Politics

Bloomberg Kim Jong Un’s sister said the US has “wrong” views in thinking North Korea might be offering an opening to return to talks, in comments coming shortly after an envoy for President Joe Biden said the US was ready for dialogue “anywhere, anytime” with Pyongyang. The official Korean Central News Agency released a statement from Kim Yo Jong on ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s parliament has unlocked a process for an overhaul of the constitution, one of the key of demands by a youth-led protest movement that has swept the nation in the past year. Lawmakers in the Senate and the Lower House voted to endorse a bill that would pave the way for a public poll on rewriting the charter. The ...

Bloomberg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to jail those who refuse Covid-19 vaccines as the nation ramps up inoculations to prevent the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. “If you’re a person who’s not vaccinated and a potential carrier, to protect the people, I have to sequester you in jail,” Duterte said. Village leaders should keep a list of ...

Bloomberg President Joe Biden’s point man for North Korea said the US was ready for talks “anywhere, anytime” with Pyongyang, providing a strong signal Washington is prepared to revive a stagnant disarmament dialogue. Sung Kim, the US special representative for North Korea, said after discussions on Monday in Seoul with South Korean counterpart Noh Kyu-duk and Japan’s Takehiro Funakoshi that ...

Bloomberg China will risk international isolation if it fails to allow a “real” investigation on its territory into the origins of the virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said. Sullivan’s comments follow last week’s call by Group of Seven leaders including US President Joe Biden for another probe into how the virus originated. Biden ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven lost a confidence vote in parliament, toppling his minority coalition and plunging the largest Nordic economy into political chaos. Lofven says he’ll now talk to his allies in parliament to figure out whether he can still patch together a viable coalition. Failing that, he may call a snap election, he said after losing Monday’s ...

Bloomberg President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen both fared worse than expected in the first round of the French regional election, in a disappointing twist for the two main contenders in the 2022 presidential race. Record-low turnout is a major talking point in France, with Frederic Dabi, deputy-head of Ifop, telling Le Figaro newspaper that abstention may ...

Bloomberg Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he plans pardons for nine Catalan separatists who were jailed for their role in the illegal independence referendum of 2017. Speaking to an audience of civic leaders in the Catalan capital, Barcelona, Sanchez, 49, said he’ll recommend that his cabinet approves pardons when it meets on Tuesday. Sanchez is currently governing in a ...

Bloomberg When hundreds of protesters gathered outside Japan’s embassy in Yangon during the height of nationwide anti-coup protests in February, Ambassador Ichiro Maruyama emerged from the gates with a firm warning for the junta: Release the detained civilian leadership “immediately.” The remarks, delivered in Burmese, drew applause from pro-democracy demonstrators hoping Japan would take concrete action to pressure Myanmar’s military, ...

Bloomberg President Vladimir Putin told business leaders at his flagship economic forum this month that Russia is coping better than many other countries with Covid-19. Events increasingly are contradicting him. Moscow reported a record-high 9,056 new Covid-19 cases, days after Mayor Sergei Sobyanin ordered mandatory vaccination for at least 2 million employees as surging infections threaten to overwhelm the capital’s ...