Current World Issues

Manus Island: Refugees refuse to leave Australian camp amid safety fear Refugees held by Australia in Papua New Guinea (PNG) have barricaded themselves inside a detention centre and launched legal action to fight its closure. Detainees, fearing for their safety after crowds reportedly gathered chanting "don't come out", argue that closure will breach their human rights. Australia holds asylum seekers arriving by boat in camps on PNG's Manus Island and the small Pacific nation of Nauru. The Manus Island centre is due to close after it was ruled unconstitutional. However many of those in the camp argue that its closure, ordered by a PNG court and initially scheduled for Tuesday, will deny them access to water, electricity and security. The local authorities said these provisions would cease at 17:00 local time (07:00 GMT), and that PNG defence authorities could enter the centre as early as Wednesday. Refugees told the BBC that detainees planned to protest peacefully, ...

Why does Israel keep attacking Syria? Over the weekend, cross-border violence between Israel and Syria set off an exchange of heated threats between the two countries. On Saturday, the neighbours traded blame when Israel attacked Syrian artillery cannons, claiming it was responding to what might have been errant rocket fire that landed in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. However, neither the cross-border violence nor the threats are new. There have been almost routine tit-for-tat attacks in the form of rocket fire, assassinations and air raids that have intensified since the war in Syria began in 2011. However, while the Israeli army has frequently shelled Syrian military positions and bases throughout the war, Syrian government forces have never directly retaliated - although Israel speculates that some of the stray fire is intentional. What types of attacks take place? The violence from the war in Syria, which started in 2011, has spilled over the border betwee...

Trump will pull Obamacare subsidies in another attack on health law The move is a new threat to the law’s insurance markets. Updated by DylanScott@dylanlscottylan.scott@vox.com Oct 12, 2017, 10:52pm EDT The Trump administration has decided to cut off crucial Obamacare subsidies that help reduce health care costs for lower-income Americans, a serious attack on the stability of the health care law’s insurance markets. President Donald Trump has been threatening to end the payments — know as cost-sharing reduction subsidies or CSRs — for months, but is finally following through after Republicans in Congress once again failed to repeal and replace Obamacare late last month. The White House announced late Thursday that the administration would stop the payments. The move comes as the Trump administration is also cutting funding for Obamacare outreach and pursuing new regulations to blow holes in the law, changes that collectively threaten a program through which millions of Am...