South Sudan's 6 Year Government Stalemate Concludes - 21st February 2020

Hi. I am Alex Hicken, summarizing my daily world news report on February 21^st, 2020 from my blog “Read the Story of the World.” If you enjoy the world news reports, the link to today’s report is in the show notes. The report has more details and the citations; furthermore, a sign up form is available on the article page that will enable the system to email you when I publish a new article. It is on the top right corner.

Let’s begin with the Coronavirus update. There was a spike in the detected infections in China today. A couple days ago, I said that on an average in the past week, there were a little over 100 new cases. The spike was a count of 411 cases. The reason for the spike was the prisons in Wuhan reported nearly 300 infected. Most of which were from a women’s prison. The government fired 11 officials who overlooked the prison situation.

I have some follow up news with the Diamond Princess Cruise ship cluster. The count of 621 cases on the ship was incomplete as they let people disembark as some were infected. Two were discovered in Australia and eleven were detected in Nebraska. It seems like we need to quadruple check, since some organizations detection processes are not as thorough as one would expect.

As Iran ran their parliament elections, the United States placed sanctions on five election managers. The most notable is the powerful clergyman Ahmad Jannati, and the other four are Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, Siamak Rahpeyk, Mohammad Moghadam, and Mohammad Yazdi. Many good people have tried to campaign for parliament positions, but thousands have been denied the opportunity as they did not favor the regime.

One development in the country of South Sudan seems to be good. The president, Salvar Kiir and the opposition leader Riek Machar was able to negotiate a resolution after rejected peace proposal over the weekend. Riek would become one of five vice presidents, and the “dissolution of all institutions at nation and state levels” was a condition to the progress toward a more united government. Mister Machar will be sworn-in to office tomorrow. Although they do have a lot of work to reorganize their entire government, this decision will hopefully be an end of the 6 year long stalemates in the country’s government coalition.

I am going to give an update to the Syrian war before I report on a couple somewhat more optimistic things. Turkey and Russia are still backing the rebels and Assad at Idlib, and the rebels are on the offensive recently as more than 50 Syrian soldiers were killed in an airstrike.

The more optimistic things have to do with Tesla and stopping of a drug trafficking operation.

Tesla was approved to continue the construction of their new Gigafactory in Gruenheide, Brandenburg near Berlin. The courts have stopped the work twice this month due to petitions by environmental groups. The court said that this is their final decision, joining Germany’s government, who praised the developing business with Tesla.

The second good news is that a Colombian delivery of 5 tons of drugs was observed by the Panama’s National Aeronaval Service. It was not a normal boat as it was partially submerged in the water. Their vessel was a homemade submarine. The Aeronaval Service arrested the four people. They were grateful that they seized a rare opportunity as it is very difficult to detect submarines without aircraft and prior knowledge of the drug trafficking.

I would like to conclude by thanking you for listening as this is my first week of my publication. I hope that it will prosper. My first step to establishing the business is the secure an income for myself; then, we could invest in expanding. If you think that my publication is worth funding, please look up Alex Hicken on Patreon, where creators have their fan’s direct support. I will report again tomorrow. I hope that Riek Machar’s appointment tomorrow to be vice president of South Sudan is successful.