Politics

BAGHDAD / Reuters An Iraqi military parade celebrating final victory over IS was held in Bag-hdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, an Iraqi military spokesman told Reuters on Sunday. The country’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared final victory over IS after Iraqi forces drove its last remn-ants from the country, three years after the militant group captured about a third of ...

Bloomberg Neither the Palestinian Authority president nor the head of the Coptic Church in Egypt plan to meet with US Vice President Mike Pence when he visits the Middle East later this month, to protest the US declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The rejections emerged as the Anadolu Agency said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and French ...

Bloomberg Liberia’s Supreme Court told the electoral commission to proceed with organising the final round of presidential elections that was initially scheduled Nov 7 but put on hold to probe allegations of fraud during the first round. The runoff should go ahead, Justice Philip Banks said in the ruling in the capital, Monrovia. The ruling ends weeks of uncertainty over ...

Bloomberg The leader of Mexico’s largest opposition group is stepping down from his post to prepare for a presidential run under a left-right coalition that’s looking to dislodge the ruling party from power. Ricardo Anaya’s resignation as party president, effective this weekend, is the first step to seeking the nomination from his National Action Party (PAN) to run in 2018 ...

Bloomberg Israeli fighter jets struck Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, killing at least two people, in response to rockets fired by Palestinian protesters into Israel. The clashes came as Muslims took to the streets from the West Bank to Jakarta to protest US President Donald Trump’s move to recognise contested Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Violence associated with the “Day ...

Bloomberg Martin Schulz signalled he wouldn’t give France a blank check on European policy if he takes the party into a government with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Fresh from re-election as head of Germany’s second-biggest party, Schulz combined a defense of his call for a “United States of Europe” by 2025 with a message to French President Emmanuel Macron. Schulz has ...

Bloomberg Honduras is headed into its third week without a winner in presidential elections amid a political standoff between the two leading candidates and few signs its worst crisis in a decade is about to end. The Central American country of 9 million has slipped into a full-blown constitutional emergency since a chaotic November 26 election ended in claims that ...

Bloomberg The nail-biting finish to the first chapter of Brexit negotiations has left many Conservative lawmakers praising Prime Minister Theresa May as a winner who had, in the words of one prominent member of her Cabinet, “confounded her critics.” But like many of the key Brexit issues, the question of May’s future is merely delayed, not resolved and even the ...

Bloomberg Cyril Ramaphosa, one of two leading candidates to win a divisive contest for the presidency of South Africa’s ruling Afri- can National Congress, said the party’s leaders must unite the party after this month’s elective conference. “Our movement is divided and there are factions in our movement,” Ramaphosa, the country’s deputy president, said in a program on Johannesburg-based radio ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Theresa May is facing a revolt from inside her Cabinet over her plan to keep UK regulations aligned with the European Union after Brexit, a split that threatens to undermine her chances of breaking the deadlock in negotiations. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Environment Secretary Michael Gove, who together led the Brexit campaign in last year’s referendum, ...