Politics

Bloomberg Malaysia is studying if it’s necessary to give booster Covid-19 vaccine shots, as the country grapples with the fast-spreading delta variant. An expert committee has been set up to assess the need for a third shot and is expected to give its recommendation by month-end, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin. The priority now is to focus on people who haven’t ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s finance minister Magdalena Andersson, the favourite to replace outgoing premier Stefan Lofven, has rebuffed a plan to increase spending from the left wing of her party. The faction within the Social Democrats called for a new fiscal policy framework, saying the current rules are “a straitjacket” that hurts the economy by blocking investments. But in an interview with ...

Bloomberg The US officially ended its military presence in Afghanistan on Tuesday with the final flight out of Kabul, concluding two decades of American involvement touched off by the September 11 terrorist attacks. “I’m here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third-country nationals and vulnerable Afghans,” ...

Bloomberg Japan’s Defense Ministry is seeking a record $50 billion annual budget that would entail the largest percentage jump in spending in eight years as it seeks to bolster its capabilities amid simmering tensions with China. If granted in full, the 5.5 trillion yen budget request for the year starting in April would amount to a 2.6% increase on the ...

Bloomberg Angela Merkel took direct aim at efforts by Finance Minister Olaf Scholz to assume her mantle to help topple her conservative bloc in the September 26 election. Scholz, who has engineered an unlikely poll surge for his Social Democratic party to become the favorite for chancellor, has conducted an unsubtle campaign to project himself as the rightful successor of ...

Bloomberg China’s top leaders will meet in November to discuss party history and achievements, just as President Xi Jinping takes aim at the nation’s yawning wealth gap and crackdowns on the tech sector. The Communist Party’s highest decision making body, the Politburo, fixed the month for the sixth plenum, a gathering of the larger Central Committee, state broadcaster China Central ...

Bloomberg The US continued to evacuate people out of Afghanistan despite a rocket attack aimed at Kabul’s international airport on Monday. As the deadline looms for the last US troops to leave and hand over control of the airport to the Taliban, the United Nations plans to take up a resolution proposed by UK and France aimed at allowing exits ...

Bloomberg A senior Chinese diplomat called on the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to work with the Taliban government and stop pressuring Beijing over the virus origin probe in order to improve ties between the world’s biggest economies. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged the US to work with the international community to provide economic assistance to the new ...

Bloomberg North Korea may have resumed operations at its plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear reactor in the past few months, the United Nations atomic watchdog said, a move that could help Kim Jong Un’s regime add to its stockpile of fissile material. For the first time in about three years, it appears there were operations of the five megawatt reactor at North ...

Bloomberg Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong pledged to tighten restrictions on foreign workers, tackling an issue that stirred anger in the traditionally open city-state as it recovers from a pandemic-induced recession. In a key policy speech, Lee said his government will further raise visa criteria for expatriates, raise salaries for low-income labourers and hold companies to account for their ...