KINSHASA, Congo — On Oct. 4, 2016, Etienne Tshisekedi made his final address to a crowd gathered in the courtyard of his party’s headquarters. The longtime leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s opposition was visibly frail, and the speech, slow and hesitant, lasted only three minutes. But the old man still managed to rev up his followers, many of whom strained to hear from the […]
OTTAWA Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces his first real test with voters on Monday, with five by-elections across the country shaping up as a barometer for the strength of his Liberals since being elected to a shock majority in 2015. The regional votes to elect two members of parliament in Calgary and one member each in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal are considered safe seats – three […]
Investors face a test of nerve as the second quarter beckons. The rally in US stocks and the dollar sparked by the election of Donald Trump is looking stretched, amid doubts about the president’s ability to deliver fiscal stimulus for the economy that can justify lofty equity valuations. The shifting mood has spurred money into emerging markets and European stocks, with EM currencies enjoying a stellar March […]
PARIS French presidential candidate Francois Fillon, an outsider to win after involvement in financial scandal, said on Monday he would order a parliamentary inquiry into allegations President Francois Hollande interfered in the justice system, if elected. Once the frontrunner, the conservative former prime minister’s poll ratings have slumped since allegations surfaced that he paid his wife and sons hundreds of thousands of euros of public money for […]
By Alexandra Ulmer and Alexandra Valencia | QUITO QUITO Leftist government candidate Lenin Moreno claimed victory in Ecuador’s presidential vote on Sunday, bucking a shift to the right in South America, but the conservative challenger asked for a recount as his supporters took to the streets in protest. A Moreno win would come as a relief for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange after Guillermo Lasso vowed to remove […]
By Wa Lone and Simon Lewis | YANGON YANGON Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won nearly half of the seats contested in by-elections on Sunday, the first vote since it swept to power a year ago and an early indication of support for her administration amid increased fighting with ethnic armed groups and slower economic growth. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won nine […]
PARIS/BORDEAUX French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen told a political rally on Sunday that the euro currency which she wants France to ditch was like a knife in the ribs of the French people. The leader of the eurosceptic and anti-immigrant National Front (FN) also told the rally in the city of Bordeaux that the forthcoming election for president could herald a “change in civilization”. Encouraged by […]
By Aleksandar Vasovic and Ivana Sekularac | BELGRADE BELGRADE Serbians voted for a new president on Sunday with conservative Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic the runaway favourite despite opposition warnings about the extent of his domination over the Balkan country. Most polls see Vucic, 47, winning in the first round with more than 50 percent of the vote, trailed in the low teens by a former rights advocate […]
By Hasmik Mkrtchyan | YEREVAN YEREVAN Armenians voted for a new parliament on Sunday in a closely fought race between the ruling party and a former coalition partner that heralds the start of a parliamentary system of government. Under constitutional changes critics say were designed to prolong the political life of President Serzh Sarksyan, parliament, not voters, will elect the president for the first time. That role […]
By Murad Sezer | DIYARBAKIR, Turkey DIYARBAKIR, Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan described himself as a “guardian of peace” on Saturday as he called on Kurds in conflict-torn southeast Turkey to vote ‘yes’ in a referendum in two weeks time on reforms that would grant him sweeping new powers. Since the collapse of a two-year-old ceasefire in July 2015, the mainly Kurdish southeast has been rocked by some […]
MARSEILLE Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist candidate who is favourite to win the French presidential election, held a meeting with French conservative and security hardliner Christian Estrosi on Saturday during a visit to Marseille. Macron has said he wants to bridge the right-left divide. Estrosi is from a wing of French conservative politics that is far to the right of the Socialist government under which the 39 […]
Chat is nothing new in business (or even new to Microsoft), but it’s heading out of the technical department and the personal chat clients, and into the wider workforce. Microsoft Teams has some obvious similarities to Slack and HipChat and the other business chat services, but it has a different focus. This is chat for teams of people in your business who already use Office 365 tools […]
By Simon Lewis and Wa Lone | YANGON YANGON Myanmar goes to the polls on Saturday for the first time since Aung San Suu Kyi’s party swept to power a year ago, in an early indication of views on her leadership amid increased fighting with armed ethnic groups and slower economic growth. The by-elections will fill 19 vacant seats in the national and regional parliaments at a […]
Investors are flocking back to European equities and propelling a rally across continental stock markets as money managers downplay fears around the upcoming French elections and fallout from Brexit. The shift — which follows a torrid 2016 when investors pulled roughly $100bn from the asset class — has been driven by hopes of a synchronised global economic expansion accelerating. European stock fund managers received $1.5bn in the […]
Latin American dictators once sent in tanks and soldiers. This week, Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolás Maduro dispatched judges. The motivation, in part, is money. The result, however, is the same: a coup. Opposition leaders branded Mr Maduro “a dictator” and foreign governments decried the power grab after Venezuela’s government-controlled Supreme Court effectively annulled the National Assembly on Thursday, where the opposition won a majority in 2015 amid […]
In a low-income area of Ecuador’s capital, followers of Lenín Boltaire Moreno sang along at his final rally to a quintessential Latin American revolutionary song, composed in 1973 by Chile’s Quilapayún: “The people united will never be defeated”. “I am here to celebrate in advance the triumph of Lenín Moreno, because he is the continuation of a project that started 10 years ago,” said Mónica Ortíz, a […]
By Ingrid Melander and Johnny Cotton | PARIS/MALESHERBES, France PARIS/MALESHERBES, France A 90-minute train ride from the Gare de Lyon station in Paris traces a political gulf between big-city voters and the rest, a divide that has shaken up Britain and the United States and has an outside chance of doing the same in France’s upcoming vote. The further you go, the greater the support for the […]
By Martin Petty and Neil Jerome Morales | MANILA MANILA Allies of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte have prepared legislation to postpone elections to the over 40,000 village councils in the country and allow him to choose replacements in what they say is part of the war on drugs. If passed by Congress, the move would make Duterte, a former mayor, the most powerful leader in the Philippines […]
We have been hearing President Rodrigo Duterte raising the alarm bells anew over alleged narco-politicians linked to the illegal drug trade down to the barangay level. President Duterte fears this pervasive problem will remain unabated if the elections of barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) will be held as scheduled this coming October 23. So again, the President suggested another postponement of the barangay and SK elections. “Narco-politics […]
By Elizabeth Piper | LONDON LONDON After nine months of preparation, bitter public argument and a battle with parliament, British Prime Minister Theresa May is launching talks with the European Union armed with a plan she hopes will secure a better divorce deal than many expect. But what is it? Although May has published a policy document outlining a 12-point approach to the talks that will reshape […]
By Michel Rose and Sudip Kar-Gupta | PARIS PARIS Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday he would vote for Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election, the biggest Socialist Party name to date to turn his back on its official candidate and support the centrist instead. While it was not clear if the defection would benefit poll favourite Macron, who politely thanked Valls, it prompted […]
PARIS Francois Hollande’s election as president in 2012 was supposed to herald a new dawn for French socialism after 17 years of right-wing rule, but by June his party could be struggling to survive. Weeks before the start of an election to pick France’s next president, the ruling bloc is in tatters. Socialist Party (PS) nominee Benoit Hamon is floundering after adopting a hard-left programme that alienated […]
Prosecutors in South Korea are seeking an arrest warrant for former president Park Geun-hye for her alleged role in a sprawling corruption scandal that triggered her impeachment earlier this month. “The issues are grave . . . the defendant has abused her status and power to extract funds from companies, impinged on corporate freedoms and leaked state secrets,” said a statement by the prosecutors on Monday. “It is unfair not to […]
In July 2011 an unusual fascination had gripped some members of New York’s financial community. Walk into a Manhattan office expecting to discuss the US stock market with an investor who exclusively backed equity hedge funds, and they instead had Italian government debt on the brain. Selling short bonds of the eurozone’s third-largest economy had become so popular that non-debt specialists had started to notice, and rising […]
