Politics

BLOOMBERG Xi Jinping started an unprecedented third term as China’s president with fresh vows to ensure stability and strengthen party leadership, as he faces a future of slower growth and greater confrontation with the US. “Security is the foundation for development, and stability is the precondition for prosperity,” Xi said on Monday to close out the annual National People’s Congress ...

BLOOMBERG Pakistan’s former premier Imran Khan is requesting the courts to hear his cases in a high-security judicial complex in the country’s capital after he skipped a lower court proceeding where he would have been formally indicted. The legal tussles over Khan’s appearance in various court cases adds to the political turmoil that has gripped the South Asian nation since ...

BLOOMBERG Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy plan to speak by video link in what would be their first conversation since Russia’s invasion, a Ukrainian official familiar with the preparations said. No date has yet been set for the conversation, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that aren’t yet public. There was ...

BLOOMBERG Former Vice President Mike Pence offered his sharpest criticism to date of Donald Trump, holding his former boss responsible for the Capitol insurrection in early 2021 as he teased his own White House ambitions for 2024. “History will hold Donald Trump accountable” for what happened on January 6, 2021, Pence told an audience of several hundred policy makers and ...

BLOOMBERG Russian missiles and artillery have destroyed more than 152,000 residential buildings since the start of the invasion, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said in a televised interview. Ukraine has already registered 66,300 criminal proceedings of the alleged crimes committed by Russian troops from the start of full-scale invasion, according to Klymenko. “Most of the crimes are violations of the ...

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 ...