Politics

BANGKOK / Reuters Thailand has no immediate plan to revoke the passports of former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the foreign minister said on Tuesday, after she fled the country last week ahead of a court ruling in a negligence case. Yingluck, 50, was elected Thailand’s first female prime minister in 2011 and is the sister of ousted former prime minister ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has set himself a possibly insurmountable challenge. He intends to work with arch-rival India to achieve peace across South Asia. It’s likely to be a tall order for Abbasi considering the two nuclear-armed nations haven’t had high-level dialogue for almost two years and given the institutional opposition of Pakistan’s military against reconciliation ...

Bloomberg Malaysia’s opposition alliance said it won’t cooperate with the country’s largest Islamic party at the next elections, raising the possibility of multiple-cornered fights that could benefit the ruling coalition. Pakatan Harapan is working on a strategy to avoid three-cornered contests, it said in a statement on Tuesday, without elaborating. The alliance is made up of four parties. The Islamic ...

Bloomberg ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ US President Donald Trump’s strategy for the nation’s longest-running war in Afghanistan will meet the same fate as the plans of his predecessors, according to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. Failure. “From day one we have been saying very clearly the military strategy in Afghanistan has not worked and it will not work,” Abbasi, who took over ...

BEIRUT / Reuters The Syrian army and Hezbollah on Monday prepared to escort IS fighters to eastern Syria from their enclave on the border with Lebanon under an agreement following a week-long offensive against the extremist group. It will end any Sunni militant presence on the border, an important goal for Lebanon and the Shi’ite Hezbollah group, and is the ...

BANGKOK / Reuters Thailand’s defence minister on Monday said he did not know the whereabouts of former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, days after she failed to show up for a verdict in her trial for negligence at which she faced up to 10 years in prison. Yingluck, whose government was ousted in a 2014 coup, fled via Singapore, sources in ...

Bloomberg Anna Kinberg Batra stepped down as leader of Sweden’s biggest opposition party as the center-right bloc finds itself in disarray one year ahead of elections in the largest Nordic economy. Kinberg Batra resigned amid growing internal discontent over her stewardship and falling support in public opinion polls. Only 6 percent of all voters and a third of her party’s ...

BAGHDAD / Reuters A car bomb killed at least eight people in a crowded vegetable market in a Shi’ite Muslim district of Baghdad on Monday, police and medics said, in an attack claimed by IS. The car detonated in the eastern district of Jamila, police said, as Iraqi government forces were preparing to declare victory over the Sunni Muslim militants ...

BEIRUT / Reuters Proposed tighter US sanctions on Hezbollah have been altered enough to allay fears of major damage to Lebanon’s economy, a sign Washington is taking concerns about Lebanese stability seriously, banking and political sources said. But banking figures told Reuters Lebanese authorities should not be complacent as US President Donald Trump’s future stance on Iran and its allies ...

Bloomberg The UK’s opposition Labour Party wants Britain to stay in the European Union’s single market for an extended period after it leaves the bloc, a shift in its position that could undermine Prime Minister Theresa May’s efforts to deliver her vision of Brexit. The proposal, which would mean no additional customs or migration controls in March 2019, would allow ...