Politics

Bloomberg UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has condemned the boarding up of key public statues in London ahead of anti-racism protests on Saturday and urged demonstrators to stay at home. Patel used an interview with the Daily Mail to accuse the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, of mishandling the few subversive protesters and called for the statue of former Prime Minister ...

Bloomberg Singapore dengue infections may top 1,000 this week, setting a record, the Straits Times newspaper reported. Cases for the year may exceed the all-time high of 22,170 set in 2013, the paper said, citing Amy Khor, the senior minister of state for the environment and water resources, and for health. Khor said the threat of dengue must be taken ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump is setting off on a trip aimed at delivering a message to the American people: It’s time to get back to normal after the pandemic. Trump hits the road on Thursday for Dallas, where he’ll hold his first in-person fundraiser in months. He’s expected to spend the rest of the weekend at his New Jersey golf ...

Bloomberg The EU supports the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and rejects any annexation plans for Palestinian territories, German foreign minister Heiko Maas said. “We are very worried about the repercussions of the annexation decision,” Maas said during the joint press conference with Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi in Amman. “We in the EU agree and are committed to ...

Bloomberg China denied claims that it was targeting Australia by warning its citizens not to travel there due to the risk of discrimination and racist attacks, after Australia’s leader accused China of attempting to coerce his country. “Our embassy and consulate in Australia also received a lot of complaints and appeals for assistance,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua ...

Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is battling to contain a public split with his own top scientific advisers, after they warned the government must learn from the catalog of failures it made during the coronavirus crisis. Standing next to Johnson on live television, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty highlighted a “long list” of potentially flawed decisions on the pandemic ...

Bloomberg A top official at a global human rights organisation criticised South Korea for trying to shut down two activist groups who sent anti-Kim Jong-un leaflets by balloon across the border into North Korea. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said a decision by South Korea to revoke the licenses and seek prosecution for the groups is ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif has quarantined himself at home after testing positive for the coronavirus, raising concerns about his health as he is a cancer survivor, his party leader said. Sharif, 68, took many tests since he was having symptoms of the virus, said Marriyum Aurangzeb, a spokesperson for Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, on Geo television. He ...

Bloomberg Both North Korea and left-leaning supporters of South Korean President Moon Jae-in want him to restore economic ties broken by security tensions. But pleasing them would mean angering US President Donald Trump. North Korea said it was closing down communication links set up two years ago between Moon and Kim Jong-un, jeopardising the South Korean leader’s 2017 campaign promise ...

Bloomberg The reverberations from Donald Trump’s latest broadside against Germany have reached all the way to Moscow. The president’s decision to withdraw more than a quarter of the US troops stationed in her country leaves Chancellor Angela Merkel exposed at a moment when she’s facing growing pressure to get tough with Vladimir Putin and was welcomed in the Russian capital. ...