Bloomberg A year ago, Hong Kong protesters effectively killed an extradition bill that would subject them to criminal prosecution under China’s legal system for the first time — a victory that inspired them to demand real elections. Now Beijing has unwound all those gains, and gone much further in eroding Hong Kong’s autonomy. Details of a proposed national security law ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said he will announce new restrictions on employment-based immigration visas in the next two days, as the nation recovers from pandemic-related unemployment. “We are going to announce something tomorrow or the next day on the visas,” Trump said in a Fox News interview, when asked about upcoming rules on several different visa categories, including the H1-B ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump kicked off his re-election campaign before a Tulsa arena crowd whose size fell short of his predictions, in a city reeling from a spike in Covid-19 cases. The 19,000-capacity BOK Center had plenty of empty seats during Trump’s speech, which came hours after the public-health threat of the event was underscored by news that six campaign ...

Bloomberg Lazarus Chakwera, a preacher who heads Malawi’s main opposition party, is seen as the front-runner heading into a court-ordered election rerun on June 23 after forming an alliance with popular vice president, Saulos Chilima. The Supreme Court of Appeal, the top judicial authority, last month upheld the Constitutional Court’s annulment of a shambolic May 2019 vote that handed President ...

Bloomberg A stabbing attack in which three people died in a park in the English town of Reading is now being investigated as an act of terrorism, UK police said. The attack happened at Forbury Gardens in Reading, about 40 miles west of London. In addition to those killed, three people sustained serious injuries. Eyewitnesses told how a man approached ...

Bloomberg South Korea’s health authorities will limit the entry of foreigners from some countries where Covid-19 infections are surging through a temporary restriction on flights and visa issuances. With the exception of important business trips or visits by government officials, Korean authorities will restrict issuance of visas “as much as possible,” and put a temporary ban on non-scheduled flights from ...

Bloomberg Germany’s economy is probably past the worst of the fallout from the coronavirus, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview. “In the last few months we’ve had the sharpest economic deterioration in the history of the republic,” FAZ cited Weidmann as saying in an excerpt of the interview. “The good news is that the low ...

Bloomberg The Trump administration, following a backlash, said it would release details about companies that received loans of $150,000 or more from a coronavirus relief program for small businesses. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last week the firms that got billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded aid wouldn’t be disclosed, sparking fury from Democrats and others. In a joint statement, the ...

Bloomberg UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is mulling an emergency cut to the country’s Value-Added Tax (VAT), The Sunday Times reported. Sunak has asked officials to prepare various options to lower the sales tax, including reducing the headline rate and zero rating more products for a fixed term, the report said. He could make the announcement in a ...

Bloomberg There will be a European tax on giant digital corporations, even if a current project harbored by the OECD fails, European Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said, in an interview with France Inter radio. “We’d rather do this within a global framework, as part of an OECD discussion, over the year 2020,” Breton said. He added that the US, ...