The world this week
Iraq’s armed forces recaptured Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, which fell to Islamic State in May and is just 100km from Baghdad. The country’s <u>prime minister</u>, Haider al-Abadi, said that IS would be driven from his country by the end of 2016. IS also suffered fresh <u>reverses</u> in Syria; on December 26th it lost the important power-generating Tishreen dam to a mainly Kurdish force.
Saudi Arabia’s stockmarkets fell <u>sharply</u> after it announced <u>swingeing</u> spending cuts to close <u>a gaping budget deficit</u>. Saudi public finances have been hurt by declining oil <u>revenues</u>. In the middle of 2015 Brent crude was trading at $65 a barrel; now it is under $38.
An outbreak of Ebola that <u>rampaged</u> through three African countries officially ended when the World Health Organisation declared that Guinea was free of the disease. The outbreak, which started two years ago, killed some 11,000 people, most of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
<u>Stockmarkets responded positively to</u> the Federal Reserve’s decision on December 16th to raise <u>interest rates</u> for the first time since 2006. After months of <u>dithering</u> the central bank lifted the range for its <u>benchmark rate</u> by a quarter of a percentage point to between 0.25% and 0.5%.
Martin Shkreli was <u>arrested</u> by the FBI on December 17th and <u>charged</u> with <u>securities fraud</u>. Mr Shkreli <u>made the headlines</u> in 2015 when a drugs company he ran bought <u>the rights to</u> a medicine and raised its price by 5,000%. The (unrelated) charges against Mr Shkreli, which he denies, <u>pertain to</u> his time as a <u>hedge-fund</u> manager.
Poland’s <u>right-wing</u> government <u>passed a law</u> requiring the constitutional court to approve decisions by a two-thirds majority, and with at least 13 of the 15 judges present. The law will force the court to accept <u>disputed</u> new judges whom the government has <u>appointed</u>. It will also make it much harder to <u>strike down</u> new laws. <u>The opposition staged furious demonstrations</u>.
Spain held an <u>election</u> before Christmas, which <u>resulted in</u> no stable majority. The ruling People’s Party of Mariano Rajoy came first and the Social- ists second. Two smaller par- ties took seats, breaking the traditional two-party system.
