Politics

Bloomberg After dipping into his savings to weather India’s snap pandemic lockdown last March, Manoj Kumar was just getting his head above water again earning 600 rupees ($8) a day as a construction worker in the tourist hotspot of Goa. He’d squirreled away enough for a trip last month to his native village in Bihar some 1,490 miles away for ...

Bloomberg The New York State Attorney General’s Office is expanding its investigation into Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter. The probe, focused on harassment allegations against Cuomo, will now look at whether one of the governor’s top advisers linked support for the governor to access to coronavirus vaccines.

Bloomberg President Joe Biden’s White House released its first set of records detailing visits by official guests, returning to a practice set by the Obama administration and dismissed by the Trump team, disclosing 400 visits during his first 12 days in office. While hundreds of visitors might have visited the White House complex on an ordinary pre-pandemic day, the sparse ...

Bloomberg The top leadership of South Africa’s ruling party excluded its suspended Secretary-General Ace Magashule from a meeting on Saturday, confirming the sidelining of one of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s biggest detractors. Magashule was ordered to vacate his post after he ignored an order by the African National Congress (ANC) to step aside while he faces trial on graft charges. He ...

Bloomberg Somalia will expedite elections in a bid to quell instability and coax donors into releasing funds needed to pay the nation’s security forces and other state employees, Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdirizak said. The prime minister is scheduled to meet representatives from political parties and other interested groups in July to agree on the voting process, Abdirizak said. The authorities ...

Bloomberg The Philippines said China’s unilateral fishing ban in the South China Sea doesn’t apply to areas within the Southeast Asian nation, in yet another sign of tension between the two countries. The National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea “opposes China’s imposition of the same over the areas within the territory and jurisdiction of the Philippines,” it said ...

Bloomberg Isabel Diaz Ayuso, Madrid’s combative conservative leader, won a second term as regional president, cementing her position as Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s most powerful critic. Ayuso’s People’s Party claimed 65 seats in the vote, more than doubling its representation in the regional assembly, with Sanchez’s Socialists getting 24 and falling to third place in number of votes behind a ...

Bloomberg Vietnam has ordered a strict border control after lengthening the quarantine period to include additional time at home and imposing some movement restrictions as it traces the recent flare up in coronavirus cases to overseas travellers. During a virus task force meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam ordered intensified inspections on arriving travellers, according to a post on ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition is rapidly revising its pandemic strategy over concerns its controversial lockdown law may suffer a court setback, which would be the second legal defeat in quick succession just months before September elections. Germany’s Constitutional Court is considering at least 289 challenges to the law, which was pushed through in April after authorities failed to find ...

Bloomberg President Joe Biden sought to ease tensions with his political allies by quadrupling the limit on the number of refugees who can enter the US after months of administration wavering and reversals over increasing the cap. Biden said he would allow in as many as 62,500 refugees by the end of September, up from the historically low ceiling of ...