Politics

Bloomberg President Joe Biden has decided to adhere to the deadline he set for evacuations from the Kabul airport, according to a senior administration official, leaving less than a week to fly out thousands of people from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The decision means that he rebuffed calls from the US’s closest allies to extend the Aug. 31 deadline during a virtual ...

Bloomberg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has accepted the ruling party’s vice-presidential endorsement, solidifying his bid to stay in a top government post once his term ends next year. Duterte agreed to run due to “popular calls” within the PDP-Laban for him to seek the second-highest post, the party said in a statement on Tuesday. The ruling party, which will convene ...

Bloomberg Zambia’s new President Hakainde Hichilema pledged to rein in public debt and the budget deficit, while restoring the nation’s credibility following a default on its foreign loans. “Our focus over the next five years will be on restoring macroeconomic stability,” Hichilema said in his inauguration address in Lusaka, the capital, on Tuesday. “We will grow our economy so we ...

Bloomberg Bathabile Dlamini, a former South African social development minister and head of the ruling party’s powerful womens’ league, will be prosecuted for perjury in a move by prosecutors that will stoke political tension. The charges relate to her testimony at a Constitutional Court inquiry in 2018 into a crisis over welfare-grant payments where a judge ruled that she’d lied ...

Bloomberg Germany’s Social Democrats (SDP) overtook Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bloc for the first time in 15 years, prompting a top conservative ally to go on the attack. Markus Soeder, head of the Bavarian sister party of her alliance, offered a taste of what the German conservatives will campaign on in the coming weeks. Speaking on Tuesday in a Bloomberg webinar, ...

Bloomberg Vice President Kamala Harris warned that China poses a threat to countries in Asia, while reassuring nations in the region the US won’t force countries to choose between the world’s biggest economies. In a speech in Singapore on Tuesday, Harris spoke about the US vision for a region built on rules, human rights, freedom of the seas and unimpeded ...

Bloomberg The US military is speaking with the Taliban several times a day, as the group warn of “consequences” if the US delays withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan past an end of month deadline. “It’s a red line,” Qatar-based Taliban spokesman and negotiator Suhail Shaheen said in an interview with Sky News. If the US or UK were to seek ...

Bloomberg Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga suffered a fresh blow amid criticism of his pandemic management, when his favoured candidate lost an election for mayor in city where he began his political career. Hachiro Okonogi was defeated by Takeharu Yamanaka, a former university professor supported by the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, in the race for mayor of Yokohama, ...

Bloomberg The US is placing “paramount priority” on defending crowds at Kabul airport seeking to leave Afghanistan against a potential IS terrorist attack, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said. “The threat is real, it is acute, it is persistent and it is something that we are focused on with every tool in our arsenal,” Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of ...

Bloomberg The Defense Department told US airlines to provide 18 planes to aid in the Afghanistan evacuation effort, saying the extra capacity will help military aircraft focus on operations in and out of Kabul. Activation of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet program involves four planes from United Airlines, three each from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines and Omni ...