After seven years of confinement in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh, Rohingya refugees are returning to western Myanmar as armed fighters. They’re being funded and armed by the Myanmar Army who drove out nearly 1 million Rohingya in 2017. The Muslim Rohingya lack any citizenship status in Myanmar, but are now being lured back by the promise of regaining rights long denied by Myanmar’s military government. The United Nations called the expulsion of the Rohingya from Myanmar by the pro-Buddhist majority a “genocide.”
(“In the World’s Largest Refugee Camp, Rohingya Mobilize to Fight in Myanmar,” Reuters, Nov. 25, 2024)
Over 40,000 people marched to New Zealand’s Parliament mid-November to protest legislation that seeks to reinterpret the country’s 184-year-old founding Treaty of Waitangi which was signed between British colonizers and the Indigenous Māori people.
(“Why are New Zealand’s Māori Protesting Over Colonial Era Treaty bill,” Al-Jazeera, Nov. 19, 2024)
Billionaire investors John Paulson and Bill Ackman are making huge financial bets the giant mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be privatized during the second Trump administration. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac underwrite and repackage most of the nation’s 30-year home mortgages. The two giant national mortgage companies were put under government conservatorship after the 2008 housing and economic crisis.
(“Trump Could Finally End One of the Oldest Fights on Wall Street,” Yahoo Finance, Nov. 24, 2024; “Upcoming Housing Battle That Could Roil Mortgage Costs,” Washington post, Nov. 19, 2024)
