Politics

  Bloomberg North Korea’s ruling party started a major policy meeting to lay out priorities for the coming year and how to respond to the Biden administration’s invitation to return to nuclear disarmament talks stalled for about two years. Leader Kim Jong-un attended the opening session of a Workers’ Party Central Committee meeting, the official Korean Central News Agency said. ...

  Bloomberg The Philippines signed a deal to purchase two corvettes from Hyundai Heavy Industries Co Ltd, beefing up its defense capabilities in a region that has become more militarised due competing claims in the South China Sea. The warships, part of a 28 billion-peso ($556 million) project for the Philippine Navy, are capable of anti-ship, anti-submarine and anti-air warfare ...

  Bloomberg Russia’s Supreme Court ordered the closure of International Memorial, the country’s most prominent human rights group, escalating a sweeping crackdown that has also targeted opposition activists and independent media. The group founded by Soviet-era dissidents including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov must shut down after failing to identify itself as a “foreign agent” under Russian law, Judge ...

  Bloomberg Taiwan is bracing for more Chinese military patrols in 2022, after People’s Liberation Army (PLA) incursions more than doubled this year, fuelling concern about a clash between the region’s big powers. Chinese warplanes have made some 950 forays into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone since January, according to Bloomberg-compiled data from the Ministry of National Defense in Taipei. That ...

  Bloomberg Infection with the Omicron coronavirus variant can also strengthen immunity against the earlier Delta strain, reducing the risk of severe disease, according to a paper released by South African scientists. While omicron has been shown to be highly transmissible and can evade some antibodies, after two weeks of getting symptoms immunity to subsequent infections from the strain rose ...

  Bloomberg Hong Kong added a colonial-era sedition charge to Jimmy Lai’s mounting list of prosecutions, as the government’s crackdown on dissent zeros in on the former media mogul. The jailed tycoon and six former employees of his flagship Apple Daily newspaper were charged with conspiracy to produce and distribute seditious publications under the Crimes Ordinance in West Kowloon Magistrates’ ...

  Bloomberg Russia will start talks first with the US on its demands for guarantees of an end to Nato’s eastward expansion before a proposed January 12 meeting between the military alliance and Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “We will hold the main round of negotiations with the US which will take place immediately after the end of the ...

  Bloomberg Israel’s cabinet approved a plan to double the Jewish population in the southern Golan Heights, part of a 1 billion-shekel ($317 million) program meant to cement Israeli control over the territory, captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. About half of the funds will be allocated to planning and housing, and the balance to developing transportation, ...

  Bloomberg The Taliban administration is working to boost exports to save the Afghan economy from collapse, with a government official saying international humanitarian aid alone won’t prevent the country from slipping deeper into poverty. “Humanitarian aid cannot solve Afghanistan’s economic problems. The only way to achieve economic self-sufficiency is to boost domestic products and export them abroad,” the Taliban ...

  Bloomberg Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to racial discrimination in South Africa, has died. He was 90. Tutu died on Sunday in Cape Town, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said in a statement. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 and underwent surgery. Tutu was subsequently hospitalized several times to undergo treatment ...