Rio De Janeiro / Bloomberg Dilma Rousseff’s supporters are almost cheerful, missing no opportunity to proclaim that the political crisis that shook Brazil in 2015 and led to impeachment proceedings against the president has lost momentum. In private, they are worried. Their main concern is that an almost two-year probe into a scheme of kickbacks in return for political favors ...

New York / AFP Argentina has reached a deal to settle with a group of holders of eurobonds it defaulted on 15 years ago, a US court mediator in its debt battle said. Mediator Daniel Pollack announced that the country reached a deal in principle with the “Brecher Class” of “holdout” creditors, to repay them 100 percent of the principal ...

Ottawa / Bloomberg It’s been a dismal start to the year for Canada’s newspapers, and investors see little sign of a turnaround. Postmedia Network Canada Corp., owner of many of the country’s newspapers, announced in January it was merging newsrooms in cities where it has two papers, eliminating dozens of jobs. Torstar Corp., publisher of the country’s largest circulation paper, ...

Bloomberg China deployed surface-to-air missiles this month on a contested island in the South China Sea, keeping tensions high even as leaders of Southeast Asian nations pledged to try and peacefully resolve territorial disputes in the waters. Satellite images showed two batteries of eight HQ-9 surface-to-air missile launchers and a radar system on Woody Island, part of the Paracel chain ...

Harare / AFP Zimbabwean former vice president Joice Mujuru announced on Wednesday that she is forming a new party to challenge President Robert Mugabe’s all-powerful ZANU-PF, in a move that could shake up the country’s politics. Mugabe, who turns 92 on Sunday, has ruled since independence in 1980 during an era marked by vote-rigging, mass emigration, accusations of human rights ...

Bloomberg Ukraine headed for a standoff between its two most powerful politicians after Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk defied President Petro Poroshenko’s call for his resignation and defeated a no-confidence motion in parliament. The result threatens to conserve political gridlock that’s jeopardizing the economy and billions of dollars of foreign aid. The motion to remove Yatsenyuk can’t be repeated during the ...

Uganda / AFP Ugandan election officials on Wednesday said they were expecting presidential and parliamentary polls to pass off peacefully, a day before seven candidates challenge veteran leader Yoweri Museveni’s three-decade grip on power. “The stage is set. We have dispatched electoral materials to all polling stations throughout the country and are ready to kick off the exercise,” national electoral ...

Bloomberg There’s only one major group of combatants in the Syrian war that’s backed by both Russia and the US—and now Turkey is attacking it. For a fourth day on Tuesday, Turkey unleashed its 155- millimeter heavy guns across the border with Syria. The targets were Kurdish forces, whose recent advance is a key part of the Russian plan to ...

Yangon / Bloomberg The US Air Force flew four F-22 fighter jets through South Korean airspace in the latest show of force against North Korea over its nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. The flight took place on Wednesday south of Seoul alongside South Korean F-15 fighter jets and demonstrated “the resolve of both nations to maintain stability on the ...

Manila / AFP Three civilians were killed in a roadside bomb explosion in a remote Philippine region where the army and Muslim rebels have engaged in sporadic fighting for days, police said on Wednesday. Muslim insurgents booby-trapped a highway to target military convoys, but it detonated when a van with six people aboard drove through late Tuesday, according to a ...