Middle East

Wearing riding pants, logo-decorated shirts and helmets, Gaza horse-riders resumed local show-jumping competitions on Thursday as coronavirus restrictions were eased.

Oil prices rose on Friday but pulled back sharply from early highs on concerns that continued spread of the novel coronavirus could stall the United States' economic rebound.

After one of the most severe equity market selloffs in decades comes the June 26 "Russell Recon", the once-a-year re-jig of FTSE Russells's U.S. index range, tracked by over $9 trillion in assets.

An Iranian cleric and judge accused of corruption in Tehran and also of human rights violations by activists was found dead on Friday at a hotel in Romania's capital Bucharest, police said.

NEW YORK/AMMAN (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - From bombings and protests to the opening of a new health center, student journalist Baraa Razzouk has been documenting daily life in Idlib, Syria, for years, and posting the videos to his YouTube account.

Britain, France and Germany said on Friday they would not back U.S. efforts to unilaterally trigger the reimposition of United Nations sanctions on Iran, but said they wanted talks with Tehran over its ongoing violations of a 2015 nuclear accord.

The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, with Thursday's 150,000 new cases the highest in a single day and nearly half of those in the Americas, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

Britain, France and Germany said on Friday they would not support U.S. efforts to trigger the reimposition of U.N. sanctions on Iran.

DHAKA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Bangladesh police have arrested more than 50 people accused of extorting money from people on false promises of jobs overseas in a major crackdown on human trafficking after 30 migrant workers were murdered in Libya.

NBA center Enes Kanter, an outspoken critic of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, said on Friday his father had been acquitted of charges that he was a member of a terrorist group.

Turkey's central bank is expected to trim its policy rate by 25 basis points to 8%, a Reuters poll showed on Friday, a relatively limited cut in an aggressive easing cycle that has lasted nearly a year.

Turkey's central bank said on Friday it had used a funding facility for Chinese yuan for the first time under a prior swap agreement with the People's Bank of China.

The European Central Bank's chief warned on Friday that the European Union's economy was in a "dramatic fall" due to the coronavirus crisis but EU leaders made little progress towards agreeing a massive stimulus plan.

Turkey will work together with Italy to achieve stable peace and a political process that will yield results in Libya, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday, and added the NATO allies could also cooperate in the eastern Mediterranean.

Oil prices are no longer particularly cheap by historical standards.

Healthcare stocks saw a record $2.6 billion in redemptions in the week to Wednesday on "U.S. election noise", BofA said on Friday, as investors turned their attention to the pivotal November vote.

CAIRO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The death of a high-profile Egyptian LGBT+ activist who sought asylum in Canada after being jailed for waving the rainbow flag was mourned on Monday by followers highlighting the nation's ongoing discrimination against the gay community.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog's 35-nation Board of Governors called on Iran on Friday to stop denying the agency access to two suspected former sites and to cooperate fully with it, diplomats attending the meeting said.

The head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund Kirill Dmitriev sees no point in extending strict global oil output cuts as world economies and oil demand recovers from the depths of the coronavirus crisis, he told the RBC Daily newspaper.