This Week: Algeria, Clinton, and North Korea

The RCMP goes to Algeria, Hillary Clinton is grilled on Benghazi, more threats from North Korea, and David Cameron wants to reconsider the EU.

By:

OpenCanada Staff

, /

25 January, 2013

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By: OpenCanada Staff

This week at OpenCanada.org, we’ve been tracking the fallout from reports that two Canadians were among the hostage takers at the Algerian gas field. The Algerian Prime Minister, Abdelmalek Sellal, made the claim at a press conference earlier this week. So far, the Canadian response has been cautiously ambiguous: “We have no substantial information at the present time on these particular individuals, but obviously we will continue to work with the government of Algeria to find out more about this particular matter,” the prime minister told reporters. RCMP officers were sent to Algeria to get to the bottom of things.

In America, soon-to-be-former U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was grilled by two congressional committees in one day over just how much the U.S. government knew about the who was behind the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi. “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again,” Clinton told Senator Ron Johnson.

Meanwhile, North Korea was once again rattling their saber at the world. The country said it would conduct further rocket launches and a nuclear test that would specifically target the United States. The threats were denounced by the White House as “needlessly provocative.”

In other nuclear news, warnings of a nuclear attack were sounded in Kashmir. Officials in the Indian-controlled region were encouraging residents to prepare shelters, food, and water in case of nuclear war. A number of deadly clashes between India and Pakistan over the disputed region heightened tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.

In the U.K., Prime Minister David Cameron wants to renegotiate Britain’s EU membership, after which he promised to hold a referendum on said membership. “I’m not blackmailing anyone,” Cameron said.

And this week’s election in Israel left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a significantly weakened position, launching much speculation over what kind of coalition might emerge to run the country.

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