UN, 16 October 2014 – In three rounds of voting the United Nations
General Assembly today elected Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain and
Venezuela to serve as non-permanent members on the Security Council for
two-year terms beginning on 1 January 2015.
The new members will serve on the Council until 31 December 2016.
Angola Malaysia, Venezuela and New Zealand were elected in the
first vote. The Assembly then held two rounds of restricted balloting to
elect Spain to fill the remaining seat on the Council open to the
Western European and Other States Group. Turkey was the other contender
for that seat.
Catalan President Artur Mas has signed a decree calling for an independence referendum on November 9, defying the Spanish national government’s vow to halt such a vote.
Mas said on Saturday that semi-autonomous Catalonia wanted to "vote and decide."
Calls for an independence vote have grown in the wake of fiscal crisis that hit Spain and led to austerity measures.
[Source: Financial Times] By Tobias Buck in Madrid and Simon Rabinovitch in ShanghaiThere is rising concern in Spain over
a diplomatic and economic backlash from China, after a criminal court
in Madrid called for the arrest of five former Chinese leaders for their
role in alleged crimes of genocide in Tibet.The ruling, handed down last week, is aimed at Jiang Zemin, the
former Chinese president, Li Peng, the former prime minister, and three
other high-ranking ex-officials. The men are said to have held
“political or military responsibility” in periods when the Chinese
authorities are alleged to have committed human rights abuses against
the Tibetan population.
The “stupid” austerity measures imposed after the 2011 EU bailout may
see Portugal losing all the gains of the Carnation Revolution, European
MP, Rui Tavares, told RT on the anniversary of the peaceful coup of
1974. Frustration with austerity is deepening among Europeans, with
one in five of the workforce without a job in Portugal and Spain's
unemployment jumping to a record of 27.2 per cent. People in the two heavily-indebted nations are launching fresh
protests against their governments and international lenders.
