Subject: Morning Brief: A rejected budget brings Spain closer to snap elections
From: "Foreign Policy" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2019 08:39:08 -0600 (CST)

A Rejected Budget Brings Spain Closer to Snap Elections

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MORNING BRIEF

Today's Global News from Foreign Policy

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02/13/2019

02/13/2019

TOP NEWS

A Rejected Budget Brings Spain Closer to Snap Elections

Top News: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez faces the possibility of a snap national election after the country’s Parliament rejected the Socialist government’s 2019 draft budget. Government sources had said Tuesday that this outcome would trigger a new election.

Catalan parties, along with center-right and conservative groups, ultimately voted against the budget, dooming the Socialists, who needed the votes of smaller regional parties to get the budget approved.

Sánchez had formed a minority government in June 2018 with the aid of Catalan separatist parties, but the parties reportedly chose not to support the budget after Sánchez chose not to consider a second independence referendum for Catalonia.

Philippines: Maria Ressa, the head of Rappler, an online news site that has been critical of President Rodrigo Duterte, has been detained. The arrest warrant is related to a digital libel case. Ressa calls the charges “unfounded.”

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AFRICA

•  Sudan’s security forces arrested 14 professors on Tuesday, in the latest week of protracted anti-government protests.

•  After eastern Libyan armed forces took over the El Sharara oilfield this week, the state oil firm NOC said it is committed to resuming output when workers’ safety is guaranteed.

•  Cameroon’s opposition leader, Maurice Kamto, has been charged with rebellion and insurrection.

AMERICAS

•  Environmental groups criticized Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, after he spoke of the Amazon rainforest defender Chico Mendes, murdered in 1988, as “irrelevant.”

•  Fifty more bodies, in addition to 19 last week, have been found in clandestine graves in Colima, Mexico.

•  Emiliano Sala’s body will be returned to his hometown in Argentina. The soccer player had been traveling in a plane that crashed over the English Channel in January.

ASIA

•  Two days of talks between U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators begin this week, attempting to address a possible U.S. tariff hike on imports from China.

•  Australia intends to reopen its Christmas Island detention camp. The government claims more asylum seekers are likely to travel to Australia by boat after the passage of a law allowing doctors to order the medical evacuation of asylum seekers to Australia from offshore detention camps in other countries.

•  The Thai Raksa Chart Party, which briefly nominated Thailand’s Princess Ubolratana as its candidate for prime minister, has been recommended for dissolution by the country’s election commission.

EUROPE

•  All flights in and out of Belgium have been cancelled due to a national strike of the country’s three main workers’ unions over pay and working conditions.

•  In Warsaw, the United States and Poland are beginning an international conference on the Middle East, with the agenda that includes Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Syria, and Yemen.

•  Philip Lane, the head of Ireland’s central bank, said Wednesday that a no-deal Brexit would severely disrupt Ireland’s economy.

MIDDLE EAST

•  Egypt’s Parliament is likely to vote this week on constitutional amendments that would permit President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to remain in power until 2034.

•  The United States delivered $16 million in laser-guided rockets to Lebanon’s military.

•  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that Israel had carried out a strike in Syria on Monday.

- By Elizabeth Miles

(Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP/Getty Images)

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