Politics

  Bloomberg Romania reopened a Soviet-era rail link connecting its Danube River port of Galati to Ukraine a month earlier than expected to help boost vital grain exports from its neighbour. Ukraine, known the breadbasket of Europe, typically exports the bulk of its grain from Black Sea ports, but they’ve been blocked by Russia’s invasion. That’s constraining sales to road, ...

Bloomberg Boris Johnson could face a leadership challenge as soon as next week as rank-and-file Conservative MPs meet Wednesday to discuss whether to allow a fresh confidence vote. Members of the Tory 1922 Committee will meet at 5 p.m. to discuss Johnson, a person familiar with the matter said. If there is a majority in favor of another confidence vote, ...

Bloomberg Russian authorities are pushing through a raft of new repressive measures against domestic opponents, expanding crackdowns on critics as the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine is in its fifth month. Legislators have approved new proposals to dramatically broaden treason statutes, as well as restrictions on “foreign agents,” a legal category that’s been used widely against critics and independent journalists. Another ...

Bloomberg US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will have a candid discussion about the war in Ukraine with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi during a summit in Indonesia that’s set to be dominated by the fallout from Russia’s invasion, a top official said. “We’ve had a number of communications at senior levels with our Chinese counterparts about what we expect, ...

Bloomberg Turkey is threatening to veto Nato membership for Sweden and Finland even as the military alliance formally paved the way for the two Nordic countries to join. Turkey will not ratify membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for the applicants if they don’t fufill their promises to combat terrorism and extradite suspects under a memorandum of understanding reached ...

  Bloomberg Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he’s open to military exchanges with China, as he sought ways to expand ties between the two nations beyond the South China Sea territorial dispute. Marcos said at a briefing Tuesday he will “find ways to work to resolve the conflicts” with Beijing when he meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. ...

  Bloomberg Boris Johnson was told of a complaint against Conservative MP Chris Pincher two years before promoting him, a minister said, in a major concession from the government after days of speculation about what the UK prime minister knew and when. An internal probe into Pincher’s conduct when he was a Foreign Office minister in October 2019 found he ...

Bloomberg Dozens of Venezuelan opposition figures, who turned Colombia into their unofficial headquarters in recent years, say the election of Gustavo Petro as Colombia’s first leftist president puts them at risk, and they plan to leave. Activists, party leaders, former officers and military deserters are making the move, according to seven people with knowledge of the plans. They’re afraid they’ll ...

Bloomberg Italy declared a state of emergency in five northern and central regions devastated by a recent drought, as a severe heat wave takes its toll on agriculture and threatens power supplies. High temperatures and exceptionally dry conditions have brought water levels in the Po, the country’s largest river, to its lowest in 70 years. Even amid a historically arid ...

  Bloomberg Hong Kong’s new leader, John Lee, declared the city must balance reducing travel inconvenience with limiting the spread of Covid-19, signaling a cautious virus approach. Lee said Tuesday that he’d asked Health Secretary Lo Chung-mau to assess the “evidence and statistics to see how we can, while on the one hand, contain the spread of the pandemic and, ...