Important news stories you may have missed because of Brexit

  27 June 2016    Read: 1341
Important news stories you may have missed because of Brexit
Brexit is one of the most important moments in modern British history, and as a result the news cycle has been dominated with the referendum campaign, the results, the resignations and world reactions, with little room for anything else.
Here`s a run down of some of the other things that have happened around the world since June 23rd:

Spain is going to the polls for the second time in six months



At Spain`s last election in December 2015 the voters gave no party an overall majority in the Cortes Generales (upper and lower houses). Polls again predict deadlock. The insurgent hard left Podemos party has made gains against the centre left PSOE (centre right People`s Party), but not enough to achieve its own majority.

Podemos was only founded in 2014, but hopes to become the main left party in Spanish politics.

Fallujah was taken back from Isis



Isis has been completely driven out of the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Senior Iraqi commander Lieutenant General Abdul Wahaad al-Saadi Saturday night declared that the city was "fully liberated" after Iraqi soldiers stormed into the remaining neighbourhoods controlled by Isis. Fallujah had been under militant control since January 2014.

Colombia signed a historic peace deal with FARC rebels



On Thursday the government of Colombia agreed a ceasefire with FARC rebels after 52 years of war. The deal also contains provisions to begin the disarmament process. FARC - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - was a left wing, anti-imperialist group that engaged in guerrilla warfare and terrorism against Colombia`s government since 1964.

Pope Francis officially recognised the `Armenian Genocide`



Pope Francis is the first Pope to have used the word `genocide` to refer to the massacre of Armenians that took place in 1915.

Following the Young Turk revolution against the Ottoman Empire in 1908, Armenian Christians were rounded up and marched through the Syrian desert to concentration camps. Many died of exhaustion en route.

Turkey has historically refused to acknowledge this as a act of genocide - as has the Vatican - but on a visit to Armenia on Friday, Pope Francis was the first head of the Catholic Church to do so. In a press release ahead of the trip the Vatican had claimed the term `genocide` would not be used. It appears it was an ad lib by Pope Francis.

Pope Francis had previously referred to it as `the first genocide of the twentieth century`, but this week he called it a planned genocide and compared it to Nazism and Stalinism.

The Turkish government has since labelled Pope Francis a `crusader`.

Refugees in Nigeria are dying of starvation in camps



Europe isn`t the only place struggling with a refugee crisis. Thousands of those fleeing the terrorist group Boko Haram in northern Nigeria and surrounding nations have been seeking refuge elsewhere. On 23 June medical charity Doctors Without Borders said they were given access to a camp in Bama, in the northeast, and reported seeing over a thousand freshly dug graves.

Fifty-eight people have been killed in Russo-Syrian attacks on Isis territory



On Saturday the Syrian Human Rights Observatory reported that Russian and Syrian forces had launched airstrikes on the eastern city of Deir Ezzor. According to the UK-based monitoring group, the fifty-eight casualties were civilians, five of whom were women.

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