Politics

Bloomberg Austrian voters gave 31-year-old conservative Sebastian Kurz a mandate to form a new government in an election on Sunday, setting up a potential coalition with the nationalist Freedom Party, according to projections based on partial returns. Kurz’s People’s Party took as much as 31 percent of the vote, with the Freedom Party polling as much 27.6 percent, according to ...

KOBANI / Reuters Almost three years after Kurdish fighters defeated IS in the Syrian town of Kobani, residents still mourn the dead and feel abandoned by their foreign allies as they struggle to rebuild. IS’s defeat in predominately Kurdish Kobani in early 2015 helped turn the tide against the ultra-militant group and marked the start of a more open US ...

WASHINGTON / Reuters The strategy that President Donald Trump has laid out to confront Iran and renegotiate a 2015 nuclear agreement requires a string of big bets to pay off in short order. The risk of failure is enormous. A hostile Congress must agree to pass legislation to toughen the terms of the accord. European allies with little appetite to ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump says those challenging the latest version of his travel ban in court can’t see a report explaining why he targeted immigrants from seven nations because it’s secret. The government on Friday told a Hawaii federal judge who demanded disclosure of the report that it’s classified and should remain off-limits as evidence in the court battle. That ...

BAGHDAD / Reuters Tension flared on Saturday in the ethnically mixed Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu after a clash between Kurdish and Shi’ite Turkmen political parties divided over the independence of the Kurdistan region, security sources said on Saturday. A dozen Kurdish families were displaced from the predominantly Turkmen district of Askari to Kurdish neighbourhoods of the town, after the ...

Bloomberg A key critic of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says he may be barred from travelling to Russia, where he’ll seek to build relations with one of the ailing regime’s few foreign backers. National Assembly President Julio Borges plans to leave Venezuela over the weekend to attend an international parliamentary forum in St. Petersburg and meet with Russian lawmakers. “In ...

Bloomberg Secessionist allies piled pressure on Catalan President Carles Puigdemont to formally declare independence from Spain as a deadline looms for him to clarify his stance or face being stripped of his powers by the central government in Madrid. CUP, a radical party that’s part of Puigdemont’s pro-independence coalition in the Catalan parliament, published a letter saying that the only ...

Bloomberg The US ambassador to Turkey said that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is engaged in talks to try and resolve a major diplomatic break between the two NATO allies, sparking a rally in the Turkish lira even as the envoy said he couldn’t predict the outcome of those efforts. Speaking to reporters at his residence in Ankara, Ambassador John ...

Bloomberg Kenya is bracing for street protests as the East African nation awaits the electoral commission’s response to opposition leader Raila Odinga’s decision to withdraw from a presidential vote rerun that’s threatening a constitutional crisis. Opposition supporters gathered on Wednesday in the capital, Nairobi, and in the western city of Kisumu to join demonstrations called to protest what Odinga said ...

Bloomberg UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said he will start releasing more money to help the government prepare for a “no deal” Brexit if there aren’t clear signs of progress in talks with the EU by early 2018. “There will be some areas where we need to start spending money in the new year if we can’t tell ...