Politics

BLOOMBERG China has named a general sanctioned by the US to be its new defense minister, setting up a potentially awkward encounter if he’s ever paired up with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for a meeting. General Li Shangfu is set to become Minister of National Defense and State Councilor — China’s equivalent of a cabinet member — according to ...

BLOOMBERG Rishi Sunak’s political opponents think they’ve found his weak spot — the family. With an election edging closer, Keir Starmer’s Labour is making a move onto traditional Tory territory, accusing the prime minister of abandoning working parents. Sensing victory after 13 years in the wilderness, Labour wants to make an overhaul of Britain’s hugely expensive child care system a ...

BLOOMBERG The US intelligence community assesses that China doesn’t want a military conflict over Taiwan even as it’s determined to bring the independently governed island under its control, officials told a House of Representatives hearing. “It’s not our assessment that China wants to go to war,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the House Intelligence Committee as part of ...

BLOOMBERG Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused the Kremlin of deliberately targeting the country’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after the latest Russian missile barrage knocked out its supply for the sixth time before power was restored. “This is a critical situation” and “means, by definition, that Russia cannot be a bona fide participant in any relations in the nuclear sphere,” Zelenskiy said ...

BLOOMBERG Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially kicked off the toughest election campaign of his career on Friday, with the broadest-ever opposition alliance standing between him and a third decade in power. Erdogan brought elections forward by more than a month to May 14 from the original date of June 18, despite twin earthquakes devastating much of the country’s southeast ...

BLOOMBERG The US ambassador to Hungary said Prime Minister Viktor Orban has reached a crossroads and that the “time is now” for him to pivot away from Russia and shore up the country’s relations with its western allies. The unusually direct remark for a sitting US ambassador about a Nato partner’s international policy adds to mounting pressure on Orban to ...

BLOOMBERG The Kremlin is opening up Vladimir Putin’s schedule around this year’s G-20 summit in India in September to make it possible for the Russian president to participate in the leaders’ gathering after skipping the last two, according to people familiar with the planning. Kremlin defiance is growing as efforts by the US and its allies to isolate Russia over ...

BLOOMBERG Russia launched a devastating bombardment against cities across Ukraine, killing at least five people and casting hundreds of thousands more into sporadic blackouts with a new mix of weapons that mostly evaded air defenses. The barrage extended Russian President Vladimir Putin’s five-month campaign of air strikes targeting civilian infrastructure including the energy grid, hospitals, schools and residential buildings. At ...

BLOOMBERG North Korea fired a suspected short-range ballistic missile after the influential sister of the state’s leader threatened the US with severe consequences if it goes ahead with joint military drills with South Korea. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a text message to reporters the missile was fired at around 6:20 pm on Thursday from the western ...

BLOOMBERG Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the possible fall of Bakhmut “in the coming days” would not indicate a turning point in Russia’s war against Ukraine. “We must continue to provide support to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said before a meeting with European Union (EU) defense ministers in Sweden. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander in charge of Ukraine’s ground forces, made a second ...