"What in the World?" - Week of Sep 10-16, 2017

China announced it wants electric or plug in hybrids to account for 1/5th of vehicle sales by 2025 and it would ban the same of gas and diesel cars and vans at a date still to be announced. China joins other large countries that are moving away from fossil fuel vehicles including THESE two nations which will completely quit by 2040:

Government forces of THIS Asian nation have responded to attacks last month by insurgents with a campaign against Rohingya Muslims that has seen about a dozen villages burned, as many as 3,000 killed and a massive refugee exodus. The Army is said to have planted anti-personnel land-mines along the border with a neighboring country that have killed fleeting refugees.

China is investing heavily in infrastructure in Serbia as part of this $900 billion initiative that goes by THIS name, boldly challenging European Union economic interests and projects in southeast Europe.

WHICH world leader chided Washington’s response to North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile developments at an international economic forum in Vladivostok last week, saying, "It's a provocation from North Korea, it's obvious," and "They count on a specific reaction from the partners and they get it. Why are you playing along with it? Have ever you thought about it?"

When President Trump met Thursday with the Emir of Kuwait at the White House they discussed the dispute between Qatar and a handful of Arab states that allege it supports terrorism and have issued a bill of demands. Qatar and the countries involved are members of all of these EXCEPT:

An advisory referendum that may put a major region of Iraq on the path to independence is set for September 25th but is not without consequences as the central government, militias and neighboring countries pose challenges to THESE people, said to be part of the largest ethnic group in the world without its own state.

THIS far-right leader in France who was defeated by President Emmanual Macron this spring sought to recapture the position of primary political alternative from the far-left France Unbowed party in a speech where she labeled them, “Islamo-Trotskysts,” saying, ““Our political family is the only one capable of being a proper alternative.” 

Moscow criticized the German Defense Minister over warnings about Russian military maneuvers code-named “West” to be held in THIS country on NATO’s eastern flank. Minister Ursula von der Leyen said more than 100,000 troops were involved in the war games and were a clear demonstration of Russian strength. The Russian Defense Ministry called those claims “bewildering” and that the exercises were defensive and involved just 13,000 troops.

The 69th anniversary of North Korea’s founding came and went on Saturday without the expected test of an ICBM. Meanwhile this official claimed Pyongyang was acting recklessly although he did not respond on whether his organization would invoke Article 5 – a mutual defense agreement – if North Korea attacked the United States. Instead he called for dialogue to resolve the crisis peacefully.

Brazil’s unfolding corruption scandal added six lawmakers to the list of officials as THIS sitting president’s Democracy Movement Party (PMDB) were charged with forming a criminal organization. The charges involve cartels of companies bribing public officials for public contracts according to Reuters.