Politics

  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 ...

  Bloomberg Poland’s President Andrzej Duda vetoed a bill that would force Discovery Inc. to sell most of the country’s most popular private television network, defusing a row that strained relations with the US. The bill, adopted in a surprise parliamentary vote on December 17, blindsided Washington and sent thousands of Poles to the streets in protest over what they ...

  Bloomberg Japan won’t send any government representatives to the Beijing Winter Olympics, effectively throwing its support behind the US-led diplomatic boycott of the games that start in February. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno announced that Japan would dispatch three top members of the teams that helped organize this year’s Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. He added the government had reached ...

  Bloomberg Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said China has been “playing” Western states against each other and that democracies should present a “united front” in response. “There’s been a bit of competition amongst friends because we’re capitalist democracies trying to do well, especially given the extraordinary economic opportunity of the rise in the Chinese middle class,” Trudeau said in ...

  Bloomberg Britain’s Labour Party has an eight-point lead over Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, according to a poll commissioned by the Sunday Times. The survey of almost 25,000 people, with a breakdown of each constituency, found Labour with enough support to win a general election with 338 seats to the Conservatives’ 237, enough for a 26-seat Labour majority, the ...

  Bloomberg German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s foreign policy adviser Jens Ploetner and Russia’s Ukraine negotiator Dmitry Kozak agreed to meet next month to try to reduce tensions over Ukraine, Reuters reported, citing an unidentified German government source. Germany wants to quickly revive the “Normandy format,” referring to multilateral talks involving Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany, the person told Reuters. The ...

  Bloomberg President Joe Biden signed into law a bill banning goods from China’s Xinjiang region unless companies can prove they aren’t made with forced labor, a move that will add to tensions over Beijing’s treatment of the nation’s Uyghur minority. The bill passed with unanimous backing in both the House and Senate earlier this month, showcasing how Republicans and ...

  Bloomberg The Russian Defense Ministry said more than 10,000 troops would return to their permanent bases in the Southern Military District after over a month of training in the region, including in areas near the Ukrainian border. The exercises took place throughout the district, including in the Crimea and Rostov regions that border Ukraine, according to a statement posted ...

  Bloomberg Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing said there are plans to hold a fresh general election on August 2023, sticking to the military government’s timeline and defying pressure from the US to hold polls earlier. “Depending on state stability and peace, we are making our utmost effort to hold a multi-party general election on August 2023,” the junta ...