Politics

  Bloomberg Boris Johnson abandoned a bid to delay a vote on whether Parliament should investigate his past comments on “partygate,” as opposition lawmakers accused him of lying over rule-breaking during the pandemic. The UK prime minister, who is in India pushing for a trade deal, is missing the debate which started on Thursday in the House of Commons. Opening ...

Bloomberg Russia has launched what Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hailed as a second phase of the war in Ukraine, and early indications are it could go better for Russia than the first. After a ferocious night of artillery bombardment along a 300 mile (482 km) front line in the east, Russian forces took a pocket of territory including the city ...

  Bloomberg A television news channel in Taiwan apologised after erroneously reporting on Wednesday that China had launched an invasion just outside the capital Taipei, triggering alarm online. Taipei-based Chinese Television Systems, a TV network partially owned by the Taiwanese government, ran a ticker along the bottom of the screen at 7 am local time saying that China had attacked ...

  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 ...