The United States and Cuba restored full diplomatic links after a 54-year interruption. Relations have been improving since Barack Obama announced in December that the United States would ease its embargo on trade with the island. Raúl Castro, Cuba’s president, followed up by freeing some political prisoners. Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida who is running for president, has threatened to block the Senate’s confirmation of an American ambassador to Cuba because of a lack of progress on the island. See article.
Prosecutors opened an investigation into allegations that Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, improperly lobbied foreign leaders, including Cuba’s, to award contracts to Odebrecht, a construction company. See article.
Eduardo Cunha, the Speaker of Brazil’s Congress and a member of the centrist PMDB party, which is in the coalition government led by the president, Dilma Rousseff, said he will switch to the opposition. He was angered by allegations, which he denies, that he had asked for a $5m bribe to promote legislation favouring suppliers to Petrobras, a state-controlled oil company. Mr Cunha says Ms Rousseff’s party is encouraging a witch-hunt against him. See article.
Investigators suggested that a gunman who shot dead five members of the armed forces at a naval facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, may have turned to radical Islam after a trip to Jordan. Muhammad Abdulazeez, who was killed in a subsequent shoot-out with the police, was born in Kuwait before moving to America and becoming a citizen. His family claim he was suffering from depression.
America’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency charged with enforcing civil-rights laws in the workplace, ruled that the ban on sex discrimination in the Civil Rights Act now includes sexual orientation and applies to discrimination against gays and lesbians.
John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, became the 16th Republican to enter the presidential race. Donald Trump continued to amuse and infuriate the public, especially when he implied that John McCain was not a war hero because he had been captured. Mr McCain was shot down in his plane and tortured in Vietnam. Mr Trump avoided the draft “because of the fact that I had a very high lottery number”. See article.
After talks in Washington with Nigeria’s new president, Muhammadu Buhari, Barack Obama set off on his fourth trip to sub-Saharan Africa since he became president. He will visit Kenya, the homeland of his father, and Ethiopia. See here and here.
Meanwhile, Mr Buhari said he would be prepared to negotiate with the leaders of Boko Haram, the jihadist group that has terrorised north-eastern Nigeria, for the release of 200-plus schoolgirls who were kidnapped from the town of Chibok in April last year.
America’s defence secretary, Ashton Carter, headed to Saudi Arabia in an effort to reassure King Salman and his government that the recent deal with Iran on its nuclear programme will not leave the kingdom vulnerable to its Shia rival as sanctions end. In Washington the Speaker of the House of Representatives vowed to kill the deal, though the Republicans lack the votes to overturn a presidential veto. See article.
Saudi Arabia launched a big crackdown on militants, announcing that it has arrested 431 people it suspects of being connected to Islamic State.
Amid widespread criticism across Africa and in the West, President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi lookedcertain to be elected for a third term, despite the constitution’s two-term limit and street protests in the past three months that have left scores of people dead.
At least 32 young aid volunteers in Turkey were killed by a suicide-bomb in the town of Suruc near the border with Syria, which was blamed on Islamic State. In the adjacent part of Syria IS and Kurdish forces have been battling for control of several strategic towns. The bomb triggered protests against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is accused of being faint-hearted in the fight against IS. Kurdish militants killed two Turkish policemen in revenge. See article.
Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, faced fresh objections from the left wing of Syriza, the radical party he leads, as he drew on opposition support to push a set of harsh reforms through parliament to help secure a new bail-out package. The country’s banks reopened after being shut for three weeks. See article.
Thousands of supporters of a right-wing nationalist group, Right Sector, demonstrated against the government in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. Earlier this month there were armed clashes between Right Sector and local authorities in a region of south-western Ukraine bordering Hungary and Slovakia.
Mitsubishi Materials, an affiliate of the Mitsubishi group, became the first Japanese firm formally to say sorry for treating American prisoners as forced labour during the second world war. On August 15th, the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender, Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, is expected to make a statement that addresses lingering resentments over the war.
Mistaking them for Taliban, American helicopters opened fire on Afghan soldiers in an outpost in Logar province, eastern Afghanistan, killing seven. The Taliban then attempted to assault the outpost. Morale is already low among soldiers fighting the insurgency, with desertion rife.
In China Ai Weiwei, perhaps the country’s best-known artist, who was detained in 2011 and has been barred from travelling since, was given his passport back. A show of his work at London’s Royal Academy opens in September, and he now hopes to visit it.
About 180,000 soldiers in the paramilitary branch of China’s People’s Liberation Army tried out new footwear to replace the ubiquitous green canvas “liberation shoe” that has been in service since the 1950s. Though the plimsolls had “passed the test of revolutionary years”, one soldier said that his dorm no longer honked of smelly feet. China’s defence budget is growing by 10% a year, though other secret weapons remain off-budget.
This article appeared in the The world this week section of the print edition under the headline "Politics this week"
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the edition