Bloomberg Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents defied concerns about social-distancing and a new security law to vote in two-day primaries held by pro-democracy opposition parties. More than 318,100 people voted electronically and at least 10,000 had used paper ballots as of 1 pm on Sunday, Andrew Chiu, convenor of organiser Power for Democracy, said at a press conference ...

Bloomberg An outspoken critic of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party was allowed to go home after being detained by Beijing police about a week ago, the New York Times reported. Xu Zhangrun, a law professor at Tsinghua University, was released on Sunday, the newspaper cited two people familiar with him as saying. He was taken away by ...

Bloomberg The Philippines will adhere without compromise to a 2016 court victory that nullified China’s claims in most of the South China Sea, its top diplomat said. “The award is non-negotiable,” Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin said in a statement on Sunday. He was commemorating the fourth anniversary of a Permanent Court of Arbitration’s decision which ruled China had ...

Bloomberg Poland is voting in a high-stakes presidential election as the coronavirus pandemic tests the populists’ grip on power and threatens one of the biggest nationalist makeovers in the heart of Europe. In what may be the closest ballot in Poland’s post-communist history, incumbent Andrzej Duda is battling Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski for the presidency in a runoff ballot on ...

Bloomberg Senators Mitt Romney and Pat Toomey became the first major Republican elected officials to criticise President Donald Trump‘s decision to commute the prison sentence of Roger Stone. “Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president,” Utah senator Romney said. The tweet trended on the ...

Bloomberg The number of coronavirus cases in Indonesia exceeded 75,000 as infections in the two largest hotspots continued to accelerate after the government eased physical-distancing curbs more than a month ago. There were 1,681 new cases in the 24 hours to midday on Sunday, bringing the total to 75,699, authorities said, adding that 71 people succumbed to the virus. The ...

Bloomberg Indian banks, which are already struggling with one of the world’s worst loan ratios, are set to face more pain as the coronavirus pandemic slams growth, the central bank’s chief warned, urging lenders to gird up their defenses. “The economic impact of the pandemic, due to the lockdown and the anticipated post-lockdown compression in economic growth, may result in ...

Bloomberg China may face a sharp rebound in non-performing loans after virus-relief incentives delayed the reflection of risk exposure on the balance sheet of lenders. The bad-loan ratio rose 8 basis points from the start of the year to 2.1% as of end-June, while non-performing loans are expected to increase, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) said in a ...

Bloomberg Bank of Nova Scotia and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce say they will fill at least 3.5% of senior executive and board positions in Canada with Black leaders by 2025. The two banks confirmed they plan to sign the BlackNorth Initiative CEO pledge, the brainchild of a group led by Wes Hall, a prominent Black executive who founded Toronto-based ...

Bloomberg Climate activist group Extinction Rebellion called on the Bank of England (BOE) to stop providing emergency funding to companies that contribute to climate change. The UK central bank should require companies that have received more than 18 billion pounds ($22.7 billion) of aid in recent months to commit to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2025, according to a statement ...