Politics

  Bloomberg About 528 ethnic Rohingya refugees broke out of an immigration detention centre in Malaysia, with more than a hundred still at large, according to the Malaysian Immigration Department. The detainees escaped by breaking down the doors and grills to their block at the Sungai Bakap Temporary Immigration Depot in Penang state, the department said in a statement. The ...

  Bloomberg The first fatality after weeks of protests in Sri Lanka over food and fuel shortages intensified calls for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign, with a key opposition leader saying Rajapaksa was “responsible for every death.” Officers fired live rounds in the central Rambukkana area after tear gas failed to dispel a group of protesters who had blocked a ...

Bloomberg A cyber organisation accredited by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) will conduct what it bills as the largest and most complex “live-fire” cyber defense exercises in the world beginning on Tuesday. The Nato Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, which is based in Estonia, said the annual event, called Locked Shields, is intended to boost the skills of ...

  Bloomberg China said it signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands, which had faced pressure from nearby Australia and the US to reject the deal. Foreign Ministers Wang Yi and Jeremiah Manele “officially signed an intergovernmental framework agreement on security cooperation the other day,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press briefing in Beijing. ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s rare air strikes inside Afghanistan over the weekend that killed more than 40 civilians shows simmering tensions with the Taliban following the US withdrawal from the region. The cross-border strikes, the first in decades, elicited an unusually sharp response from the extremist group in Kabul and a warning that more such attacks would stoke retaliation. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry ...

Bloomberg Australian voters are turning their backs on the two major parties ahead of next month’s election, with new polling showing the center-right government and the opposition Labor Party could both struggle to win a majority in parliament. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal National Coalition government saw its primary support fall to 35%, while the opposition Labor Party’s fell to ...

  Bloomberg Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa promised to reduce the sweeping powers of the president, the government’s biggest concession yet to protesters as it seeks to stay in power amid a spiraling debt crisis. The premier told parliament that he would reintroduce the 19th amendment to the constitution, “with certain amendments,” as a possible “temporary solution” as the ...

Bloomberg Kimberly Guilfoyle, a Trump campaign fundraiser and Donald Trump Jr’s fiance, was re-interviewed in-person by the House committee investigating the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. Her lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said that the interview, which had begun in the morning, was continuing. The appearance is a follow-up to Guilfoyle’s abbreviated session with the panel, which was done virtually ...

Bloomberg The Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper called on the nation to support President Xi Jinping’s Covid Zero strategy, showing any shift in policy is unlikely even as lockdowns in Shanghai and elsewhere threaten to hurt the economy. In a front-page commentary, the People’s Daily said Xi’s strategy to snuff out the virus has proven “correct and effective” and China ...

Bloomberg The Paris prosecutor is looking into allegations that nationalist leader Marine Le Pen and several of her party members misused hundreds of thousands of euros of European Union funds between 2004 and 2017 when she was a member of the European Parliament, with just a week left before she stands in the final round of the French presidential election. ...