Politics

Bloomberg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe that South China Sea disputes must be resolved using international law, including a treaty used as the basis for a 2016 ruling that refuted China’s claims in the area. Duterte met with the Chinese official and emphasized that disputes “must be resolved peacefully in full accord with the United ...

Bloomberg The embattled Belarusian opposition lost contact with two more members of its coordination council as authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko targets the leaders of the biggest protests of his 26-year rule. Lawyers Maksim Znak and Ilya Saley were targeted in separate raids on Wednesday, opposition spokesman Gleb Germanchuk said. Znak managed to tell him that “someone came to visit us” ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump plans to announce further US troop reductions in Iraq on Wednesday, an administration official said. The US commander in the Middle East, General Frank McKenzie, said the current level of 5,200 military personnel would be reduced to 3,000 in September, CNN reported on Wednesday. After sending more American forces to the Middle East in his first ...

Bloomberg Boris Johnson is facing a backlash from within his own ruling Conservative Party after the UK government said it plans to break international law over Brexit. As trade talks with the European Union continue, the prime minister will take questions in Parliament and is likely to be put under pressure by senior Tories who fear the move will undermine ...

Bloomberg An anti-graft court in Pakistan indicted former President Asif Ali Zardari and declared ex-premier Nawaz Sharif an absconder in corruption cases, the latest move in multiple legal proceedings against the political opponents of Prime Minister Imran Khan. An accountability court judge, Syed Asghar Ali, framed charges against Zardari, the co-Chairman of opposition Pakistan Peoples Party for illegally accepting gifts ...

Bloomberg The biggest refugee camp in Greece by numbers was evacuated after a fire broke out early on Wednesday. The Moria camp on the island of Lesvos hosts around 13,000 refugees. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis held an extraordinary inter-ministerial meeting in Athens to review the situation and to decide on measures needed to deal with the situation, according to his ...

Bloomberg Negotiations between Asean countries and China over a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea will resume no later than November, Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin said during a virtual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The talks come as territorial tensions in the sea are on the rise with countries such as Vietnam pushing ...

Bloomberg India and China accused each other of firing warning shots in the air along their disputed Himalayan border for the first time in more than four decades in a new sign of friction days after top officials on both sides agreed to defuse tensions. Indian troops “illegally crossed the Line of Actual Control on the southern bank of Pangong ...

Bloomberg Irish PM Micheal Martin warned Boris Johnson against tampering with the Brexit divorce agreement he signed last year, saying doing so would torpedo any trade deal between Britain and the European Union. “The Withdrawal Agreement is an international treaty, and we expect the UK government to implement and to adhere to what was agreed,” Martin said in an interview ...

Bloomberg Belarus said Maria Kalesnikava, one of the Belarusian opposition’s top organisers, was detained at the border with Ukraine after being reported missing as President Alexander Lukashenko targets leaders of month-long protests against his 26-year rule. Two of Kalesnikava’s colleagues on the united opposition’s coordinating council, spokesman Anton Radniankou and its executive secretary Ivan Krautsou, crossed into Ukraine, leaving Kalesnikava ...