Bloomberg The European Union called for new elections to be held in Belarus, just as President Alexander Lukashenko makes plans to travel to Moscow in the coming weeks to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, wrote in Journal du Dimanche that a new ballot is needed, with the Organization for Security and Cooperation ...

Bloomberg The military coup in Mali raised alarm across West Africa, a region under threat for years from extremists that can ill afford more instability. Yet at home, it’s largely seen as a harbinger of progress. Weeks of public unrest and the final ouster of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was the culmination of anxiety over his failure to steer the ...

Bloomberg China’s biggest banks are suffering their worst profit decline in more than a decade as a cascade of loans to businesses across China are going bad. Reporting their first-half earnings on Sunday, China Construction Bank Corp., (CCB) the world’s second-largest lender by assets, said profit slid 11% in the period, while Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., (AgBank), China’s third ...