The Ukrainian authorities have acted on their threat to ban Yulia Samoilova – the wheelchair bound signer the Russians have picked to represent them in this year’s Eurovision song contest in Kiev – from travelling to Ukraine.
The grounds for this ban are that Samoilova violated Ukrainian law by taking part in a concert in Crimea in 2015.
As Ukraine becomes increasingly engulfed by crisis, the IMF has postponed the decision as to whether or not to provide Ukraine with the latest tranche of its bailout funding.
That decision was supposed to be made today (Monday 20th March 2017). Instead, without any formal announcement, the IMF put off the decision, giving no date for when it would be made.
Jihadis fighters affiliated to Al-Qaeda launched a surprise attack on eastern Damascus today.
This attack comes after weeks of Jihadi defeats in and around Damascus, with the Syrian army steadily driving Jihadi fighters away from the Damascus countryside. The result has been to leave Damascus far more secure than it has been ever since the first big Jihadi offensive – Operation Damascus Volcano – launched by the Jihadis in June 2012.
Israeli Prime Minsiter Benjamin Netanyahu has emerged after an illegal Israeli air strike on Syrian troops in Palmyra. In his statement, he predictably disregarded international law, but he also made what can only be described as a thinly veiled threat against Russia.
For the third time in three months, Israeli war planes have illegally bombed Syria. According to Syria, the Israeli jets targeted government positions in Palmyra, which was recently liberated from ISIS by the Syrian Arab Army along with Russian Aerospace Forces and Russian special forces.
Syria has given the following statement about the latest Israel attack on Syrian sovereignty,
In the last few hours a US Federal Judge in Hawaii, Judge Derrick Watson, has imposed a temporary restraining Order on President Trump’s second ‘travel ban’ Executive Order.
I do not yet have the transcript of Judge Watson’s decision. However I understand that Judge Watson sought to use comments made by various persons associated with the administration – including possibly the President himself – to interpret the Order as discriminating against Muslims.
Though results are still coming in, it is clear that Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s centre right VVD party has achieved a comfortable lead in the Dutch parliamentary elections.
By contrast Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party, though it has significantly increased its share of the vote and has almost doubled its representation in the parliament, has done less well than opinion polls predicted, and may even have come third.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has detailed her intention to hold a referendum on Scottish independence.
Although a referendum on Scottish independence was held in 2014 which was narrowly won by the ‘remain in UK’ side. However, with Scottish people voting strongly against Brexit, the issue of independence is very much on the table. In 2014, the word Brexit did not exist and the natural assumption was that Scotland was voting to remain in a UK that would forever be in the EU.
Now, the pro-EU population of Scotland find themselves faced with new realities.
Mr. Brexit aka Nigel Farage was pictured entering the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He stayed for around 40 minutes.
Perhaps Farage wanted to strength British-Ecuadorian trade relations in preparation for the UK’s exit from the EU single market or perhaps he was meeting with the most famous resident of the Embassy, none other than Julian Assange? So far, no one can confirm.
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange held a press conference following the release of the first part of Vault 7, the largest archive of CIA related classified documents to hit the internet.
The main announcement that came from Julian Assange was the revelation that Wikileaks may be working with the tech community to secure the world’s data and privacy against the vast power of the CIA’s data gathering capability.
A “Digital Geneva Convention” (as outlined by Microsoft), looks like it will come into being. Wikileaks working with the tech community to stop CIA intrusion and hacking.
