WASHINGTON / Reuters US President Donald Trump hailed the defeat of IS figh-ters in their self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa as “a crit- ical breakthrough” in a worldwide campaign against the militants. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had formally announced Raqqa’s liberation from IS after four months of battles and said the city would be part of a decentralized federal ...

MOSCOW / Reuters Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari will meet in Moscow on October 23 to discuss the situation in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement. Moscow is for constructive dialogue between Baghdad and Kurdistan, the ministry added. During al-Jaafari’s visit to Moscow on Oct. 23-25, the minister will ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy invoked the most far-reaching powers in the Spanish Constitution as he aimed to strike a decisive blow against the Catalan separatist campaign that’s divided the nation and put its economic expansion at risk. Spain will dismiss Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and his government, and take control of the regional police force and public television and ...

Bloomberg Voters in two regions of Italy’s wealthy north vote in referendums on Sunday to demand more autonomy from the state, in a ballot which could strengthen the anti-migrant Northern League ahead of national elections early next year. Backers of the non-binding referendums in Lombardy and Veneto, whose regional capitals are Milan and Venice, insist they have little in common ...

Bloomberg The UK opposition Labour Party could unite with rebels in Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party as a way to force her to give lawmakers a vote on the final deal to leave the European Union, the party’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer wrote in the Sunday Times. Starmer demanded May accept six changes to the so-called repeal bill, including ...

Looking at photographs of the ruined, desolate streets of what was once the IS’s capital of Raqqa is a reminder of the overwhelming, pitilessly effective military power of the United States. Perhaps it’s a tribute to the inevitable nature of American force, once it’s engaged, that the fall of Raqqa this week provoked so little public discussion. Commentators focused on ...

Remember this when you see your Netflix bill rising: It has to be this way. The company has recently warned price increases are coming for many subscribers in the US and other countries. It’s happening because Netflix Inc. has been spending a small fortune to supply homes with entertainment —such as ‘Narcos’ and ‘Stranger Things’—that it creates itself, owns and ...

UK supermarket giant Tesco Plc announced this week it will buy back up to 700 million pounds ($921.6 million) of its outstanding debt across a series of its bonds — and then cancel it. Yields fell sharply on the news. This should surely send a clear signal to rating companies that it is on the path back to an investment ...

“A triumph of peace and democracy.” That’s how Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro described his government’s implausible victory in last weekend’s gubernatorial elections. In fact, it is a further hardening of the soft autocracy that used to be South America’s richest democracy. Maduro’s government entered the polls with an approval rate of about 24 percent in a collapsed economy with inflation ...

What would America’s abortion policy be if the number of months in the gestation of a human infant were a prime number — say, seven or eleven? This thought experiment is germane to why the abortion issue has been politically toxic, and points to a path toward a less bitter debate. The House of Representatives has for a third time ...