Israel's parliament was dissolved and early elections called for March after Prime Minister Netanyahu dissolved his governing coalition. In Kenya, the Islamist group al-Shabab killed 36 workers at a quarry, and the president declared a "war on terror" in response. An Egyptian court sentenced 188 people to death for an attack on a police station that killed 14 officers.

1. Politics this week
Israel’s parliament was dissolved and early elections called for March 17th, after the collapse
of the governing coalition led by Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister. The government fell apart
when Mr Netanyahu kicked out two moderates from his cabinet, Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni, for, he
said, plotting to throw him out of office. Both Mr Lapid and Ms Livni are opposed to a controversial
proposed law that would favour Jewish rights over those of Arabs. See article
Somali insurgents belonging to the Shabab, an Islamist group, killed 36 workers at a quarry in
Kenya. It is the latest attack in which non-Muslims have been singled out by the Shabab and
executed. Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, replaced the interior minister and police chief
and declared a “war against terrorists”. See article
A court in Egypt sentenced 188 people to death for an attack on a police station near Cairo in which
14 police officers died. Just days before the ruling another court dropped charges against Hosni
Mubarak, the president ousted during the Arab spring, relating to the deaths of protesters at the
hands of the security forces in the dying days of his rule. See article
Bringing in the brains
Barack Obama was expected to nominate Ashton Carter as his next secretary of defence, replacing
Chuck Hagel, who is stepping down. A former number two at the Pentagon, Mr Carter has decades
of experience in defence policy and used to head Harvard’s Kennedy school. He will be the
first defence secretary without any experience of being in uniform since William Cohen, who was in
the job between 1997 and 2001. See article
A week after the Ferguson riots, protesters took to the streets of New York after a grand jury
brought no charges against a white policeman who had applied a chokehold to a black man. Eric
Garner died later; the New York medical examiner has ruled that his death was a homicide. The
Justice Department has launched an investigation. See article
A federal appeals court delayed the execution in Texas of a convicted murderer who has
schizophrenia. Scott Panetti’s lawyers say he was diagnosed with a psychotic disorder long
before he shot his in-laws. They want the Supreme Court to rule once and for all on the
constitutionality of executing mentally ill convicts.

2. To the polls, again
Stefan Lofven, Sweden’s prime minister, called new elections after parliament rejected his
proposed budget. The Social Democrat had been in office for just two months, the shortest term of
any elected prime minister in Swedish history. The far-right anti-immigrant Sweden Democrat party
was the decisive block voting against the government. See article
Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected referendum proposals to restrict immigration drastically and
to force Switzerland’s central bank to hold 20% of its assets in gold. A third proposal to drop
some tax preferences for rich foreigners failed as well. More flexible immigration restrictions
approved in a referendum last February remain in place. See article
Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, granted citizenship to three foreigners so that they
can serve as ministers in the new government formed by Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the prime minister.
Natalie Jaresko, a Ukrainian-American private-equity executive, is the new finance minister.
Meanwhile, fighting flared between pro-Russia separatists and Ukrainian troops in eastern
Ukraine’s region of Donbas.ÂÂ
Three pro-Europe parties won a combined narrow majority in Moldova’s parliamentary
election, though a pro-Russia party got more votes than any other. Russia has pressured the
impoverished country to join its Eurasian Customs Union. The European Union signed an association
agreement with Moldova this spring. See article
Aiming for a fresh start
Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, named a new economic team to deal with deteriorating
public finances, rising inflation and sluggish economic growth. The new finance minister, Joaquim
Levy, helped trim the budget deficit during an earlier stint as a senior official. Alexandre Tombini
remains head of the Central Bank, which raised its main interest rate by half a percentage point this
week. See article
Colombia’s left-wing guerrilla army, the FARC, released five captives whom it had abducted
on two separate occasions, including a Colombian army general. The government and the FARC
agreed to resume peace talks on December 10th; they had been suspended after the
general’s kidnapping. See article
Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, laid out a package of reforms to the police and
justice system. They include putting state governments in charge of local police forces and giving
the federal government the power to take over local governments that have been infiltrated by
organised crime. Mr Peña has been the target of public anger since the murder in September of
43 students in the state of Guerrero, allegedly by a drugs gang and the local authorities. See article
The last UN conference on climate change before next December’s meeting in
Paris—where a global treaty on carbon emissions is expected to be signed—began in
Lima. The World Meteorological Organisation reported that 2014 could turn out to be the hottest
year on record. It found that the global average air temperature over land and sea from January to
October was 0.09°C above the average for the past ten years.ÂÂ
Seeking distance from Beijing
Taiwan’s ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), was heavily defeated in local elections,

3. including for the office of mayor in Taipei, the capital. Many voters were unhappy that the
government’s pursuit of closer ties and trade links with China had done little to help the
economy. After the elections the prime minister and cabinet resigned and Ma Ying-jeou,
Taiwan’s president, quit as the KMT’s chairman. See article
In Hong Kong hundreds of protesters, mostly students, clashed with police outside government
offices. The three founders of the Occupy Central movement, which has organised the barricades
and sit-ins on the city’s streets to protest against mainland China’s interference in
elections set for 2017, turned themselves over to police, but were not charged. China, meanwhile,
barred a group of British politicians from entering Hong Kong, saying it didn’t welcome
foreign intrusions into domestic affairs.ÂÂ
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