Politics

  Bloomberg Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha slipped to the second position in an opinion poll as the number of undecided voters shrunk amid speculation of an early general election. Prayuth, the coup leader-turned-premier, got 12.7% votes in a March 10-15 survey by the National Institute of Development Administration, known as Nida. That’s down from 16.9% in December and his ...

Bloomberg Chinese President Xi Jinping has an opportunity to make history in pushing for a resolution to the war in Ukraine, the United Nations’ most senior official in China said, encouraging Beijing to take a more active part in ending the bloodshed. “I see China as a country which can play an important role in mediating the crisis,” Siddharth Chatterjee, ...

Bloomberg After a month of fighting that’s yielded limited territorial gains, the Russian military said it’s focusing efforts on taking full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region, potentially a sign it’s backing away from hopes of taking larger swathes of the country. “Our forces will focus on the main thing – the complete liberation of Donbas,” Sergei Rudskoi, first deputy chief ...

Bloomberg Kim Jong-un oversaw the successful launch of a new, larger intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), in an explosive confirmation of his continued nuclear weapons development over the past four years despite international sanctions and failed talks with the US. The missile fired from a mobile launcher at Pyongyang Sunan International Airport was a Hwasong-17, according to dispatches and photographs published ...

Bloomberg India and China discussed Russia’s war in Ukraine and their own border standoff during an unannounced visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the first since tensions erupted between the neighbors two years ago. Ties between New Delhi and Beijing haven’t returned to normal yet and will continue to be disturbed as long as troops remain deployed along their ...

  Bloomberg The warring sides in Ethiopia agreed to a conditional truce in the northern Tigray region, where a civil war that’s raged since November 2020 has displaced millions of people and brought hundreds of thousands of others to the brink of starvation. The dissident Tigray People’s Liberation Front said it will implement a “cessation of hostilities effective immediately” once ...

Bloomberg Nato agreed to boost its deployments in the eastern portion of the defense alliance, doubling the number of battle groups to eight, as the US said it is working with Nato to prepare for possible biological or nuclear incidents by Russia. The world’s leading developed nations plan to warn President Vladimir Putin against deploying such weapons amid his stalled ...

Bloomberg The US announced a new package of sanctions on Russian elites, lawmakers and defense companies, punishments designed to ramp up pressure on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. The measures announced Thursday during summit meetings between President Joe Biden and Nato, as well as the Group of Seven, will be followed by others to reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian ...

Bloomberg North Korea launched what appeared to be its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in more than four years, as Kim Jong-un finally abandoned a testing freeze that had underpinned an unprecedented wave of talks with the US. The missile was launched from the Sunan area outside Pyongyang on Thursday, reaching an altitude of 6,200 kilometres (3,900 miles) and traveling ...

  Bloomberg Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Kabul unannounced and held talks with the Taliban’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and others leaders, his first visit since the militant group seized power last year. “Important issues” related to joint efforts in alleviating the country’s humanitarian crisis and improving bilateral trade were on the agenda, the Taliban’s deputy spokesman ...