HANNOVER, Germany (AP) – Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up “momentum” in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists. He pressed European allies to match the U.S. with new contributions of their own.
Obama’s announcement of the American troops, which capped a six-day tour to the Middle East and Europe, reflected a steady deepening of U.S. military engagement, despite the President’s professed reluctance to dive further into another Middle Eastern conflict.
CAIRO (AP) – Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators calling on President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to step down over his government’s decision to surrender control over two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. The violence in Mesaha Square in Cairo’s Dokki district took place as thousands of police and soldiers were deployed across the Egyptian capital ahead of the planned demonstrations over the islands. This was a thorny issue which had already sparked the largest protests since el-Sissi assumed power nearly two years ago.
Following the arrest of dozens of activists and journalists in recent days, riot police backed by armored vehicles took up positions in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypt’s 2011 uprising. They also deployed on the ring road, downtown and at a square where hundreds of Islamist protesters were killed when security forces broke up their sit-in in August 2013.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. job market is healthy. The stock market is up. Home prices are rising. Yet as the Federal Reserve prepares to meet this week, it seems in no mood to resume raising interest rates from ultra-lows. With the global economy struggling and U.S. inflation still below the Fed’s target rate, many economists see little likelihood of a rate increase even before the second half of the year.
The outlook for the world economy was downgraded this month by the International Monetary Fund, which warned of the risk of another international recession. Any major global slump would, in turn, hinder the U.S.