Bloomberg President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia had seized Ukraine’s Mariupol even as his defense minister said more than 2,000 opposing troops remain holed up in an industrial complex in the strategic southern port city. “Taking control of such an important centre in the South as Mariupol is a success,” Putin said in a televised meeting with Defense Minister Sergei ...

  Bloomberg Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde said political parties deliberating a potential application for Nato membership may speed up the process, initially planned to conclude by the end of next month. The talks should be finalised by May 13, Linde said in an interview with Swedish public radio’s Ekot. “The situation in Ukraine continues to worsen, Finland has submitted ...

Bloomberg Emmanuel Macron and Le Pen struggled to land a knockout blow during their one-and-only debate, an encounter that left the French president in the box seat four days before the final round of the presidential election. Some 15.6 million viewers watched the long and rather technical head-to-head during which both candidates confirmed their positions on key issues, from tech ...

  Bloomberg Former Botswanan President Ian Khama has been formally charged with 14 counts relating to the illegal possession of firearms in what is the first attempt at the criminal prosecution of a previous head of state. Khama, who is charged with three others, was not at the court in the capital, Gaborone, after having moved to South Africa in ...

  Bloomberg China said certain US companies were “political tools” after YouTube shut the campaign channel of John Lee, a former policeman in line to become Hong Kong’s next leader. The move showed the US was making “a vicious attempt to intervene in Hong Kong affairs and sabotage the chief executive election,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is getting left behind by the international effort to help Ukraine stand up to Russia and has no obvious way back into the fold. The 63-year-old Social Democrat has resisted directly supplying tanks and other heavy weapons to Ukraine and opposed an embargo of Russian oil and gas. His policies have him in a tight ...

  Bloomberg Boris Johnson abandoned a bid to delay a vote on whether Parliament should investigate his past comments on “partygate,” as opposition lawmakers accused him of lying over rule-breaking during the pandemic. The UK prime minister, who is in India pushing for a trade deal, is missing the debate which started on Thursday in the House of Commons. Opening ...

  Bloomberg Traders are betting the European Central Bank (ECB) will raise rates above zero this year for the first time since 2012, after a string of hawkish comments from policy makers spurred speculation the bank is priming the market for faster-than-expected monetary tightening. Money markets are pricing 75 basis points of interest-rate hikes by the ECB’s December decision, according ...

  Bloomberg A senior BNP Paribas SA banker who denies terrorizing subordinates on the trading floor is claiming $4 million compensation for the unfair dismissal. Omar Alami, the then head of BNP’s equity derivatives sales for Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg, was fired in 2019 after an internal report revealed that a rant at a trader he allegedly called “useless” and ...

Bloomberg The Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) bandwagon is coming to Australia as regulators finalise approvals for products offering direct exposure to digital assets. Cosmos Asset Management said it’s preparing to launch the Cosmos Purpose Bitcoin Access ETF in coming days. It will invest in the Purpose Bitcoin ETF, a Toronto-listed fund with assets of about C$1.6 billion ($1.3 billion). “We ...