In this weekly brief we will focus more on the Asian trip of Donald Trump, the situation in Catalonia.
The week started with a shocking news: A 25-year-old gunman killed at least 26 people in a rural church in Texas(USA). It was a horrifying news to start the week with, however a couple of days after a boat, carrying 140 people on board, capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, just some 30 miles off the Libyan coast. Both events are terrifying, but it seems as the problem of the migrants crossing the sea within the past years became something so usual, that it has now less media coverage.
Last week was also marked by an impressively big demonstration, which took place in Barcelona. Around 750,000 people took the streets in Barcelona. The protestors showed their support to the jailed leaders of the pro-independence movement and were demanding the government in Madrid free their leaders. As it was during the last Ukrainian revolution of 2014 the crowd was using the screens of mobile phones to attract attention and from an aerial view the picture looked very impressive. It has been weeks already since people in Spain went on protests in different cities and chanting their position from different sides, however what is clear already now is that in the short run the economic situation in Catalonia is not going to get any better, as hundreds of businesses have already moved their headquarters from this region and thus the level of trust is fading together with the certainty.
Last week Vietnam was in the spotlight, because leaders of several leading states met there in frames of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. There were various important items to discuss: trade policy, aggressive rhetoric of the N.Korean leader, meeting of Donald Trump with the Filipino and Russian presidents. After the US president met his colleague in China there were many speculations whether the meeting with the Russian president will take place or not. Eventually they did meet, but rather informally for a couple of minutes. Nevertheless from both sides there was a clear signal that the relationship between N.Korea and the rest of world should be revised as neither Russians, nor Americans are amused by the fact that N.Korea is in possession of nuclear arms. Well, at least they agreed on something.
In its turn the meeting with the Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte did take place and they agreed to meet in Manila on Monday during the ASEAN summit for more comprehensive discussion. This would be an interesting event, keeping in mind how the Filipino president used to call his US colleague.
ApricotLawyer.com
Photos: AP via Independent. co.uk, Trisha Macas via Twitter.com
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