Politics

Bloomberg The US is placing sanctions on 11 Chinese officials and their allies in Hong Kong, including Chief Executive Carrie Lam, over their roles in curtailing political freedoms in the former UK colony, the Treasury Department said. “The United States stands with the people of Hong Kong and we will use our tools and authorities to target those undermining their ...

Bloomberg China and Iran are working to sway US voters against President Donald Trump while Russia is working against his rival, Joe Biden, intelligence agencies said. “Many foreign actors have a preference for who wins the election, which they express through a range of overt and private statements; covert influence efforts are rarer,” National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William ...

Bloomberg New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern launched her campaign for a second term by reminding voters of her leadership credentials and pledging to steer the country through the economic crisis unleashed by Covid-19. The September 19 election is “more important than ever” because of the pandemic, Ardern told Labour Party faithful in Auckland on Saturday. “It’s about the future. ...

Bloomberg For almost six months, Vietnamese officials every day announced a fairly astonishing statistic for a nation of 96 million: no Covid-19 deaths. But that changed on July 31, with 10 deaths being reported since. After no reports of community transmission cases since April 16, an outbreak in the coastal city of Danang turned deadly in late July. The virus ...

Bloomberg As India passes the grim milestone of two million virus cases and new hotspots emerge in villages, experts are worried infections will now rise exponentially in the world’s second-most populous country, overwhelming its under-prepared hinterland. In the remote Valad village in the southern state of Kerala, 236 people have been found positive in the last two weeks. In Katapali ...

Bloomberg Army personnel and rescue workers sifted through mountains of rubble from a massive explosion that flattened Lebanon’s main port, looking for survivors from a blast that roared through the capital, Beirut, killing at least 100 people and wounding thousands more. Authorities appealed to other countries for emergency aid as concerns over food supply in the import-dependent nation mounted. Officials ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said the coronavirus pandemic is “going away,” as the US continues to see tens of thousands of new daily cases and recorded 1,380 deaths. “This thing’s going away. It will go away like things go away,” Trump said in a telephone interview with Fox News. He said the US is in “very good shape” while touting ...

Bloomberg The rapid speed at which researchers are developing coronavirus vaccines doesn’t mean that safety is being sacrificed, said Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious-disease expert. “The rapidity with which we are moving relates more to technological advances with how you can make a vaccine even before you start testing it,” Fauci, the head of the National Institute of ...

Bloomberg Authorities lifted a curfew in the main city in India’s portion of Kashmir where sweeping movement and Internet curbs and a heavier than usual military presence marked a year since the revocation of seven decades of autonomy in the disputed Muslim-majority region. The two-day curfew was rolled back after widespread criticism, a government order said, but businesses and public ...

Bloomberg Three years after he survived an assassination attempt, Tanzania’s main opposition chose Tundu Lissu as its candidate to run for president. The 52-year-old human-rights lawyer will run against John Magufuli, who’s seeking a second term after five years in power that critics say has been marred by a crackdown on civil liberties and political dissent. While Magufuli is expected ...