Politics

  Bloomberg A former general in South Sudan’s army said he commands a new rebel movement of at least 30,000 fighters that will seek to overthrow President Salva Kiir, threatening to deepen the three-year civil war in Africa’s newest nation. Thomas Cirillo, a former lieutenant general, resigned as deputy chief for logistics in South Sudan’s army in February, accusing Kiir ...

  Bloomberg Emmanuel Macron beat the anti-euro nationalist Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential election. Macron, a 39-year-old centrist, leads Le Pen by about 65 percent to 35 percent, according to the estimates of four separate pollsters. The firms sampled real votes as they were being counted and weighted their results to reflect the composition of the French electorate. Their ...

  Bloomberg Nigeria said 82 more girls were freed by the Boko Haram militant group out of the hundreds abducted from a school dormitory more than three years ago in exchange for some of its jailed leaders. “After lengthy negotiations, our security agencies have taken back these girls in exchange for some Boko Haram suspects held by the authorities,” Garba ...

  Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party won a state election in northern Germany, according to projections based on exit polls, handing her Social Democratic challengers their second straight defeat at the polls before the nation votes in September. The German leader’s Christian Democratic Union took 33 percent of the vote on Sunday to 26 percent for the Social Democratic Party, ...

  Bloomberg Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry denied a report by Pakistan that 50 Afghan forces were killed in a skirmish last week, a spokesman said on Sunday. The border fight erupted in the past few days in Kandahar province and ended with both sides announcing a cease-fire, Najib Danish, a spokesman to the Interior Ministry, said by phone. Pakistan’s army had ...

  Bloomberg Glasgow, the Tees Valley, Northumberland — these are places that haven’t voted Conservative in decades, if ever. If the scale of Theresa May’s victory in Britain’s local elections was startling, so too was its geography. In one fell swoop the prime minister has claimed entire swathes of Labour’s traditional vote in working class areas of the Midlands and ...

  Bloomberg France’s presidential election erupted into new controversy just before voting was due to start as the campaign of front-runner Emmanuel Macron said it was the victim of a “massive” cyber attack. Minutes before a blackout on all campaigning at midnight Friday, Macron’s team said in a statement that hackers mixed fake documents with real ones stolen from staff’s ...

  Bloomberg The North Atlantic Treaty Organization needs to show strength and keep open lines of dialog amid a new political security situation in Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. The NATO alliance must stick together in the face of threats including Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the chancellor said in her weekly podcast on Saturday. The trans-Atlantic alliance shouldn’t allow itself ...

  Bloomberg A large convoy of militants attacked a Chadian military camp near Lake Chad early Friday, killing nine soldiers, according to an army statement. The militants were suspected to be members of the Boko Haram extremist group that’s based in northeastern Nigeria, the army said in the statement read on state TV late Friday. At least 40 assailants died ...

  Bloomberg National Front leaders are beginning to acknowledge that Marine Le Pen may be headed for defeat in Sunday’s presidential election after she failed to land the decisive blow she needs to overhaul Emmanuel Macron in Wednesday’s television debate. Scoring 40 percent in the runoff “would be an enormous victory,” the candidate’s niece and a fellow National Front lawmaker ...