Politics

• Monday, May 21st 2018 - 08:42 UTC

  Nicaraguan truce on the cliff after claims police attacked and shot students

  

  Nicaraguans were back on the streets in their thousands on Sunday to protest what they called a government breach of a two-day truce agreed during Church-mediated peace talks. Students at a university in northeastern Managua claim police attacked them during a demonstration outside the campus on Saturday night in which four students were shot and injured.

• Monday, May 21st 2018 - 08:33 UTC

  Maduro re-elected, but with massive abstention and other candidates call for fresh elections

  

  Venezuela’s populist leader Nicolas Maduro won a new six-year term on Sunday, but his main rivals disavowed the election alleging massive irregularities in a process critics decried as a farce propping up a dictatorship. Victory for the 55-year-old former bus driver, who replaced Hugo Chavez after his death from cancer in 2013, may trigger a new round of western sanctions against the populist government as it grapples with a ruinous economic crisis.

• Monday, May 21st 2018 - 08:26 UTC

  UK and Spain discuss Brexit and Gibraltar in Madrid: “constructive meeting”

  

  Gibraltar was discussed in Madrid on Saturday during a wide-ranging meeting on Brexit between the UK’s Minister for the Cabinet Office, David Lidington, and Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alfonso Dastis. Speaking after the meeting, Mr Lidington expressed confidence that a constructive agreement would be reached on Gibraltar’s post-Brexit relations with Spain and the wider EU.

• Monday, May 21st 2018 - 08:17 UTC

  Commons report: “Moscow's Gold: Russian Corruption in the UK”

  

  The UK has been accused of turning a “blind eye” to Russia's “dirty money”, putting national security at risk. The House of Commons foreign affairs committee said London was being used to hide the “corrupt assets” of President Vladimir Putin and his allies.

• Sunday, May 20th 2018 - 19:55 UTC

  Venezuelans in Uruguay demonstrated by denouncing “fraudulent” presidential elections

  

  Little by little, around noon on this Sunday, Venezuelans living in Uruguay gathered in front of the Venezuelan embassy in Montevideo to protest against what they consider “unfair and fraudulent” presidential elections. The diplomatic office, where an electoral table was installed where 405 Venezuelans living in Uruguay would be authorized to vote by the electoral register, was fenced with by the police for fear of violent attacks.

• Sunday, May 20th 2018 - 13:15 UTC

  Venezuela: Proselytism, pro-government advantage and hunger on the eve of the presidential election; the crisis gets worse

  

  A few hours before the presidential election of May 20 in Venezuela, which is not recognized by dozens of countries in the region and is classified as “fraud” by the opposition of that country, official statements and messages favorable to the candidate and current president , Nicolás Maduro, have flooded the programs of the open media in Venezuela, according to a report by the Press Institute and Venezuela Society (IPYS).

• Saturday, May 19th 2018 - 09:38 UTC

  Trump imposes sanctions against the powerful Venezuela clan of Diosdado Cabello

  

  Two days before presidential elections in Venezuela, the Trump administration on Friday announced sanctions against a powerful governing party politician, accusing him of drug trafficking, extortion, money laundering and embezzling government money.

• Saturday, May 19th 2018 - 09:27 UTC

  China/US trade talks on a more positive track; Beijing dumps sorghum levy

  

  Beijing has dropped an anti-dumping investigation into imported U.S. sorghum, which it had accused the United States of unfairly subsiding. It has also given approval for a U.S. private equity firm to buy Toshiba's memory chip business. Those gestures could suggest a thaw with the U.S. as trade talks went on in Washington in an atmosphere of hopefulness but hardly assurance of a breakthrough in the impasse.

• Saturday, May 19th 2018 - 09:18 UTC

  Italy readies for a populist euro skeptic coalition; challenge for Brussels and the Euro

  

  Italy’s two anti-establishment parties promised on Friday to ramp up spending in a program for a new coalition government, putting them on a collision course with the European Union despite having dropped some of their most radical proposals.

• Saturday, May 19th 2018 - 09:09 UTC

  Theresa May nominates new Tory peers; government has suffered a series of defeats in House of Lords

  

  Downing Street has nominated nine new Conservative peers, including a number of former ministers, to sit in the House of Lords. Among those put forward for a peerage are former communities secretary Sir Eric Pickles and former trade and industry secretary Peter Lilley.