Politics this week

Donald Trump sacked Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, announcing the defenestration on Twitter. Mr Tillerson had become increasingly detached from the White House as the president let it be known that he wanted to pursue a more muscular foreign policy. Concluding that his unconventional approach was reaping benefits, Mr Trump had earlier surprised South Korean envoys, and his own national-security team, by agreeing to meet Kim Jong Un for talks on North Korea’s nuclear aims. See article.

The new secretary of state will be Mike Pompeo, who currently runs the CIA. Gina Haspel steps up from deputy director to the top job at the CIA. She will be the first woman to hold the position if her appointment clears the Senate, where she will face tough questioning about her past supervision of “enhanced” interrogations at secret sites. See article.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released their report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, concluding that provocateurs had interfered, but that there had been no collusion with the Trump campaign. Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is still investigating.

The governor of Florida, Rick Scott, signed a bill that raises the state’s legal age for all gun purchases from 18 to 21 and introduces a three-day waiting period when buying a weapon. The law would have stopped the 19-year-old who massacred 17 people at a school near Miami from buying his semi-automatic rifle.

The Democrats claimed victory in a special election for a congressional seat in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. The seat had been held by the Republicans since 2003 and its voters chose Mr Trump in the presidential election by a 20-point margin. The win fired up the Democrats’ hopes of taking the House in the mid-terms. See article.

Forever Xi

China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, removed the two-term limit for presidents, allowing Xi Jinping to remain in office for life. It also announced the re-organisation of more than two dozen ministries and departments.

In Hong Kong, by-elections were held in four of the six seats where pro-democracy candidates had been removed from office for criticising the governments of China and Hong Kong during their swearing-in. The pro-democracy movement lost two of the seats, a blow to its standing. See article.

Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, threatened to withdraw his country from the International Criminal Court because it is investigating human-rights abuses in his bloody campaign against drug pushers and users. 

A scandal over the sale of state land at a huge discount to a school with links to the wife of Japan’s prime minister was revived, after the finance ministry admitted it had doctored documents relating to the sale before submitting them to parliament. See article.

The mother of diplomatic rows

Britain said it would expel 23 Russian diplomats in response to a nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury. Theresa May, the prime minister, said Moscow had reacted to the attack with “sarcasm, contempt and defiance”. Russia said it would retaliate. See article.

Lucy Allan, the MP for Telford, renewed her call for an independent inquiry into the alleged sexual abuse of up to 1,000 “white working-class girls” in the English town by suspected gangs of men of South Asian origin. As with a similar case in Rotherham, the authorities have come under intense criticism for not investigating the claims because of the racial sensitivities.

Angela Merkel was sworn in as Germany’s chancellor for a fourth term. The Social Democrats, coalition partners to her Christian Democrats, have been given the jobs of finance minister and foreign minister, filled by Olaf Scholz and Heiko Maas respectively. See article.

The prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, offered to stand down, following the murder of a young journalist who had been investigating official corruption. Huge crowds had demonstrated against Mr Fico in the capital, Bratislava, and other cities. See article.

Anti-revolutionary forces

Colombians voted in legislative elections and presidential primaries. They rejected the candidates from the political party created by former rebels from the FARC, though the party is guaranteed ten seats in congress. Rodrigo Londoño, the FARC’s leader, withdrew from the presidential race because of bad health. Iván Duque, the right’s candidate, and Gustavo Petro, the left’s man, are the front-runners in the presidential election. See article.

Federal police in Mexico arrested a man they say was involved in the disappearance of 43 students from the town of Iguala in 2014. Erick Uriel Sandoval is accused of helping burn the students’ bodies at a rubbish dump. Independent experts have cast doubt on prosecutors’ version of events.

Lawmakers in Peru put forward a motion to begin impeachment proceedings against Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the president, who is defending himself in congress against accusations that he lied about donations from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction firm.

Close shave

A roadside bomb in Gaza targeted the convoy of the Palestinian prime minister, Rami Hamdallah. The Palestinian Authority called the explosion an assassination attempt and held Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, responsible for the breakdown in security, but did not accuse it of carrying out the attack.

Israel’s government settled a dispute over a bill that would extend an exemption from military service for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students. The row threatened to bring down the government. However, there is speculation that Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, wants an early election as he faces multiple corruption investigations.

Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, issued a decree lifting a ban on international flights to and from the Kurdistan region. Kurdish authorities agreed to place the airports under federal control, according to the decree.

Julius Maada Bio, a former leader of a military coup, won the first round of Sierra Leone’s presidential election. He will face Samura Kamara, the ruling party’s candidate, in the run-off.

Happiness, happiness

Burundi came last in the annual World Happiness Report by the UN, which ranks countries on factors such as life expectancy, freedom and corruption. Burundi edged out the Central African Republic, which came bottom last year. Norway, the happiest country in 2017, was nudged out of the top spot by Finland.