Politics

Bloomberg China confirmed it’s compiling a global watch list of Taiwanese independence backers it plans to “punish,” marking an escalation in Beijing’s pursuit of its critics. “The list is only targeting the extremely few stubborn Taiwan independence activists and their funders, not targeting the majority of Taiwan compatriots,” Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a ...

Bloomberg When Linda Thomas-Greenfield was held at gunpoint on a diplomatic assignment in Rwanda in 1994, she tried her best to look calm as she explained to a “glazed-eyed young man” that she wasn’t the woman he was told to kill. “I was afraid, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t panic,” Thomas-Greenfield, now one of America’s most experienced diplomats ...

Bloomberg President-elect Joe Biden is delivering a not-so-subtle rebuke to President Donald Trump with his choices of nominees to lead two key national-security agencies. For his director of national intelligence, Biden has selected Avril Haines, a former top CIA official with years of experience in the espionage community who would fill a job that Trump had largely reserved for people ...

Bloomberg An informal militia made up of Tigrayan youths killed at least 600 Ethiopian civilians identified as belonging to other ethnic groups on November 9, according to a state-run human rights body. The massacre occurred less than a week after a conflict started between federal forces and Tigrayan soldiers in the northern Ethiopian region. The youths, known as Samri, and ...

Bloomberg Storm Nivar over the Bay of Bengal is likely to turn into a “very severe cyclone” by Wednesday and may cause widespread damage to crops, mud houses and electricity poles in some southern Indian states. The storm will have a sustained wind speed of 120 to 130 kilometres (75-81 miles) per hour, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). ...

Bloomberg Algeria’s 75-year-old leader flew to Germany last month for treatment after catching Covid-19. He hasn’t been seen in public since and barely a word on his condition reaches home. The prolonged absence of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is now the hot topic of political debate, supplanting a vote on constitutional reform and the rumblings of war near the country’s western ...

Bloomberg One year ago, Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) was in flames. Police and student protesters faced off at the campus — one of Hong Kong’s best-known — in a chaotic 16-day siege last November that became a symbol of the battle between the city’s China-backed administration and anti-government protesters. Today, what had once been a bustling, freely accessible campus ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump is facing rising pressure from prominent Republicans to begin a transition to President-elect Joe Biden — or even concede defeat — as Trump’s long-shot legal challenges failed to gain traction. Several key allies for Trump appeared to lose their patience over the weekend. Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota — one ...

Bloomberg Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is consulting with the UK’s most senior legal officer on the position of British judges in Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal, as he condemned China’s “chilling” national security law for suppressing legal freedoms in the former British colony. Hong Kong’s independent judiciary is a key to its success as a global financial hub, and ...

Bloomberg Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan authorities have issued contradictory accounts of who’s winning a conflict that’s been raging in the dissident northern state since November 4 and triggered a humanitarian crisis in Africa’s second-most populous nation. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration said its troops have seized control of several Tigrayan towns, indicated the fall of its capital, Mekelle, is imminent ...