• On the eve of the 21st anniversary of the Good Friday peace agreement, Northern Ireland journalist Lyra McKee was killed by a sniper’s bullet during a police confrontation with a dissident Republican protest in Derry. The shooting occurred in the Creggan housing estate, one of the poorest places in the United Kingdom and a hotbed of dissident Republican activists who reject peace with British authorities. The murder of McKee, a respected 29-year-old journalist and LBGT activist shocked the UK.
(“Lyra McKee Killing: Why Derry Never Saw a Peace Dividend,” Guardian, April 20, 2019; “New IRA Admits to Killing,” BBC, April 23, 2019; “Lyra McKee: Murdered Belfast Journalist ‘Committed to Truth’,” BBC, April 19, 2019)
• In the midst of rising anti-immigrant populism across Europe, the German Green Party is seeing a boost in its popularity, in opposition to the far-right Alternative for Germany movement. The Green Party is now the second most popular party in Germany in the months before critical state elections.
(“Is Populism Waning in Germany? The Steady Rise of the Greens Party,” CS Monitor, April 18, 2019)
• In his early days on the El Paso city council, one of today’s aspiring Democratic presidential candidates Beto O’Rourke, backed a controversial redevelopment plan that would have displaced 2,000 poor residents to build a sports arena and stores in the city’s historic south side. The plan was fiercely opposed by the community’s poor Latino residents – many of whom were O’Rourke’s constituents, and today much of the community is roped off and derelict after the stadium construction project was stalled after being challenged in court.
(“Beto versus The Barrio,” American Prospect, March 15, 2019)
This week’s News Summary was narrated by Nigel Victor Rees.
