Politics

Bloomberg India and China pledged to de-escalate tensions along their disputed Himalayan border after their foreign ministers met Thursday for the first time since May when the stand-off began. Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, agreed that “the current situation in the border area is not in the interests of both sides,” according to a joint ...

Bloomberg Yoshihide Suga, the front-runner to become Japan’s next premier, emphasized the importance of the nation’s alliance with the US for the country’s foreign policy. “With the US-Japan alliance at the foundation, it is important for Japan to get along with other Asian nations,” Suga said in a debate in Tokyo on Saturday at the Japan National Press Club. While ...

Bloomberg Australian raids on Chinese journalists living in that country were “imperious” and “utterly appalling,” and are damaging relations between the two nations, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said. Australian authorities confiscated computers and phones in raids on four Chinese journalists’ homes, including that of a Xinhua employee, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said. The operation was conducted by ...

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 ...