Monday, 9th May 2016
GREECE – Eurozone Finance Ministers have promised to examine how to ease Greece’s colossal debt burden, with writing off bad loans remaining off the table. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the chair of Eurozone Finance Ministers, said he was hopeful of getting an agreement on Greek debt management in talks on 24 May. (The Guardian)
Greece’s leftist-led coalition will turn to the lightning rod issue of debt relief on Monday at a crucial meeting of Eurozone Finance Ministers following the late-night approval in Athens of laws overhauling the country’s tax and pension system. (The Guardian)
ISRAEL – London’s newly elected Muslim mayor paid respect Sunday to the millions of Jews slain in the Holocaust as his first official act in office. (Haaretz)
MIGRANT CRISIS – Slovakian border officials shot and wounded a Syrian refugee when they opened fired at a car carrying migrants from Hungary into Slovakia, authorities have said. (The Independent)
Tuesday, 10th May 2016
ITALY – Forget Brexit or Grexit, €360bn of bad loans within a fragmented Italian banking sector could be the biggest threat of all. Even a “small crisis” could trigger a chain of events that would threaten the stability of the European Union, the credit ratings agency Moody’s has said. (The Guardian)
Italian police have arrested three asylum-seekers in a terrorism and human-trafficking investigation launched after photos of potential targets in three countries were discovered on suspects’ cell phones, prosecutors in the southern city of Bari said Tuesday. (The New York Times)
MIGRANT CRISIS – Hundreds of non-Syrian asylum seekers deported under the EU-Turkey migration deal were not allowed to claim asylum in either Greece or Turkey, a group of European politicians has claimed. (The Guardian)
TURKEY – Turkey came under scrutiny on Tuesday for alleged human rights violations committed by security forces against Kurds in the southeast and Syrian refugees trying to enter the country, with two organizations calling for investigations. (The New York Times)
WAR ON TERROR – President Barack Obama will meet with his National Security Council on Tuesday morning to discuss US efforts to fight ISIS militants, the White House said. (Al Arabiya)
Wednesday, 11th May 2016
ALGERIA – Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal is expected to announce a new package of reforms to cope with plummeting global energy prices within the coming weeks. Last December, Sellal established a task force to diversify the country’s oil-dependent economy. (Al Jazeera)
FRANCE – French Prime Minister Manuel Valls will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories this month in a bid to relaunch the peace process following the worst flare-up of violence in the Gaza Strip for two years, his office said Tuesday. (Al Arabiya)
MIGRANT CRISIS – German Authorities are investigating the possible arrival of 40 Islamist militants among more than 1.1 million asylum seekers who have travelled to the country during the refugee crisis. (The Independent)
TURKEY – A German court has rejected a request by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for a preliminary injunction preventing the head of German publisher Axel Springer repeating a derogatory term. (The Guardian)
Thursday, 12th May 2016
SYRIA – Syrian and Russian air strikes have targeted rebel-held areas in Aleppo province, killing and injuring several people, as rebels captured a village in Homs province, monitoring group says. (Al Jazeera)
TURKEY – European leaders have warned that a visa-free travel deal for Turkey might fail unless Ankara changes its anti-terrorism law. The Turkish President has refused to budge and accused the EU of “hypocrisy.” (Deutsche Welle)
TURKISH KURDISTAN – Four people were killed and 15 wounded, including four critically, when an explosion ripped through a village in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, security sources said. (Reuters)
WAR ON TERROR – Turkish artillery pounded Islamic State targets in northern Syria overnight and the U.S.-led coalition carried out airstrikes, killing 28 militants near a Turkish border town repeatedly hit by rocket fire, Turkish military sources said. (Haaretz)
Islamic State fighters extended their barrage of suicide bombings in Iraq on Thursday, killing at least 20 Iraqi soldiers and tribal fighters outside the western regional capital of Ramadi, and killing five policemen in a coordinated attack outside the Abu Ghraib district of Baghdad, officials said. (The New York Times)
Friday, 13th May 2016
LIBYA – The US government is ready to loosen a United Nations ban on arms exports to Libya, in a bid to help the country’s fledgling unity government fight ISIS, officials and diplomats told AFP. (Al Arabiya)
MIGRANT CRISIS – The EU naval mission to tackle people smuggling in the central Mediterranean is failing to achieve its aims, a British parliamentary committee says. (BBC)
SYRIA – Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group said Friday its top military commander Mustafa Badreddine was killed in an explosion in the Syrian capital of Damascus, a major blow to the militant group. (The New York Times)
TURKISH KURDISTAN – Eight Turkish soldiers and 22 Kurdish militants have been killed in clashes over the last two days, authorities said on Friday, as violence widened in the largely Kurdish southeast following two bombings. (Reuters)
Four suspected bombmakers were killed and 17 people wounded when an explosion ripped through a village in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish north-east, according to security officials. (The Telegraph)
