Politics

Bloomberg New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern has voted two weeks before election day as part of a strategy to encourage people to cast their ballots in advance. Early voting began on Saturday at 450 locations across the nation, ahead of the October 17 election day. The Electoral Commission has estimated as many as 60% of votes could be cast early, ...

Bloomberg India’s coronavirus death toll passed the 100,000 mark on Saturday, a milestone reached only by the US and Brazil. The South Asian nation’s total number of positive cases is 6.47 million and the death toll from the virus is 100,842, according to the health ministry. India may overtake the US in the coming weeks to become the world’s worst-affected ...

Bloomberg Czech billionaire PM Andrej Babis’s party dominated regional elections, overcoming a drop in popularity over his mixed record in handling the resurgent coronavirus pandemic. Babis’s ANO party won the most mandates in 10 out of 13 regions in the vote, according to partial results. That compared with ANO’s victories in nine regions four years ago. While local administrations hold ...

Bloomberg US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo urged the Vatican to ramp up its opposition to governments abusing religious freedom, as he sought allies for the administration’s push against China. Shortly after landing in Rome on the first day of a two-day visit, Pompeo lost no time in pointing the finger at China, as the Vatican prepares to renew a ...

Bloomberg A special court has acquitted senior leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, including a former deputy prime minister, 28 years after a Hindu mob demolished a centuries old mosque that triggered deadly riots killing thousands, according to a lawyer involved in the case. The court in Lucknow, the capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, on Wednesday ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel said she’ll meet with Belarus’s exiled opposition leader as she condemned President Alexander Lukashenko’s crackdown on demonstrators protesting his disputed election victory. “We don’t recognise the election of President Lukashenko,” Merkel told lawmakers in Germany’s Bundestag, saying she would meet “soon” with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. “We call on him to enter into a dialog with his people, ...

Bloomberg Boris Johnson struck a deal with rebels in his Conservative Party over giving the UK Parliament more power to scrutinise new emergency coronavirus laws, in a bid to curb a growing backlash over his handling of the pandemic. Health secretary Matt Hancock was expected to set out details of the agreement when he introduces a debate on the renewal ...

Bloomberg Armenia and Azerbaijan reported a fourth day of fierce fighting, defying growing international calls to halt the worst violence in decades over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Artillery fire is taking place along the contact line between the two militaries, Armenian Defense Ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan said on Wednesday on Facebook. “Intense battles” continue with combat operations taking place ...

Bloomberg The leader of Poland’s ruling party will join the cabinet as deputy prime minister in a revamp that appears to push the government further to the right and follows weeks of tensions that threatened to trigger snap elections. Jaroslaw Kaczynski is the driving conservative force behind the campaign to reshape Poland that’s put the country in an unprecedented standoff ...

Bloomberg A bruising Senate confirmation fight over President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court choice may seal the fates of several incumbent senators in the November election, though it has yet to drastically alter the odds for which party will control the chamber. Trump’s decision to nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the high court with just weeks to go before Election ...