UN envoy to Burundi quits ahead of 2020 vote
AFP, United Nations
The United Nations envoy to Burundi announced on Wednesday that he planned to step down from the post he has held for two years, amid concerns over the impartiality of elections set for 2020.
“The situation in Burundi remains tenuous,” Michel Kafando told the Security Council, lamenting “growing political intolerance and attacks on civic and political freedoms.” Kafando said he hoped the May 2020 elections would be “transparent.”
Israel rearrests female Palestinian activist in West Bank
AP, Ramallah
The family of a former Palestinian lawmaker says Israeli authorities have rearrested her just months after she was released from detention. Ghassan Jarrar, the husband of 57-year-old Khalida Jarrar, says Israeli forces arrested her from her home in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday.
Jarrar, a senior official with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was released in February from 20 months of administrative detention, an Israeli policy that permits holding people for months at a time without charges.
South African police arrest 100 after refugees protest
AP, Johannesburg
Police in the South African city of Cape Town used water cannons Wednesday while arresting and dispersing hundreds of refugees and asylum-seekers, including children, who had camped for weeks outside the U.N. refugee agency’s office seeking protection after anti-immigrant attacks.
Local human rights and legal groups expressed shock over images of small children clinging to people being dragged away by police. Some people screamed in protest as officers with riot shields and batons moved through the crowd.
Hotel collapses after quake in southern Philippines
Reuters, Manila
An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 struck central Mindanao in the southern Philippines, causing at least one hotel on the island to collapse, a disaster official said on Thursday.
The quake, which the United States Geological Survey (USGS) initially measured at magnitude 6.8, was the third quake to hit the area since October 16 The quake was later put at magnitude 6.5 by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
At least two dead in Bolivia
post-election clashes
AFP, La Paz
Bolivia’s defense minister said on Wednesday that at least two people have died in clashes between supporters and opponents of President Evo Morales following his disputed election victory earlier this month.
“The truth is that human lives have been lost, and that is irreparable,” Javier Zabaleta told local media, following reports of violence in the eastern town of Montero.
