The week at a glance...International

last updated 8 January 2015

Beijing

Skynet is watching: The Chinese government has revealed that it has a nationwide surveillance system to track dissidents, and it bears the same name as the evil computer network that tries to destroy humanity in the Terminator movies. Skynet, begun in 2005, has at least 20 million cameras installed across the country in public places, including on buses and streets, and outside dissidents’ homes. Following uprisings in Tibet and in the Muslim province of Xinjiang, cameras were placed in temples and mosques. The government hopes to develop facial-recognition technology that would let it track dissidents anywhere in real time. “That would be a game changer,” Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch told NPR.

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Bomb threat: The North Korean regime said it had launched a program to build and deliver a nuclear bomb to its “sworn enemy,’’ the United States. In his most belligerent statement yet, dictator Kim Jong Un said his country would soon test a nuclear bomb to protest U.N. sanctions, and vowed to take “all-out actions’’ against the U.S. North Korea has tested small nuclear bombs before, in 2006 and 2009. Experts said North Korea was at least three years away from developing a weapon it could deliver to U.S. soil. But Kim’s rhetoric raised concerns that he’d decided on a policy of confrontation with the West, perhaps because of mounting internal problems. Food is scarce, and tens of thousands of North Koreans are starving.

Istanbul

American disappears: An American woman on a solo, two-week photography vacation in Istanbul is missing. Sarai Sierra, a 33-year-old mother of two, was supposed to return to the U.S. over a week ago. Her belongings and passport were found in the apartment where she was staying, in one of the dodgier neighborhoods of the city. Her husband, Steven, who has flown to Turkey to help police search for her, said she last called the day before she was due to leave. Harassment of foreign women is common in Istanbul, but murder is very rare.

Al-Kassir, Syria

Israel bombs weapons convoy: Israeli forces struck inside Syria this week, attacking a convoy headed for Lebanon and allegedly carrying strategic weapons meant for Hezbollah. Unnamed regional officials told the Associated Press that the weapons included sophisticated, Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles that could bring down Israeli planes and would be strategically “game-changing.” Israel had no comment, but in recent weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned of possible pre-emptive strikes on Syria, saying that any sign that the regime’s chemical weapons might fall into Hezbollah’s hands would trigger action. The Israeli strike came a week after Iran said it would treat any Israeli attack on Syria as an attack on itself.

Tel Aviv

Sharon awake? Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may be conscious and suffering from locked-in syndrome. Sharon, 84, suffered a massive stroke in 2006 and has been thought to be in a persistent vegetative state, kept alive on ventilators and a feeding tube. His family said they felt he showed signs of consciousness and could move a finger, but doctors disagreed until they performed sophisticated tests last week and found that his brain lit up when presented with familiar images and sounds, such as his son’s voice. “It doesn’t mean he’s going to sit up tomorrow and start speaking with his family,” said CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. “It just means that things that are familiar to him are just registering in his brain in some way.”

Bundaberg, Australia

Under water: Thousands of Australians had to be evacuated this week as torrential rains caused floods that swept across the east coast. In Bundaberg, Queensland, thousands of homes have been inundated. “Listen to the roar of the water—that’s not helicopters,” said Queensland Premier Campbell Newman. “There are literally sort of rapids.” Flooding in the same area in 2010 killed dozens of people, damaged 30,000 buildings, and left Brisbane, Australia’s third-largest city, under water for days.