BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s disparate opposition, independent and main Christian parties said on Sunday they had nominated IMF official Jihad Azour for the presidency in a challenge to Hezbollah-backed candidate Suleiman Franjieh. A meeting of the parties endorsed the nomination of Azour, currently director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International…
By Xinghui Kok, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Greg Torode SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Senior officials from about two dozen of the world’s major intelligence agencies held a secret meeting on the fringes of the Shangri-La Dialogue security meeting in Singapore this weekend, five people told Reuters. Such meetings are organised by the Singapore government and have been…
LONDON (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia will make new voluntary cuts as part of an OPEC+ deal, an OPEC+ source told Reuters on Sunday. Two other OPEC+ sources said the group is likely to agree a policy roll over until 2023 and make additional cuts in 2024 if new production baselines for members are agreed. (Reporting…
KYIV (Reuters) – The Ukrainian military on Sunday renewed its plea for operational silence around a long-awaited counteroffensive against Russian forces, the latest in a stream of messages by Kyiv as it prepares for the assault. Anticipation has mounted around what is expected to be a broad attack by Ukrainian forces to retake Russian-occupied territory…
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Ukrainian forces continued to shell Russia’s border region of Belgorod overnight into Sunday after two people were killed the previous night and hundreds of children were evacuated away from the border, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. “Overnight, it was quite restless,” Gladkov said on the Telegram channel, adding that the Shebekino and Volokonovsky districts…
(Reuters) -Clashes are continuing around the devastated city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine and Moscow is still suffering “significant losses” despite a relative easing of combat operations in recent days, Kyiv’s armed forces said on Sunday. Russia claimed late last month to have captured Bakhmut following what had become the war’s longest and bloodiest battle,…
CAIRO (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry and the United States called on Sudan’s warring factions to agree to a new ceasefire and make efforts to implement it effectively, the Saudi ministry and the U.S. said on Sunday. Saudi Arabia and the United States are keen to continue talks with the two Sudanese negotiating delegations,…
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany will send two warships to the Indo-Pacific in 2024, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Sunday, amid rising tensions between China and Taiwan and over the disputed South China Sea. Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Asia’s most important security conference, Pistorius said countries needed to stand up for the…
By Chen Lin and Kanupriya Kapoor SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu told Asia’s top security summit on Sunday that conflict with the United States would be an “unbearable disaster” but that his country sought dialogue over confrontation. Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Li said the world was big enough for…
LONDON (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs revised its Turkish lira forecast in the wake of President Tayyip Erdogan’t cabinet revamp, saying it now expected the currency to weaken to 28 to the dollar in 12 months compared with a previous prediction of 22. Erdogan signalled on Saturday his newly-elected government would return to more orthodox economic…
