Politics

Bloomberg China sentenced 10 Hong Kong activists who made a dramatic attempt to flee by boat to up to three years in prison, defying calls for their release from the US and others. Activist Tang Kai-yin was sentenced to three years while Quinn Moon was jailed for two years over their roles in organising an illegal border crossing, the Yantian ...

Bloomberg Algeria’s president returned from two months abroad receiving treatment for Covid-19 to a country facing a simmering crisis at its western border and more economic uncertainty. Abdelmadjid Tebboune arrived back in the North African nation, state TV reported, seemingly ending a prolonged absence that had stoked speculation over both his condition and the future political direction of Algeria, which ...

Bloomberg Russia stepped up pressure on opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who survived a nerve-agent attack he and Western governments have blamed on the Kremlin, opening a new criminal case against him for alleged fraud. The country’s Investigative Committee said Navalny had spent 356 million rubles ($8 million) on personal purposes from donations transferred to various funds, including the Anti-Corruption Foundation ...

Bloomberg President-elect Joe Biden accused Trump loyalists at national security agencies of throwing up roadblocks to a smooth presidential transition and warned that adversaries could take advantage of the situation without better cooperation from the outgoing administration. “We need to make sure nothing is lost in the hand-off between administrations,” he said after a meeting with his national security advisers ...

Bloomberg The Philippines has decided to ban travellers from 20 nations with the new Covid-19 strain, Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello said on Tuesday. The travel ban covers Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and the UK, Bello said. The ban will be effective December ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was charged earlier this month with colluding with foreign forces under city’s new national security law, resigned as chairman of Next Digital Ltd, the company he founded said in a filing on Tuesday. Lai, 73, tendered his resignation “in order to spend more time dealing with his personal affairs,” according to the ...

Bloomberg US President Donald Trump’s campaign to cut North Korea’s economy off from the world worked. But it also may have accelerated Kim Jong Un’s efforts to build a military less reliant on foreign support. The North Korea awaiting President-elect Joe Biden is more dangerous and more self-reliant, possessing at least three different intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear ...

Bloomberg Croatia suffered its strongest earthquake in 140 years — for the second time in 2020 — with the tremor devastating the city at its epicenter, killing at least one person and rattling Europeans as far away as Rome and Vienna. The temblor, measured at 6.3 by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre on Tuesday, was larger than both a 5.2 quake ...

Bloomberg The trade deal that both sides of the English Channel say reflects a new era of cooperation is essentially a sideshow for the City of London, which is still awaiting its own seal of approval from the European Union (EU). EU officials must rule separately that British financial regulations and oversight are strong enough to create a level playing ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s continued effort to overturn the November 3 election results got a front-page rebuke from one his most loyal backers: the New York Post. “Mr President, it’s time to end this dark charade,” the New York City tabloid’s editorial board wrote in Monday’s edition. The paper, which endorsed Trump for president, tells Trump to “Give it up,” ...