Politics

Bloomberg US Secretary of State Antony Blinken kicked off a Middle East diplomatic mission with a pledge to help reconstruction efforts in Gaza, left battered after a destructive 11-day conflict with Israel. Standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Blinken said he will specify an aid package to the Palestinians later on Tuesday. The US will ensure ...

Bloomberg Two light rail transit trains collided at an underground section near the famed Petronas twin towers in Kuala Lumpur, injuring more than 200 passengers in a rare mishap that has prompted a full government probe. No deaths were reported while 47 passengers sustained serious injuries, Bernama cited Dang Wangi District Police chief Mohamad Zainal Abdullah as saying. The collision ...

Bloomberg Backed by the US, European Union (EU) leaders moved to impose new sanctions on Belarus over the forced landing of a Ryanair Holdings Plc jet and the arrest of a dissident journalist. “It’s piracy,” German Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday in a Bloomberg webinar. “I’m really, really angry about what happened and we cannot ...

Bloomberg Russia dismissed European Union (EU) and US outrage at the forced landing of a Ryanair Holdings Plc plane in Minsk by Belarusian authorities who arrested a journalist on board. The European Union will consider further sanctions against President Alexander Lukashenko’s administration when its leaders meet for dinner in Brussels for the start of a two-day summit. The EU was ...

Bloomberg US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to the Middle East, President Joe Biden said, as the US continues to try to cement a fragile cease-fire that ended renewed conflict in Gaza. Biden announced the trip in a written statement on Monday morning, tasking Blinken with building ties with both Israelis and Palestinians. Blinken will visit Jerusalem, Ramallah, ...

Bloomberg The US imposed “wide-ranging” economic sanctions against Ethiopia to push the African nation led by a Nobel laureate to end violence in Tigray that has killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Visas to government and military officials from Ethiopia and its neighbour Eritrea, which is also involved in the violence in Tigray, will be restricted, ...

Bloomberg Myanmar’s detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi vowed her pro-democracy political party would continue its work despite being slated for dissolution in her first public appearance since her government was overthrown in a military coup. In a message passed to her lawyers ahead of a court appearance in the capital Naypyidaw on Monday, she said the National League ...

Bloomberg China accused the US of promoting theories that the coronavirus escaped from a high-security lab in Wuhan, as a fresh report about sick workers at the facility prompted Beijing to reaffirm denials. “The report that you mentioned about three people getting sick, that is not true,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular briefing on Monday in Beijing. ...

Bloomberg Belarus scrambled a fighter jet to force a Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania to land in its territory, where authorities detained a journalist who covered the 2020 presidential election and protests against Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed claim of victory. The crew of the Boeing 737-800 carrying scores of passengers from Athens to Vilnius was notified by Belarusian authorities of ...

Bloomberg China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, will visit Russia for the 16th strategic and security consultation between the two countries starting from Monday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday. Yang, director of the Communist Party’s central committee for foreign affairs who sits on the 25-member Politburo, will also visit Slovenia and Croatia, ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said ...