Week #3 (24-30/06/2019)

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Donald Trump’s tweets to Iranian leaders.

AFRICA

A copper mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, collapsed (27/06) and killed at least 36 illegal miners. The mine is owned by an Anglo-Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company, Glencore. According to a statement from Glencore, the miners worked without permission.

AMERICA

United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump imposed (24/06) new sanctions on Iran. The sanctions will prevent some Iranian top leaders from access to the international financial system. Trump also posted (25/06) a sequence of threatening tweets aimed at Iranian leaders. The tweets’ closing sentences read “…Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!” In Ottawa, Canada, a fertility specialist, Bernard Norman Barwin (80), had his medical license revoked (25/6) and had to pay a fine of around USD 10,000 for using his own sperm to impregnate his patients without consent.

ASIA

Reported on June 24, the National Liberation Army of West Papua (Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat/TNPB) in Indonesia has recruited about a dozen teenagers aged 15 to 18 as combatants to fight against the Indonesian military. TNPB spokesman, Sebby Sambom, said that “These children automatically become fighters and opponents of the colonial military of Indonesia.” Meanwhile, according to the U.N. Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, one should be at least aged 18 to be eligible for the recruitment and involvement in hostilities—any recruitment below the legal age would be defined as a war crime by the International Court of Justice. On a separate occasion (26/06), President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) offered some strategic Indonesian products to Mauricio Macri, president of Argentina, during his visit to Indonesia. The products, as Jokowi mentioned in a press conference, are airplanes, maintenance service, and globally standardized locomotives and railcars. Further discussions regarding the offer were held between Argentina and the Indonesian state-owned companies in charge. In neighboring Malaysia, more than 400 schools in southern part of the country were temporarily closed due to the fear of exposure to chemical pollution. As per June 24, the source of the pollution, which has caused the recurrence of sickness among young residents, has yet to be identified. In Hong Kong (26/06) demonstrators continued the protest against the extradition bill—and they won’t back off. “It’s hard to ask people to come out again. So once we are out, we won’t retreat,” said Joe Yeung, one of the activists.

AUSTRALIA

In an attempt to tackle cyber-bullying and curb distraction, students of primary and secondary public schools in Victoria, Australia will be banned from using phones during school hours. The phones, however, can still be kept in school lockers and can be used if a child needs to keep a phone for medical reasons or if there is a specific instruction from the teacher that the phones are needed for a classroom activity. The new rule will be effective on 2020.

EUROPE

The Russian government denounced (25/06) the U.S.’s new sanctions on Iranian high officials as ‘illegal.’ Still in Russia, President Vladimir Putin (25/06) unveiled a new spy drone that’s designed resembling Harry Potter’s pet-owl Hedwig. The drone is equipped with a laser beam to guide artillery and aviation, of which then enables other military assets to attack the target. Also, a Polish man Marian Radzajewski was found guilty (25/06) of stealing classified parts of Russian’s S-300 missile system for a Polish supplier. He was sentenced to 14 years in ‘strict regime colony.’

Editor: Darynaufal Mulyaman & Aldrin Sampeliling