Macedonia’s parliament has approved a proposal to change the country’s name, a move that could pave the way for it to join NATO and the European Union. Eighty members of parliament in the 120-seat body voted in favor of the measure Friday to rename the country North Macedonia, just surpassing the two-thirds supermajority needed to enact constitutional changes. Parliament was forced to address the issue after a September referendum on…

U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton will meet Saturday in Moscow with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, amid reports that Washington will tell Russia it plans to quit a landmark nuclear weapons treaty. The visit comes ahead of what is expected to be a second summit between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump this year. Bolton, who will also meet Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, announced the visit to…

U.S. intelligence, law enforcement and security agencies are warning that Russia is persistently targeting the country’s upcoming midterm elections. They laid out the latest evidence in new charges against a Russian national connected to the oligarch known as “Putin’s cook.” The U.S. on Friday unsealed the criminal complaint against Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, making her the first Russian charged in connection with interference in the 2018 election. According…

A women-to-women investment fund is coming to Britain next month to boost financing for female-owned businesses, its founder said Thursday, as efforts grow to close the gender investing gap. SheEO has lent more than $2 million to 32 female social entrepreneurs in the United States, Canada and New Zealand to grow their businesses since 2015 in an attempt to address a global gender investment gap. “Most of the people writing…

The United States suspended imports of pork from Poland Thursday because of an outbreak of the highly contagious hog disease African swine fever in that country. African swine fever has spread rapidly in Eastern Europe and China, the world’s largest pork producer, where new cases are appearing and the disease is traveling far distances. The United States is free of the disease and eager to keep it that way because…

Computer giant IBM Corp., financial services company Western Union Co. and European police launched a project Thursday to share financial data that  they said may one day be able to predict human trafficking before it occurs. The shared data hub will collect information on money moving around the world and compare it with known ways that traffickers move their illicit gains, highlighting red flags signaling potential trafficking, organizers said. “We will build and aggregate that material,…

Europe and Asia should use their combined economic clout “to tackle global challenges such as trade tensions that put millions of jobs at risk” and the threat of climate change, a top European official said Thursday. European Council President Donald Tusk spoke in Brussels as he opened the Asia-Europe summit, which brought together 30 European leaders with their counterparts or top officials from 21 Asian nations. The gathering accounts for…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is warning of military action against a key U.S. ally in the disputed Syrian city of Manbij, as bilateral tensions threaten to resurface between the NATO partners. “We will do what is necessary,” was Erdogan’s message to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when they met Wednesday in Ankara, according to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu who also attended the meeting. Ankara is demanding the…

Several major Russian companies are exploring ways to do deals abroad without using dollars, spurred on by a U.S. threat to broaden sanctions that have impeded access of some Russian firms to the international banking system. The Kremlin has been pushing companies to conduct more deals using other currencies to reduce reliance on the dollar. Russian Alrosa, the world’s biggest producer of rough diamonds in carat terms, said it had…

Germany has extradited the suspect in the killing of Bulgarian television journalist Viktoria Marinova to Bulgaria, an Interior Ministry official said Wednesday. Bulgarian Severin Krasimirov is to be charged in person with the rape and murder of 30-year-old Marinova, whose body was found in a park in her Danube hometown of Ruse on Oct 6. Police said she was beaten and raped and died of suffocation. Prosecutors have said evidence…