Politics

AMMAN / Reuters Syrian jets and artillery struck rebel-held eastern Damascus suburbs a day after a Russian sponsored ceasefire with a rebel group agreed a halt of fighting in the last opposition enclave in the capital, rebels and witnesses said. The Russian defence ministry said it had reached a ceasefire that took effect with Failaq al Rahman, the main Free ...

Bloomberg Iranian President Hassan Rouhani won lawmakers’ approval for 16 of his 17 ministerial nominees, in an overwhelming show of support for his policies. Parliament on Sunday voted to reappoint Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, top Rouhani allies during his first term. The only candidate to lose a vote of confidence was Energy Ministry ...

Bloomberg New Zealand’s main opposition Labour Party, buoyed by a surge in the polls under new leader Jacinda Ardern, launched its campaign to win next month’s election with a pledge to close the gap between rich and poor. Speaking to party faithful in Auckland on Sunday, Ardern highlighted child poverty as a key issue heading into the September 23 vote. ...

Bloomberg The presidential candidate from Angola’s ruling party, Joao Lourenco, promised to push hard to diversify the oil-rich African nation’s economy, while his fragmented opposition questioned the fairness of next week’s vote and threatened to hold protests. In the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola’s last campaign gathering ahead of the Aug. 23 vote, Lourenco predicted the MPLA would ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump has yet to decide the future US role in Afghanistan, even after spending hours in a retreat at Camp David where his defense and foreign policy team made the case to continue fighting a war Trump has long questioned. “This afternoon the president was briefed extensively by his national security team on a new strategy to ...

ISTANBUL / Reuters Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats were enemies of Turkey and called on Turks in Germany to vote against major parties in next month’s elections. The comments, some of Erdogan’s harshest yet against Merkel, drew a furious response from Merkel, her government and some Turkish organisations in Germany, illustrating the widening divide ...

WASHINGTON / Reuters US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis will travel to Jordan, Turkey and Ukraine later this month, the Pentagon said. Mattis will begin his trip in Jordan where he will meet with King Abdullah. Jordan is a member of the US-led coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq. The visit will be Mattis’ first to Jordan as defense ...

BEIRUT / Reuters An advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said the six-year war is nearly over as foreign states cut backing for rebels, and vowed the government would confront any “illegitimate” forces, whether Turkish or American. Bouthaina Shaaban said the fact that Syria was staging the Damascus International Fair for the first time in the war “sends a ...

TUNIS / Reuters Tunisia’s prime minister accepted the resignation of interim finance minister Fadhel Abdelkefi over a conflict of interest in a judicial case, but said he had asked him to stay on until a replacement is found. Abdelkefi is a key member of Prime Minister Youssef Chahed’s government, which is under pressure to carry out contentious economic reforms demanded ...

Bloomberg A day after belatedly faulting white supremacists for deadly clashes in Virginia, President Donald Trump returned to his controversial position that there was “blame on both sides” for the weekend violence — remarks that caught his own aides off-guard. “You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that ...