Bloomberg US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to impose a new cease-fire in southwest Syria in a bid towards resolving that nation’s intractable civil war, trying again to cooperate in an area where the two countries have repeatedly failed. Speaking after Trump and Putin met at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, Secretary of …

Bloomberg Australia will press ahead with a missile defense program to protect its forces, but a US shield system isn’t appropriate, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system mentioned in recent briefings is “not really suitable for our situation,” Turnbull told reporters at the Group of 20 Summit on Friday. The meeting in …

Bloomberg Things might have been a little awkward when Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi saw each other on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting in Germany. Far from the plush leaders events in Hamburg, China and India are facing the resurgence of a decades-long dispute over a remote area of the Himalayas. The …

Bloomberg Two US strategic bombers led a joint military exercise in South Korea on Saturday in response to this week’s launch by North Korea of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking Alaska. The B-1B Lancers, deployed from the US base in Guam, conducted an air-to-surface firing drill in Gangwon province, near the border with North Korea, the US Air …

Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Theresa May is planning to relaunch her political mission to deliver Brexit and help ordinary working people, as she tries to put last month’s disastrous election result behind her, according to a senior government official. May is lining up significant interventions in the next week, including a major speech, setting out her commitment to social and …

Bloomberg Venezuela’s Supreme Court said early Saturday that the country’s most renowned political prisoner, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, was transferred from military prison to house arrest after three years in jail. Lopez, who’s been serving an almost 14-year sentence for allegedly inciting violence in a wave of protests against President Nicolas Maduro, left the Ramo Verde facility outside Caracas, where …

Bloomberg The trillion-dollar global shipping industry may soon be forced to curb greenhouse gas emissions under new rules backed by the European Union and China. Over 200 representatives convened this week at the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations shipping supervisor based in London, to discuss regulation that could turn their industry, currently responsible for as much as 3 percent …

Bloomberg Oil prices declined for the week, as expanded US drilling activity and added production offset a larger-than-expected drop in stockpiles. Futures fell 3.9 percent, even after US data showed the nation’s crude stockpiles dropped by 6.3 million barrels, three times as much as expected. US drillers went back to adding rigs this week, after breaking a record streak of …

Bloomberg Hungary sees a new pipeline for Russian gas as the “only realistic” step toward energy diversification now, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on the same day Poland used a visit by US President Donald Trump to announce plans to wean itself off fuel supplies from its Soviet-era master. Hungary signed an agreement this week with Russian energy giant OAO …

Bloomberg Ukraine is talking to one of France’s largest energy companies about building a giant, billion-euro ($1.25 billion) solar park in the uninhabited radioactive zone surrounding the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Engie SA is beginning a pre-feasibility study funded by the French government next week with the results expected for the end of the year, Ukraine’s minister of ecology, Ostap …