Digest year-ender for international stories for month of February, 2018

Digest year-ender for international stories for month of February, 2018

Press Trust of India

Feb 1: Kathmandu: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today held one-on-one meeting with the Left alliance leader and CPN-UML chairman K P Sharma Oli and the two leaders discussed ways to take the special relationship between India and Nepal forward.

Feb 2: Washington: US President Donald Trump today authorised the release of a controversial Republican memo alleging intelligence abuses, hours after he accused the Justice Department and the FBI of a "pro-Democrat bias", saying they had "politicised" the probe against Republicans.

Feb 3: Washington: The Trump administration announces a new policy to modernise its nuclear arsenal by developing new smaller atomic bombs and enhancing its deterrence capabilities.

Feb 4: Washington: Several hundred highly-skilled Indian workers, in long agonising green card wait, from across the US along with their children and spouses hold a rally in front of the White House here in support of President Donald Trump's plan for a merit-based immigration system that among other things ends chain migration and diversity lottery visa.

Feb 5: Male: The Maldives government declared a 15-day state of emergency today as the political crisis deepened in the Indian Ocean nation amid an increasingly bitter standoff between the president and the Supreme Court.

Feb 6: Colombo/Male: Maldives' Supreme court tonight revoked an order to release nine high-profile political prisoners, hours after former president Mohamed Nasheed sought India's military intervention to resolve the ongoing political crisis in his country following declaration of emergency by President Abdulla Yameen and arrest of two top judges.

Feb 7: Beijing: China warns against any military intervention in the Maldives, saying such a move would further complicate the situation, amid repeated calls for India's military intervention by exiled former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed to resolve the political crisis. Feb 8: Dhaka: Khaleda Zia was today sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment for corruption, a body blow for the ex-Bangladeshi prime minister who may be disqualified from contesting general elections in December, as thousands of her supporters staged protests against her jailing.

Feb 9: Washington: US President Donald Trump signed a crucial spending bill today, reopening the US government after a brief shutdown, the second in three weeks, and a night of high drama in Congress.

Feb 10: Abu Dhabi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi held wide-ranging talks with Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan today as the two sides signed five agreements including a historic pact awarding a consortium of Indian oil companies a 10 per cent stake in offshore oil concession.

Feb 11: Stepanovskoye (Russia), Feb 11 (AFP) A Russian passenger plane carrying 71 people crashed near Moscow today minutes after taking off, killing everyone on board in one of the country's worst ever aviation disasters.

Feb 12: Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin said today at the start of talks with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas that he had discussed the Middle East conflict with his US counterpart Donald Trump.

Feb 13: Washington: China is 'coercing' its neighbours to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to its advantage, the Pentagon tells Congress amid Beijing flexing its muscles in the East and South China Seas. Feb 14: Johannesburg: A defiant Jacob Zuma refuses to step down as the South African president, hours after the ruling African National Congress ordered him to quit by this evening or face a motion of no confidence in Parliament. Feb 15: Washington: An expelled former student armed with a powerful assault rifle unleashed a hail of gunfire in a Florida high school, killing 17 people and injuring 15 others, including an Indian-American student, in one of the grizzliest mass shootings in modern US history.

Feb 16: Kathmandu: Questions are already being raised over the future of the new Nepal government, a day after CPN-UML leader K P Sharma Oli was sworn in as prime minister, as no ministers from ally CPN-Maoist Centre have been included in the Cabinet. Feb 17: Lahore: An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan today sentenced to death a serial killer for the brutal rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl that sparked national outrage, the first ever trial in the country's history that concluded in shortest period of four days.

Feb 18: Tehran: An Iranian passenger plane on a domestic flight crashes into the country's Zagros mountains killing all 66 people on board.

Feb 19: Colombo/Male: The state of emergency in trouble-torn Maldives was today extended by 30 days after a key parliamentary committee approved President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom's request, a media report said, allowing him to reinforce his power in the picturesque Indian Ocean island nation.

Feb 20: Dhaka: Former Bangladesh prime minister Khaleda Zia challenges the five-year prison sentence handed out to her in a corruption case, claiming that the verdict was politically motivated to debar her from contesting the general elections in December.

Feb 21: Mary (Turkmenistan): India says it is "strongly committed" to the USD 10 billion trans-national TAPI pipeline project that will help ease energy shortages in South Asia, but voices concerns over the security and predictability of supply of gas and sought contractual assurances.

Feb 22: Washington: US President Donald Trump today imposed the "heaviest-ever" sanctions on North Korea's shipping companies in a bid to prevent the reclusive nation from acquiring nuclear weapons and developing intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Feb 23: Islamabad: Pakistan today said that India's desire to become a "regional hegemon" is casting a "dark shadow" in the region.

Feb 24: Washington: President Donald Trump again blames India and China for his decision last year to withdraw from the historic Paris climate accord, saying the agreement was unfair as it would have made the US pay for nations which benefited the most from the deal. Feb 25: Beijing: In an unprecedented move, China's ruling Communist Party today prepared the ground for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely after the end of his second term in 2022 as it proposed to remove presidential term limits from the party's Constitution.

Feb 26: London: A powerful explosion ripped through a three-storey building killed at least five people and injured five others in Leicester, police said today but ruled out a terror link to the "earthquake-like" blast in the English city, home to a large number of people of Indian-origin.

Feb 27: Washington: President Donald Trump recalled a conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the high import tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles, saying India is not doing the US any "favour" by slashing customs duty to 50 per cent. Feb 28: Hazeh (Syria): In Syria's rebel-held Eastern Ghouta enclave, the bombs have stopped falling from the sky but the dead are still being raised from the rubble.

(Source PTI)