TDB Top 5 International Stories: Tuesday 21st February 2017

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5: Nobody Is Sure What Caused a Mysterious Radiation Spike Across Europe

Some speculate a Russian nuclear test in the Arctic, but experts say a pharmaceutical facility could be responsible.

Nuclear scientists are struggling to determine the source of small amounts of nuclear radiation that bloomed over Europe throughout January.

Vice News

4: Iraqi forces push into ISIL-held southern Mosul

Iraqi security forces have pushed into the southern outskirts of Mosul on the second day of a new offensive to drive ISIL fighters from the city’s western half, as US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis arrived in Baghdad on an unannounced visit.

Iraqi forces backed by jets and helicopters battled their way to Mosul airport on Monday as they prepared to take on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group’s stronghold in the city’s west bank.

“The federal police has resumed its advance … Our cannons are targeting Daesh defence lines with heavy fire,” federal police chief Raed Shaker Jawdat said, using and Arabic acronym for ISIL, also known as ISIS.

Aljazeera

3: DHS Memos: Speed Up Mass Deportations & Prosecute Parents Who Help Undocumented Children Enter U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has drafted and signed sweeping new guidelines to speed up the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States. The memos instruct federal agencies to begin hiring 10,000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, as well as 5,000 more Border Patrol agents. They also detail plans to accelerate deportation hearings and to expand the number of people prioritized for removal from the United States. McClatchy is reporting hundreds of thousands more undocumented immigrants in the United States would be subject to what’s known as expedited removal proceedings to get them quickly out of the country. According to McClatchy, children who arrived in the United States as “unaccompanied minors” would no longer be protected against deportation, and their parents would be subject to criminal prosecution if they had paid human traffickers to bring their children across the border. For more, we speak with Franco Ordoñez, White House correspondent for the McClatchy Washington Bureau. His latest article is “DHS chief proposes prosecuting parents of children smuggled into U.S.”

Democracy Now

 

2: AS CONSTRUCTION NEAR STANDING ROCK RESTARTS, PIPELINE FIGHTS FLARE ACROSS THE U.S.

UNDER ORDERS FROM President Donald Trump, the Army Corps of Engineers on February 7 approved a final easement allowing Energy Transfer Partners to drill under the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Construction has restarted, and lawyers for the company say it could take as little as 30 days for oil to flow through the Dakota Access pipeline.

While the Standing Rock Sioux and neighboring tribes attempt to halt the project in court, other opponents of the pipeline have launched what they’re calling a “last stand,” holding protests and disruptive actions across the U.S. In North Dakota, where it all began, a few hundred people continue to live at camps on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, using them as bases for prayer and for direct actions to block construction. Last week, camps were served eviction notices from Gov. Doug Burgum and from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, demanding that they clear the biggest camp, Oceti Sakowin, by Wednesday and a smaller camp, Sacred Stone, within 10 days.

The fight against DAPL didn’t come from nowhere. It’s a direct descendant of the Keystone XL fight — both pass through the territory of the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires, which includes bands of the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota people. And when Standing Rock tribal members saw that it was time to mobilize, they turned to relatives that had fought the Keystone XL.

The Intercept

1:  Swedish police comments ‘taken out of context’ in film cited by Trump

Two Swedish police officers interviewed for a documentary cited by Donald Trump as evidence of a link between crime levels and asylum policy in Sweden say their comments were taken out of context, accusing the interviewer of “bad journalism”.

At a Florida rally on Sunday the US president sowed confusion by seemingly referencing a non-existent terrorist attack in Sweden, later explaining on Twitter that the comment had been a reference to a news segment on the Fox News TV channel, which described an “incredible surge of violence” in Sweden.

But two police officers interviewed for the broadcast told Dagens Nyeter newspaper on Monday that their interview had been edited and “we were answering completely different questions in the interview”. They described the filmmaker who interviewed them, Ami Horowitz, as “a madman”.

Horowitz denied the accusations, saying he stood by his reporting and that the two policemen were “probably under a lot of pressure because of what they said”.

Fox’s nightly Tucker Carlson Tonight show featured the segment, introduced as “Filmmaker documents refugee violence in Sweden”, in which Horowitz appears to ask two off-duty policemen if they “see the violence really spreading across Sweden into cities”.

The Guardian