Beirut / AFP The United States and Russia are pulling the strings in Syria’s five-year war, experts say, pressuring opposing sides and leveraging rival regional powers to reach a settlement. As the conflict enters its sixth year, the embattled regime and fractured opposition are in Geneva for indirect peace talks hosted by United Nations peace envoy Staffan de Mistura. But …

Bloomberg “Republicans in Ohio and Florida head to the polls this week to help decide who will become their party’s nominee, and whether the GOP will endure in any recognizable form in the months and years that follow. To hear those who have devoted their lives to building the party tell it, if front-runner Donald Trump prevails on Tuesday in …

Baikonur / AFP Two robotic spacecraft on Monday began a seven-month journey to Mars as part of a European-Russian unmanned space mission to sniff out leads to life on the Red Planet. Russia’s Proton rocket carrying the spacecraft launched into an overcast sky at the Russian-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe at 0931 GMT according to plan, the Russian …