A round up of world news in the week ahead from journalist resource ForesightNews.

Monday 14 January

Five men charged with the gang rape and murder last month of a 23-year-old medical student on a bus in New Delhi are due back in court on Monday, following a 10 January hearing. The horrific case has provoked unprecedented protests in India, where rape victims are frequently blamed for attacks.

Meanwhile, a law lifting restrictions stopping all but a few favoured Cubans from leaving the island takes effect. For many Cubans, the termination of the so-called exit visa, which was announced last October, is one of the most significant relaxations to be announced by President Raul Castro. Commentators speculate that Castro hopes that the measure will lead to the injection of much-needed capital to the Communist state from Cubans travelling abroad.

Finally, outgoing US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will kick off a four-nation European visit with a stop in Portugal. The week-long tour will see Panetta meet counterparts in Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Tuesday 15 January

US Vice President Joe Biden has said he will present his highly-anticipated proposals on gun law reform in the wake of the Newtown massacre by Tuesday.

Four highly-anticipated rulings from the European Court of Human Rights will be handed down on Tuesday in cases relating to the rights of Christians in the UK. The cases concern a registrar who refused to conduct same-sex civil partnerships, a relationship counsellor who was dismissed after expressing concerns over his ability to provide advice to same-sex couples, and a British Airways employee who was not permitted to wear a visible crucifix necklace, and a nurse who was also barred from wearing a crucifix necklace.

The Philippines Supreme Court is due to hear arguments in challenges brought against a controversial new law regulating online activity, which came into effect last October but was subsequently suspended. Critics of The Cybercrime Prevention Act 0f 2012 argue that the law is unconstitutional and threatens freedom of expression. A further hearing is due 22 January.

Finally, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar will chair an open debate at the UN Security Council in New York on a comprehensive approach to counter-terrorism’. The debate is expected to be one of the highlights of Pakistan’s presidency of the SC this month.

Wednesday 16 January

On Wednesday, a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency is due to hold talks in Tehran over Iran’s nuclear programme. The IAEA has long wanted to visit the Parchin facility, however this is not seen as likely this time around. The US has threatened to take action at the UN Security Council unless Iran shows ‘substantive cooperation’ with the IAEA by March.

Top US diplomat for Asia Kurt Campbell will arrive in Tokyo for talks with Japanese counterparts, following a visit on Tuesday to South Korea. The visit comes amid heightened regional tension, particularly between old foes Japan and China. He is joined on this trip by his counterparts from the Department of Defense and the National Security Council, an indication of the seriousness with which the Obama administration is treating the situation.

The IMF’s Executive Board, finally, is due to meet to review its loans to Greece and the country’s progress towards tackling its enormous economic challenges.

Thursday 17 January

Sticking with the IMF, on Thursday Managing Director Christine Lagarde will address media from the DC headquarters of the Fund, discussing her views on economic policy priorities for the year ahead. The latest self-made crisis facing the US economy, namely the brinkmanship over whether to raise the debt ceiling, is likely to feature in her remarks.

In Brussels, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton will host the latest round of EU-mediated talks between Serbia and Kosovo. Although Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic will be in attendance, the agenda for talks does not include the status of Kosovo, which Belgrade refuses to recognise.

Finally, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will be addressing an event organised by The Spectator. He may well be asked about the current conflict in Syria.

Friday 18 January

New Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will be in Washington on Friday to meet Hillary Clinton for the first time since Shinzo Abe and the LDP swept to power in December elections. The worrying escalation of tensions between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu island chain is likely to be top of the agenda – it will be interesting to see whether Clinton sticks with the US policy of referring to the islands publicly as the Senkakus, thereby further irking Beijing.

As it happens, China will be releasing its GDP data for the final quarter of 2012 on Friday. Economists will be watching the data closely, since there is little growth elsewhere.

Saturday 19 January

The festivities surrounding Barack Obama’s second inauguration will kick off Saturday with a National Day of Service, where Americans are encouraged to engage in community service projects, a tradition started by the President in 2009. Defenders of Second Amendment rights are organising a ‘Gun Appreciation Day’ to coincide with the perceived onslaught on their right to bear arms. Their slogan is ‘Hands off our Guns’.

Sunday 20 January

A cease fire announced by leftist Colombian rebels on 19 November will expire today, unless it is extended. The extent to which progress is being made in talks between the FARC and Colombian government is unclear, but President Juan Manuel Santos has said a deal must be made by November.

Ahead of the national poll in September, elections will take place in the German state of Lower Saxony on Sunday. Half-Scottish Governor David McAllister, who represents Angela Merkel’s CDU, is seeking re-election in a vote being seen as a litmus test ahead of the September vote.

Finally, Barack Obama will be sworn-in as President by Chief Justice John Robert in a private ceremony ahead of the public inauguration ceremonies taking place Monday.

Images courtesy of spirit of america / Shutterstock.com

By Nicole Hunt

UN-Arab League Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan is back in Moscow on Monday for a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Despite a Russian-backed agreement signed in Geneva at the end of June, international action on Syria has been slow-moving ever since, despite the US and the UK taking a strong stance against Syria and China just a week later at the Friends of Syria meeting. Annan’s meeting with Lavrov comes on the heels of a reported massacre in Treimsa on 12 July, in which at least 200 Syrians were killed.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton begins a two-day trip to Israel, where she’ll discuss the Middle East peace process with Israeli and Palestinian officials. The visit is Clinton’s first in two years, and comes ahead of a trip by Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney next week; in addition to the diplomatic meetings, Clinton will surely be hoping to shore up some support for the Democrats from wealthy ex-pat Americans in Israel.

Monday also marks the 70th anniversary of the Vel d’Hiv roundup, which saw over 13,000 of France’s Jews deported to Germany, where most ended up at Auschwitz. Paris is marking the anniversary with a Day of Commemoration and the release and exhibition of meticulously kept records related to the roundup. The documents had previously been kept secret to hide the extent of the collaboration between French police and the Germans under the Vichy regime during World War II.

Abd al Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al Nashiri, the Guantanamo Bay detainee charged with the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, appears for a three-day motions hearing on Tuesday. Fifteen motions due to be heard, including one requesting that Judge James Pohl recuses himself or is disqualified from the case, one to dismiss the charges, and one requesting that the proceedings are broadcast via traditional media, rather than the military’s current closed circuit system.

Former US President George W. Bush is a contributor to a new book published Tuesday called The 4% Solution: Unleashing the Economic Growth America Needs. The idea of Bush Jr. sharing his thoughts on economic growth has raised some eyebrows among those who remember that the economy wasn’t exactly the strongpoint of his presidency.

The UN Security Council is due to adopt a resolution on the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) in New York on Wednesday, two days before the mission’s three-month mandate expires. Given that the mission has been suspended since 16 June, and in the wake of ongoing violence and the Houla and Treimsa massacres, any renewal is likely to be dependent on a change in the form the mission takes or tougher sanctions on the Syrian regime.

Indians go to the polls on Thursday to elect their president for a five-year term. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee resigned from his post last month in order to run for the UPA party, and now looks likely to win. Mukherjee has been campaigning hard to convince the electorate to follow tradition and vote for whichever candidate their party leaders back, and indeed to make sure he’s the one smaller parties are throwing their support behind.

The month-long Muslim festival of Ramadan is likely to officially start on Friday, though Muslims will begin to observe it from sundown on Thursday. The exact date for the festival’s beginning is still a bit up in the air, as the beginning of the lunar month is dependent on the sighting of the new moon.

Apple’s iPad goes on sale in China on Friday, the launch having been delayed due to a naming dispute with Chinese firm Proview. China is Apple’s second-strongest market (after its home ground in the US), but while the release of the iPhone 4s last year caused havoc, Chinese analysts are predicting the new iPad won’t fare as well, as cheaper, ‘gray market’ versions have been available from Hong Kong for months.

Francesco Schettino, the skipper of the Costa Concordia who has been nicknamed ‘Captain Coward’ after he allegedly fled the ship as it went down in January, is scheduled to be back in front of the court in Grosseto, Italy on Saturday. The court is expected to be presented with the results of the analysis of data from the ship’s Voyage Data Recorders (or ‘black boxes’). Schettino has recently appeared in several TV interviews, most recently apologising for the disaster and admitting to being ‘distracted’ at the time.

The 19th biennial International AIDS Conference kicks off in Washington on Sunday. Bill Clinton, Elton John, Bill Gates, Whoopi Goldberg and Aung San Suu Kyi (via videolink) are among those attending to discus

s the major challenges facing the global response to AIDS and to preview new scientific research. Norway marks the first anniversary of the 22 July attacks, which saw 77 people killed in a bombing in Oslo and a mass shooting at a Labour Party youth camp on the island of Utoya. Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik , who has admitted carrying out the attacks but claimed they were justified, recently stood trial for the killings; the verdict in his case is expected on 24 August.

“I would be more pessimistic if I had to rewrite the last sentences,” said Christophe Ayad, co-director of Syria: Assad’s Twilight. The documentary finished where it began – with Bashar al-Assad’s brutality unleashed upon his own people, captured only on shaking mobile phones – but with a feeling of optimism that the regime’s days are numbered and its power is waning.

But things have changed since Christophe Ayad and Vincent De Cointet finished filming in June 2011. There is no longer any certainty that the Assad regime will have to go. On the same day as the UK premiere of their documentary, Kofi Annan told the UN Security Council that the Syrian government had agreed to withdraw forces from towns and cities.

The film takes us back to the beginning of the Assad regime in 1971, to Hafez’s establishment of a single-party state that ruled with an iron fist, to his longstanding conflict with Israel, and his entrenched involvement in Lebanese politics. Little changed in 2000, when Bashar came to power after his father’s death. In particular, neither man could tolerate opposition.

We see parallels between father and son in the only surviving evidence of the 1982 Hama massacre – four weeks of mass murder, rape, and torture – a series of faded photographs of destroyed buildings, looking then like the Homs district of Baba Amr does today.

After the screening, Patrick Seale, author and Middle East expert featuring in the documentary, joined Ayad on stage for the Q&A.

Ayad was asked to expand upon his pessimism. He said: “The peaceful demonstrations were totally new to the regime, but the moment the demonstrators took up weapons they entered a game that the regime knows how to play.”

Seale described the mounting layers of Syria’s problems: “Unemployment, drought, a demographic explosion and an education system and government services over-burdened . . . coupled with the mindset of Bashar – he has faced a series of external conspiracies which have threatened the regime.”

Ayad agreed, but said: “The external problems can be changed, solved, but I’m pessimistic about the regime’s capacity to reform in its approach to its own people. The regime does not consider them as citizens – they are just there to shut up. Syria has lost its people, but you can run a country without your people.”

“After 2005, Bashar felt that he had overcome something and that he didn’t have to listen anymore. Even Hafez was more political – for example, he sided with the US against Iraq during the Gulf War – but Bashar is not political. He’s a mix of Western idealism and Eastern autocracy.” – Christophe Ayad

Ayad is no longer certain that we are witnessing the Assads’ twilight because Syria has various assets that prolong its grip on power: agricultural wealth and the support of two substantial powers – Russia and Iran. It also maintains control of a strong security apparatus which, until now, has not fallen apart. But what remains of Bashar’s capacity to rule?

By Nicole Hunt

Following the Friends of Syria (or Friends of the Syrian people, depending on who you ask) meeting in Istanbul on Sunday, UN-Arab League Special Envoy for Syria Kofi Annan is set to address the UN Security Council in New York on Monday to update them on the progress of his recent discussions with the Syrian government and the implementation of his six-point plan.

The recent rise in diplomatic sparring between the UK and Argentina can be attributed to the fact that the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Falklands War has been fast approaching. Monday marks 30 years since Argentine naval forces landed on the Falkland Islands, sparking the 74-day conflict over the sovereignty of the archipelago.

South Sudan has invited Sudanese President Omar al Bashir to something of a peace summit on Tuesday, though it looks increasingly unlikely that he will attend (he’s said he won’t, but South Sudan says the invitation still stands). The two countries have been trying to iron out outstanding issues surrounding oil revenues, disputed border regions and citizenship since South Sudan became independent in July 2011, but ongoing armed conflict – with each country blaming the other – has stalled negotiations.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Prague to meet with Prime Minister Petr Necas, partially to celebrate 20 since the signing of a treaty of cooperation between the two countries, and partially to discuss the EU debt crisis, following the Czech Republic’s decision to opt out of the new EU fiscal stability treaty alongside the UK. The meeting comes on the same day that the EU releases the third estimate of its fourth quarter GDP figures, and as the German, French and Italian statistics offices release their quarterly eurozone economic outlook.

Angola marks the 10th anniversary of the end of its 27-year civil war on Wednesday. Over 500,000 civilians are believed to have been killed during the conflict, and another 4.3 million people displaced. After several false starts, including the signing of the Lusaka Protocol in October 1994, the conflict was formally ended with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the government and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) on April 4, 2002.

Four police officers are sentenced in New Orleans after having been found guilty last August of opening fire on an unarmed family in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, resulting in the death of 17-year-old James Brissette. Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso were also found guilty of obstructing the course of justice and the shooting death of 40-year-old Ronald Madison, who had severe mental disabilities. Attention stays stateside and in the courts on Thursday, with two high-profile hearings scheduled to take place.

Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout is sentenced in New York, having been convicted of conspiring to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to South American terrorists, conspiring to kill US nationals, conspiring to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, and harbouring or concealing terrorists.

In Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky is due to appear for a pre-trial hearing ahead of his 5 June trial to face multiple charges of child abuse.

Christians around the globe observe Good Friday, though the conventional traditions of going to mass and eating fish pale in comparison to the rituals carried out in the Philippines every year, where dozens of people are nailed to crosses and hundreds of others whipped until their backs bleed in ceremonial re-enactments of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

And in the last of this week’s war-related anniversaries, Bosnia marks 20 years since the siege of Sarajevo began. While the beginning of the Bosnian war, which lasted until December 1995, is officially recognised as 1 April, Bosnians generally observe 6 April as the starting point of the conflict. A range of events are planned, from a concert with empty seats for those killed in the siege to a gathering of war reporters at the Holiday Inn that became media headquarters during the war.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi hosts his Japanese and South Korean counterparts in Ningbo on Saturday for two days of talks ahead of a trilateral leaders’ meeting later this year. Discussions are expected to focus on regional cooperation, but it’s unlikely that the three ministers will make it through the weekend without the topic of North Korea popping up, especially ahead of a rocket launch planned for next week.

Sudan has set Sunday as the deadline for between 500,000 and 700,000 ethnic South Sudanese living in Sudan to obtain a residency or work permit to remain in the country or risk ‘being treated as foreigners’. Whether this deadline still stands by the end of the week may depend on how Monday’s summit goes – or whether it goes ahead at all.