Politics

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said the US doesn’t know directly whether Alexey Navalny was poisoned, failing to accept the German government’s assessment that the Russian opposition leader was attacked with a nerve agent. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that medical tests showed “unequivocally” that Navalny had been poisoned by a military-grade novichok nerve agent. Asked about the German conclusion at ...

Bloomberg Defense ministers from India and China agreed to defuse tensions after the latest clash on their Himalayan border revived a conflict that had been largely dormant since June. India’s Rajnath Singh and his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe held “frank and in-depth discussions” in Moscow about developments on the border and on bilateral relations, according to a statement from India’s ...

Bloomberg Sudan declared a three-month national state of emergency following floods that killed dozens of people and damaged or destroyed more than 100,000 homes, state-owned news agency Suna reported. The floods have affected over 500,000 people this year, killing 99 and injuring 46 others, Suna cited Labor and Social Development Minister Lena Al-Sheikh as saying. The rate of floods and ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said that Serbia and Kosovo had agreed to “economic normalisation,” in what he said was a step towards ending a two-decade old conflict. But the deal fell short of Belgrade recognising its neighbour as an independent nation. “My administration proposed a new way of bridging the divide by focussing on job creation and economic growth,” Trump ...

Bloomberg Italian PM Giuseppe Conte said that coronavirus outbreaks this autumn may prompt local restrictions but not a nationwide lockdown. “I am confident,” Conte said at an event organised by Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper. “We won’t find ourselves in a situation to order a general lockdown; at worst we’ll have to intervene in a targeted way, with restrictive measures for narrowly ...

Bloomberg India triggered the latest clash with China on their Himalayan border by executing a stealth night-time operation to claim strategic outposts offering a clear view of troop movements in disputed territory, according to Indian officials with knowledge of the matter. In what they called India’s first offensive move since the conflict began in May, thousands of soldiers climbed up ...

Bloomberg Taiwan has unveiled a redesigned passport in an effort to stop its citizens being mistaken for Chinese while traveling abroad. The new passport omits “Republic of China” — the official name by which Taiwan refers to itself — in larger English print from the Taiwanese passport cover. “Republic of China” remains written in Chinese, and in smaller English writing ...

Bloomberg China’s rapid military buildup means the country is closer to joining the US and Russia as the top nations capable of deploying nuclear weapons on land, in the air and at sea, the Pentagon warned in a new report. China’s progress in upgrading its strategic bombers to carry nuclear payloads puts it on the cusp of achieving a “triad” ...

Bloomberg Bulgaria’s president renewed his call for the resignation of Prime Minister Boyko Borissov as protesters clashed with police after thousands demonstrated outside parliament. Opposition-backed President Rumen Radev, who has accused Borissov and Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev of harboring links to organised crime that they deny, said the premier’s departure was “unavoidable” after two months of anti-corruption demonstrations against the ...

Bloomberg Boris Johnson’s government announced another U-turn, caving in to pressure from opponents and keeping local lockdown rules in place amid a rise in Covid-19 cases. The prime minister is pushing to get Britons back to work and school, and his team had decided restrictions imposed in some areas of northwest England should be eased. But local politicians, including Greater ...