Bloomberg Lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will make an application for bail on Wednesday, on grounds he is vulnerable to the virus pandemic while in prison. The Australian is being held at Britain’s most notorious prison, Belmarsh in southeast London, which holds around 800 prisoners. His US extradition trial began in February and was adjourned until May 18. The ...

Bloomberg The US said it will cut assistance to Afghanistan by $1 billion this year and threatened more cuts could come as a breakdown in talks over forming a unity government threatened to derail a US-engineered peace deal. Hours after departing Kabul on March 23, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo issued a statement saying the US “deeply regrets” the failure ...

Bloomberg The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is looking at contingency options for its July convention amid a growing expectation that the coronavirus crisis will not have abated by the time the parties are ready to nominate their presidential candidates. “As we navigate the unprecedented challenge of responding to the coronavirus, we’re exploring a range of contingency options to ensure we ...

Bloomberg German officials are ready to help Italy get through the coronavirus pandemic and are prepared to support an emergency loan from the euro area’s bailout fund. The preferred option in Berlin would see Italy granted an enhanced credit line by the European Stability Mechanism with minimal conditionality, according to a German official with knowledge of the government’s thinking. While ...

Bloomberg Russia is starting to restrict exports of some goods while easing imports as part of the government’s response to the global coronavirus crisis. A government coronavirus prevention council ordered exports of groats suspended for 10 days starting on March 20, the state-run Tass news service reported, citing a letter from the agricultural agency Rosselkhoznadzor. Groats typically include rice and ...

Bloomberg US index futures and European stocks rallied alongside Asian shares on Tuesday as investors rediscovered some appetite for risk after global equities hit their lowest level since 2016. The dollar slumped following a 10-day winning streak, and Treasuries slipped. Contracts on the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100 and Dow Jones Industrial Average all jumped more than 5% to hit their ...

Bloomberg Indian stocks rebounded in a volatile session, following a record fall on March 23 triggered by a nationwide lockdown. The S&P BSE Sensex Index closed up 2.7% at 26,674.03, after advancing as much as 5.7%, with the NSE Nifty 50 Index rising 2.5% for the day. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s speech in the last hour of trading failed to ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England’s (BOE) new 200 billion pounds ($231 billion) of bond purchases has the potential to hit the market at a faster pace than currently advertised. With rates near zero already, increasing the speed of purchases is one lever policy makers could pull if they want to boost the impact of the current package of measures, without ...

Bloomberg Japanese banks took almost $90 billion of cheap-dollar funding through the Federal Reserve’s enlarged swap lines on Tuesday, with total borrowings surpassing the record seen during the global financial crisis. Including earlier operations on March 17 and 23, the lenders have gobbled up more than $150 billion of dollars, exceeding the amount seen in other nations with the revamped ...

Bloomberg The Philippine central bank is infusing more funds into the economy, slashing big lenders’ reserve requirement ratio (RRR) by 2 percentage points and flagging more cuts to come. “The reduction is intended to calm the financial markets and encourage banks to continue lending to both the retail and corporate sectors,” Governor Benjamin Diokno said in a mobile phone message ...