Bloomberg Former National Security Advisor John Bolton writes in a new book that President Donald Trump asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help him win re-election by buying more US farm products, according to an excerpt published by the Wall Street Journal. The disclosure is part of a devastating portrayal of Trump’s conduct of foreign policy by Bolton, the most ...

Bloomberg Polish President Andrzej Duda is hoping to boost his re-election bid by meeting Donald Trump in Washington next week, just four days before the east European nation’s ballot. Duda has long played up what he calls his “special relationship” with Trump, who gave a major foreign-policy speech in Warsaw in 2017. Additional security guarantees from the US at the ...

Bloomberg World War II veterans selected to sit with President Vladimir Putin at next week’s Red Square military parade are being kept in isolation at a health resort as part of measures to protect him from possible exposure to the coronavirus. Nearly 80 veterans were brought to the resort outside Moscow for 14 days before the June 24 parade, when ...

Bloomberg Hungarian PM Viktor Orban lost a court fight with the European Union over controversial curbs on foreign-funded non-governmental organisations and groups linked to financier George Soros. The Hungarian law imposed “discriminatory and unjustified restrictions on foreign donations to civil society organisations,” the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg said in a final ruling on Thursday. The case follows a ...

Bloomberg Japanese prosecutors arrested a former justice minister and his lawmaker wife on vote-buying allegations on Thursday, in a fresh blow for troubled Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Katsuyuki Kawai resigned from the cabinet in October, less than two months after being appointed, following allegations in a magazine that he was linked to illicit payments made to local politicians and potential ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England (BOE) is widely expected to boost its support for the UK economy again amid signs that recovering from the pandemic-induced recession will be harder than hoped. Economists predict the central bank will expand its bond-buying program by 100 billion pounds ($125 billion), taking it to 745 billion pounds, and investors are watching keenly for any ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG are likely to face worsening credit quality and falling demand for wealth-management and investment-banking services because of the pandemic, according to the Swiss National Bank (SNB). Credit quality is expected to deteriorate both in Switzerland and abroad, the national bank said in its annual Financial Stability Report. A stock market correction ...

Bloomberg Norway’s central bank signalled it might be ready to raise its main interest rate from a crisis low in about two years, as an historic wave of stimulus helps revive the economy. The bank left its benchmark deposit rate at a record low of zero, as expected, after delivering three cuts earlier in the year to steer the richest ...

Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time in three months and lowered its growth outlook for the year, days after the government warned of a severe hit to the economy from the coronavirus pandemic. Bank Indonesia lowered its seven-day reverse repurchase rate by 25 basis points to 4.25% on Thursday, ending a two-month pause. ...

Bloomberg A hiring slowdown at banks in Asia is beginning to thaw, driven by demand for coders. Lenders including DBS Group Holding Ltd., Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. (OCBC) and Citigroup Inc. are adding workers to their tech departments in the region despite the economic downturn. Financial institutions are especially hungry for mobile app designers and data scientists who can build systems ...