Bloomberg An uneasy calm prevailed in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, and the west of the country after two days of running battles between the security forces and supporters of the main opposition, which boycotted a court-ordered repeat of presidential elections. Opposition leader Raila Odinga pulled out of the October 26 rerun, after the electoral commission failed to heed his demands to ...

Bloomberg At least 26 people were killed on Saturday when al-Shabaab militants detonated two car bombs in Mogadishu, according to police in the capital of the horn of Africa nation. Somalia President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo was expected to hold a meeting with feuding politicians at Nasahablod Hotel where the first car bomb exploded, while the second blast occurred near the ...

Bloomberg Normal weekend routines like shopping, soccer and strolling prevailed in Catalonia even as the first test of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s decision to take over the breakaway region approached, with Catalans weighing compliance versus defiance. When schools and government offices open on Monday, teachers and civil servants will decide whether to follow the ousted Catalan leaders’ calls to ...

Bloomberg Iceland faces politically tumultuous times after the conservative ruling party emerged weakened in a snap vote, with new parties entering parliament in the nation’s third election in four years. The Independence Party will win about 25.3 percent of the vote, down from 29 percent last year, a count of about 45 percent of the vote showed. Its closest challenger, ...

Russia’s cybermeddling in the 2016 US presidential election has been accompanied by what US and European experts describe as a worrisome Kremlin campaign to rewrite the rules for global cyberspace. A draft of a Russian proposal for a new ‘United Nations Convention on Cooperation in Combating Information Crimes’ was recently shown to me by a security expert who obtained a ...

In view of the deepening Brexit gloom ahead of the meeting, last week’s amicable European Union summit was moderately encouraging: At least the talks didn’t break down. Both sides ought to understand, however, that when they meet next time, moving to actual trade negotiations is essential. Instead of negotiating the shape of their future trade arrangements, Britain and the EU ...

Along with its Silicon Valley brethren, Facebook is scrambling to respond to pressure from Congress about the flood of fake news and bogus political ads on its site. The deluge is also doing great damage, it’s worth pointing out, far from Washington. Facebook’s fastest-growing markets are in the developing world, where the problem of fake news is even more devilishly ...

If there is anything to be gained from President Donald Trump’s ‘disgraceful’ attack on the credibility of the widow of a US Special Forces soldier killed in Niger, it’s that Americans are finally becoming aware of the expanding US mission against extremist violence now spreading across the Sahel region of Africa. As Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford explained ...

People tend to like big, sweeping theories of economic history. When Karl Marx foretold a supposedly inevitable series of class conflicts and revolutions that would end in a communist utopia, the idea was so powerful that it inspired revolutions, alternative economic systems and wars. Other thinkers depicted economic history as the triumph of a particular culture, or the inevitable ascendance ...

After three years of hand-wringing, India has finally done the right thing by its struggling banks. The 2.1 trillion rupees ($32 billion) capital infusion into state-run lenders announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday evening has been well received by rating companies, despite its unconventional structure. As much as 1.35 trillion rupees will come from banks’ own resources. The ...