US, Russia fail to reach Syria deal

Top diplomats from the United States and Russia on Monday failed to reach a deal to ease fighting in Syria, US officials said, after government troops encircled rebel-held parts of Aleppo.
A senior State Department official said a fresh round of crisis talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the margins of the G20 summit in China had ended without agreement.
Washington and Moscow support opposing sides in the five-year conflict, which has killed around 300,000 people and forced millions to flee.
A deal to provide aid to Aleppo’s ravaged civilians and at least partially halt Russian and Syrian bombardments had looked likely on Sunday, before talks collapsed.
US officials accused Russia of backtracking on already agreed issues which Washington refused to revisit, but the talks seemed to have been overtaken by developments on the ground.
Syrian government troops renewed their siege of Aleppo on Sunday, with state media saying they

poll defeat to anti-migrant party

Angela Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel came under renewed pressure over her liberal refugee policy Monday after an upstart anti-migrant populist party handed her party a humiliating defeat in her home state.
The xenophobic Alternative for Germany (AfD) clinched around 22 percent in its first bid for seats in the regional parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Vorpommern, results showed after most ballots had been counted from Sunday polls.
Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) garnered just 19 percent in its worst ever score in the northeastern state, while the Social Democrats maintained top place with around 30 percent.
AfD’s lead candidate Leif-Erik Holm called it a “proud result for a young party” as the populists secured seats on the opposition benches of the ninth out of 16 regional parliaments.