Politics

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 ...

Bloomberg A twin bombing that killed 58 people at a camp in a northeastern Nigerian town last week underlies the destructive capacity of extremist militant group Boko Haram two months after President Muhammadu Buhari said they had been defeated. The camp at Dikwa stands in a town where shops and homes have been deserted by residents who fled Boko Haram’s ...

Bloomberg The European Union is “defenseless” against mass migration from the Middle East and the inflow of refugees constitutes the “most serious issue” the 28-nation trading bloc has faced since its founding, according to Hungary’s minister of foreign affairs and trade Peter Szijjarto. “If we don’t find a way to cut this defenselessness, then it’s going to be a real ...

Yangon / Bloomberg The European Union’s regulatory arm proposed more oversight of natural-gas contracts with Russia and other external suppliers as a part of a wider plan to boost energy security. The European Commission is also seeking closer regional cooperation among the EU’s 28 nations to prevent supply disruptions, under its winter gas package presented in Brussels on Tuesday. The ...

Yangon / Bloomberg Over 3,000 people have fled their homes in northern Myanmar following clashes between two ethnic rebel groups, the United Nations said Tuesday, raising fears the government’s fragile peace efforts could be fracturing. Heavy fighting in the northern state of Shan broke out last week between the Restoration Council for Shan State (RCSS) and the Ta’ang National Liberation ...

Bloomberg Two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin swiped Crimea, the fallout from his Ukrainian land grab continues to reverberate through nearby budgets. It’s most visible in Lithuania, whose split from the Soviet Union was among the bloodiest of the communist collapse. The government there raised defense spending by more than 30 percent in 2015, outdoing NATO’s 27 other members. ...

Bloomberg The European Union’s eastern members agreed that should a deal with Turkey to stem the flow of refugees into Europe fail, the bloc should have a “plan B” that would seal Greece’s northern borders. Leaders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, meeting in Prague three days before an EU summit, offered troops, police and other aid to ...