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Munich / AFP The world has plunged into a “new Cold War”, the Russian premier said on Saturday, as East-West tensions over Ukraine and Syria took centre-stage at a gathering of world leaders in Germany. “We have slid into a new period of Cold War,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told the audience at the Munich Security Conference. “Almost every day ...

Budapest / AFP Thousands of Hungarians angry at the state’s tight grip on public education rallied on Saturday in Budapest, in one of the biggest street protests against Prime Minister Viktor Orban in recent years. Soon after coming to power in 2010, his rightwing government launched sweeping reforms of the public education system, which it said was too liberal and ...

Istanbul / AFP Turkey and Saudi Arabia could launch a ground operation against IS extremists in Syria, the Turkish foreign minister said on Saturday, adding the kingdom was already sending jets to a Turkish base to attack the extremists. The coordinated plans by Riyadh and Ankara, who are pursuing an increasingly tight alliance, add a new element to the explosive ...

Munich / AFP More major attacks in Europe are a “certainty”, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told an audience at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. “We have entered—we all feel it—in a new era characterised by the lasting presence of ‘hyper-terrorism’,” said Valls, whose country was hit by two attacks last year. “We must be fully conscious of the ...

Yangon / AFP Myanmar’s outgoing president has scrapped a planned trip to the US next week in order to oversee the power hand-off to Aung San SuuKyi’s new government, a presidential spokesman said on Saturday. Thein Sein was due to attend a summit for leaders from the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc hosted by US president Barack ...

Onzain / AFP When they were born premature in 1912, doctors gave Paulette and Simone the slimmest chance of survival. But 104 years later, the French twins say there’s a simple secret to their longevity: sticking together. With their long white hair tied back in ponytails and gold spectacles perched on their noses, Paulette Olivier and Simone Thiot are happy ...

London / Bloomberg UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne must do more to back up the economic case for expanding Heathrow Airport, the chairman of Parliament’s Treasury Committee said. Lawmaker Andrew Tyrie wrote to Osborne for a second time after what he described as the chancellor’s “curious” explanation for stonewalling questions included in a January 25 letter. Osborne’s reply, ...

You cannot understand the vulnerable state of the US and global economies — and nervous stock markets — without coming to grips with the crash of “emerging-market” countries. Led by China, these are middle-income countries that, along with the poorest countries, account for 85 percent of the world’s population and 60 percent of the global economy, according to Christine Lagarde, ...

Uzbekistan tightly controls its currency, in the past year allowing it to depreciate very gradually. Officially, the Uzbek som has avoided the rapid and massive depreciation experienced by the Kazakh tenge, for example. But, unofficially, as Olim Abdullayev wrote for bne Intellinews this week, it’s a whole different story. On the Uzbek black market the som sits at 6,200 sum ...

Ever since the Eurasian recession began in earnest — or, predating that, when it was clear that Russia’s economic engine would stall under Vladimir Putin’s third term — there has nonetheless been a source of hope for Central Asia’s economies: China. On the backs of China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) platform, Beijing has stepped in to provide Central Asian ...