Tuesday 31 March 2020

A bit of variety - but it still makes grim reading

Huw Evans, over in the next valley, challenged people on Facebook recently to put up news stories which did not involve Covid-19. I defended myself, pointing out that I have posted such items, just as I did when the rest of the media seemed to be wall-to-wall Brexit. However, looking back on recent contributions, they seem to have been just as depressing as coverage of the new corona virus.

Perhaps it is good news that Turkey continues to pursue the Saudi assassins.

Israel may be entering a period of political stability at last, but at the cost of keeping in power a prime minister with fraud and corruption charges hanging over him and of an opposition leader who has torn up virtually all of his party's last election manifesto.

"Federal prosecutors accused President Nicolás Maduro of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy, in a major escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure him to leave office." reports the New York Times. If the Obama or Carter presidencies had issued such indictments, one would have been inclined to believe they had merit, but with Trump, who knows?

The finance minister of the state of Hesse in Germany has been found dead on railway tracks. The immediate suspicion is that he committed suicide. What adds significance is that the financial capital of Germany, Frankfurt-am-Main, is situated in Hesse.

In Libya, the Benghazi-based, UAE-backed, warlord Khalifa Haftar continues to attack Tripoli, the seat of the legitimate government, in spite of a cease-fire which had been negotiated early in the month. It cannot be good that the state from which people-traffickers operate seemingly with impunity and which is next-door to popular UK holiday destinations, is unstable.

Most serious to my view is the incursion of the evil al Shabaab into Mozambique, a Commonwealth nation, with it seems little resistance from the central authority. If what Amnesty says is true, that journalists are prevented from entering the region, then the news broadcasters have some excuse.

[Acknowledgements to al-Jazeera, Deutsche Welle and Amnesty International]

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