Subject: Morning Brief: Indonesia tsunami death toll reaches 430
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Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2018 09:16:08 -0600 (CST)

Indonesia Tsunami Death Toll Reaches 430

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MORNING BRIEF

Today's Global News from Foreign Policy

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12/26/2018

12/26/2018

TOP NEWS

Indonesia Tsunami Death Toll Reaches 430

Top News: The death toll from a tsunami that swept across Indonesia’s Sunda Strait without warning on Saturday has reached 430, with many still missing. Approximately 1,500 people were injured and 22,000 displaced along the coasts of Java and Sumatra. Authorities on Wednesday issued an extreme weather warning for the affected region.

In recent decades, Indonesia, the world’s fourth-largest country, has been battered by tsunamis. The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami killed some 200,000 Indonesians. Some of the early warning systems built after that disaster have not been properly maintained.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo promised a new warning system in 2019.

Syria: Israeli missiles hit an arms cache northeast of Damascus on Tuesday, according to Syrian state media. The targeted weapons belonged to Iran or Hezbollah, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Israel, which does not usually acknowledge its strikes in Syria, did not comment on the attack. Russia said that the strikes threatened civilian flights.

“The decision to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria will not change our consistent policy,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, the Washington Post reported. “We will continue to act against Iran’s attempts to entrench itself militarily in Syria, and to the extent necessary, we will even expand our actions there.”

Space: A mysterious hole in a Soyuz capsule docked to the International Space station looks suspiciously like it was drilled from the inside.

AFRICA

•  Election officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said that Sunday’s presidential vote would be delayed until March in three cities—in two because of Ebola and in one because of ethnic violence—and would proceed everywhere else as planned.

•  In Khartoum on Tuesday, Sudanese security forces broke up demonstrations against President Omar al-Bashir, who has been in power for three decades.

•  Qatar sent 24 armored vehicles to Mali for use in counterterrorism operations.

AMERICAS

•  Martha Erika Alonso, the first female governor of Puebla, Mexico, and her husband Rafael Moreno Valle, a Mexican senator, died in a helicopter crash on Tuesday.

•  An 8-year-old Guatemalan died in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody—the second child to die in the agency’s custody this month.

•  A partial U.S. government shutdown entered its fifth day.

ASIA

•  Chinese human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, who was detained in a crackdown on activists in 2015, went on trial on accusations of subverting state power.

•  Japan, which has long allowed the sale of whale meat collected for “scientific research” in order to meet the requirements of the International Whaling Commission (which bans commercial whale hunting), said it would withdraw from an international agreement in order to formally resume commercial whaling.

•  Thailand’s ruling junta approved bills that would legalize same-sex civil unions and medical marijuana. The civil union law, approved by the cabinet, still needs parliamentary signoff. The marijuana bill is set to become law upon receiving royal approval.

EUROPE

•  France dropped charges against Rwandan officials investigated after the downing of then-Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane in 1994.

•  Sicily's Mount Etna erupted on Monday, carpeting nearby villages with ash, and dozens of tremors have rippled through the area since, including a 4.8 magnitude earthquake on Wednesday.

•  A man in Spain was found to have successfully pretended to be a Catholic priest for 18 years.

MIDDLE EAST

•  The Arab League is moving toward readmitting Syria, the Guardian reported.

•  Abbas Edalat, a British-Iranian academic detained in Iran since April, was released.

•  Israel will hold general elections in April.

- By Benjamin Soloway

Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

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