Politics

Bloomberg Afghanistan’s acting finance minister Khalid Payenda has resigned and left the country after the Taliban captured key customs posts bleeding the administration of revenue, reinforcing the government’s isolation as the extremists make swift gains. Payenda has “resigned and left the country because Afghanistan is grappling with declining revenues after the takeover of the custom posts,” Finance Ministry spokesman Mohammad ...

Bloomberg Afghan President Ashraf Ghani views peace talks with the Taliban as dead, and is looking to both arm civilians and cooperate with warlords to prevent the militant group from overrunning his administration in Kabul. Since the weekend the Taliban has captured the capitals of five northern provinces and one in the west, where they met little resistance from the ...

Bloomberg Peru’s new president is off to a rocky start, selecting contentious ministers, alienating allies and setting the stage for a brutal face-off with congress, all within days of taking office. A rural teacher and union activist, Pedro Castillo won the election after reassurances that he’s his own man, not beholden to his party’s Marxist ideology or chief. But when ...

Bloomberg Melissa DeRosa, the highest-ranking aide to Andrew Cuomo, resigned as the embattled New York governor contends with possible criminal charges over numerous harassment claims and a potential impeachment trial. DeRosa, who had remained one of Cuomo’s chief defenders throughout multiple scandals, said she would step down from her post as secretary to the governor after what she called a ...

Bloomberg Troops from Mozambique and Rwanda retook a port town at the heart of a four-year insurgency that led to the suspension of a $20 billion project by TotalEnergies SE. Soldiers from the two countries retook Mocimboa da Praia, which insurgents with ties to IS have held for a year, the Rwanda Defence Force said in Twitter post. The Mozambican ...

Bloomberg China has punished a slew of officials for failing to curb a Covid-19 outbreak that’s spawned nearly 900 symptomatic infections across the country in less than a month, a resurgence that complicates Beijing’s strategy of keeping the virus out entirely. The eastern Chinese city of Yangzhou issued warnings to five officials for mishandling mass testing that they said allowed ...

Bloomberg Australians’ approval of Prime Minister Scott Morrison has fallen to the lowest level since the pandemic began, with voters wearying of virus-induced lockdowns amid his government’s tardy vaccine rollout. Support for Morrison’s handling of the crisis has fallen from 85% in April last year —when his conservative government imposed strict border controls that helped keep virus fatalities to less ...

Bloomberg Two former US Marines imprisoned in Russia are likely to seek transfers to the US to serve their sentences, an early test of whether the Kremlin is ready to respond to President Joe Biden’s policy of re-engagement. Paul Whelan, who was sentenced to 16 years for spying last year, is expected to submit the request this month, according to ...

Bloomberg US military aircraft have been hitting ground targets in Afghanistan in an effort to protect allies, according to US Central Command, as the Taliban makes rapid advances in the void left by withdrawing American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops. “US forces have conducted several airstrikes in defense of our Afghan partners in recent days,” US Air Force Maj. ...

Bloomberg Support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party bloc declined in a poll that suggested momentum for the Social Democrats and their candidate, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz. The weekly Insa poll hints at the challenge faced by Armin Laschet, the leader of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, who’s running to replace her after the September 26 federal election. Scholz is the ...