Politics

• Thursday, March 16th 2017 - 05:58 UTC

  Relief in Europe: “Netherlands said No to the wrong kind of populism”, Dutch PM Rutte claims victory

  

  Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Wednesday claimed a dominating parliamentary election victory over anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders, who failed the year's first litmus test for populism in Europe. Provisional results with over half the votes counted suggested Rutte's party won 32 seats in the 150-member legislature, 13 more than Wilders' party, which took only third place with 19 seats. The surging CDA Christian Democrats claimed 20.

• Thursday, March 16th 2017 - 05:37 UTC

  Scotland will be out of the EU either with UK or independent, PM May tells SNP leader

  

  Prime Minister Theresa May has claimed that Scotland will be leaving the European Union regardless of whether or not it votes for independence. Speaking during an exchange with the SNP's Angus Robertson, Theresa May also warned against “constitutional game-playing”.

• Thursday, March 16th 2017 - 04:56 UTC

  Political seism in Brazil: prosecutor asks Supreme Court to open 83 new graft investigations

  

  Brazil's top public prosecutor seismically expanded a corruption probe of the country's political establishment on Tuesday, asking the Supreme Court to open 83 new investigations of politicians named in explosive plea bargain testimony. Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot also requested that the Court send 211 other requests to lower courts based on much-anticipated testimony by executives of engineering group Odebrecht implicated in Brazil's biggest-ever graft scandal.

• Wednesday, March 15th 2017 - 08:04 UTC

  Lula da Silva denies all charges in court; “I have been a victim for three years”

  

  Brazil's former president has appeared in court to deny allegations he was part of a plot to obstruct a massive corruption probe by keeping a former Petrobras executive from revealing what he knew. News media websites in Brazil published Tuesday's testimony by Lula da Silva, who told a federal court in Brasilia that he didn't even know Nestor Cervero, a former director of the State oil company.

• Wednesday, March 15th 2017 - 07:56 UTC

  Two US airlines cancel flights to Cuba: excess of capacity

  

  On Monday, two US airlines announced that they have plans to cancel their flights to Cuba, one of which is Fort Lauderdale-based Silver Airways, whose representatives said they had made the “difficult but necessary” decision to cancel its services to Cuba from April 22.

• Wednesday, March 15th 2017 - 07:26 UTC

  Scottish support for independence at its highest, but EU popularity has fallen

  

  Support for Scottish independence is at its highest-ever level, according to an academic study, but the Scottish Social Attitudes survey also suggested the popularity of the European Union has fallen. The researchers said this suggested focusing on EU membership may not be the best way to swing more voters towards independence.

• Wednesday, March 15th 2017 - 07:12 UTC

  Trump furious: media leak shows he paid US$ 38m in tax on income of US$ 150m in 2005

  

  US President Donald Trump paid US$38m in tax on more than US$150m income in 2005, a leaked tax return shows. Two pages of the tax return were revealed by US TV network MSNBC, triggering an angry response from the White House, arguing that publishing the tax return was illegal.

• Wednesday, March 15th 2017 - 06:52 UTC

  Temer moved out of the presidential palace because of “bad energy and ghosts”

  

  Brazilian president Michel Temer confessed in an interview with the leading news magazine Veja that he and his family moved out of the nation’s Alvorada Palace, the official presidential residence, over bad energy and “ghosts” that kept him and First Lady Marcela Temer from sleeping well at night.

• Wednesday, March 15th 2017 - 06:38 UTC

  Mercosur expects to sign a trade deal with the EU by year end taking advantage of Trump's isolationism

  

  Mercosur expects to sign a framework accord this year for a trade deal with the European Union as the U.S. shift to isolationism under President Donald Trump encourages it to look outside the hemisphere for opportunities, Brazil's foreign minister Aloysio Nunes said on Tuesday.

• Tuesday, March 14th 2017 - 21:28 UTC

  Is a second OPEC cut on the Cards?

  

  OPEC's coordinated effort to curtail global supply has so far managed to put a floor under oil prices, which have been sitting modestly above US$50 since the deal was announced at the end of November last year. But resurging U.S. shale has been capping the upside, and Brent has not breached US$58 per barrel. Analysts and experts are now mostly predicting that oil prices will remain below US$60 this year.