May, 2016

• 4 May

  Petrobras boomtown turns desolate as billions vanish

  Bloomberg Located just 30 miles east of Rio de Janeiro’s bustling Copacabana beach, Itaborai looks like many oil boomtowns after the bust — except the deserted stores and empty glass towers that loom over this town of 220,000 speak of some bigger cataclysm than the collapse of crude prices. “They said this would be the new oil city,” says Jefferson ...

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• 4 May

  Kerry warns Syria’s Assad as truce talks shift to Berlin

  

    Astana / AFP US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Syria’s Bashar Al Assad of “repercussions” if his regime flouts a new truce under negotiation, as talks to halt the violence shifted to Berlin on Wednesday. Russia has said a new ceasefire to halt fighting in Aleppo could be imminent, with Syria’s divided northern city hit by a wave of ...

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• 4 May

  EU backs Turkey visa-free travel, fines for refusing refugees

    Brussels/ AFP The EU on Wednesday gave conditional backing to visa-free travel for Turks under a migrant deal and unveiled new asylum rules including fines for countries that refuse their share of refugees. In its latest bid to tackle the biggest migration crisis since World War II, the European Commission proposed making countries pay a “solidarity contribution” of 250,000 ...

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• 4 May

  Campaign against IS extremists ‘far from over’, says US Defence Secretary

  

    STUTTGART / AP The combat death of an American Navy SEAL in Iraq shows that despite recent gains against the IS in Iraq, “this fight is far from over,” US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday. Carter spoke at the outset of a closed-door meeting in Germany with his counterparts from 11 countries contributing to the military campaign against ...

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• 4 May

  Yemen warring parties to resume face-to-face talks

    Kuwait City / AP Yemen’s warring parties are to resume face-to-face peace talks on Wednesday after a three-day break triggered by a walkout by the government delegation, the United Nations said. The negotiations, which began on April 21, broke off on Sunday after the government delegation quit in protest at the apparent surrender of one of the few loyalist bases ...

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• 4 May

  Relief in Yemen’s war-hit Mukalla after year of Al Qaeda rule

  

    Mukalla / AFP Ten days after Gulf-backed forces drove Al-Qaeda out of the Yemeni port city of Mukalla, the signs of their harsh year-long rule are still everywhere for relieved residents to see. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula took advantage of the chaos of fighting between pro-government forces and Iran-backed rebels to expand its control in southern Yemen, seizing ...

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• 4 May

  Trump, Clinton all but certain to face off in fall campaign

  

    INDIANAPOLIS / AP Once dismissed as a fringe contender, businessman Donald Trump now is all but certain to lead the Republican Party into the fall presidential campaign against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton — a stunning political triumph for a first-time candidate whose appeal to frustrated voters was widely underestimated. Trump’s victory in Indiana on Tuesday and Ted Cruz’s abrupt ...

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• 4 May

  Indonesia set to resume executions

    Jakarta / AFP Indonesia is preparing for a new round of executions, police said on Wednesday, around a year after Jakarta sparked global outrage by putting seven foreign drug convicts to death by firing squad. Officials recently started getting ready after an order from the attorney-general’s office, which oversees executions, said Central Java police spokesman Aloysius Lilik Darmanto. He ...

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• 4 May

  Malaysia searches for missing foreigners

    Kuala Lumpur / AFP Malaysian authorities are searching for three foreigners who went missing in waters near the Philippines where a spate of recent kidnappings have taken place, a coast guard official said on Wednesday. The official cautioned there was so far no cause to suspect the abduction of the foreigners, who went missing late Monday along with a ...

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• 4 May

  Brazil prosecutor seeks ‘obstruction of justice probe’ against Rousseff

  

    Rio De Janeiro / AFP Brazil’s top prosecutor has asked the Supreme Court to open a probe into alleged obstruction of justice by President Dilma Rousseff, Brazilian media reported, in a potentially explosive twist to the country’s political crisis. According to reports in the Globo, Folha de Sao Paulo and Estadao dailies, chief prosecutor Rodrigo Janot has requested authority to ...

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