Politics

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. ...

Bloomberg Joe Biden is working to show he’s an ally for black voters in their fight against police brutality, yet the likely Democratic nominee is only willing to go so far. In the wake of George Floyd’s death while in Minneapolis police custody, Biden has taken a tough stance against police misconduct, urging additional training for law enforcement and an ...

Bloomberg More than 142 people are missing and 57 feared killed after troops in Mali and Niger scaled up counter-terrorism operations in recent months, Amnesty International said. The human-rights group documented 199 cases of abuses, arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances by troops in the two countries, as well as neighbouring Burkina Faso, in February and March. The security forces were ...

Bloomberg Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, whose 15-year rule was marked by political violence and upheaval that earned his country international pariah status, has died. He was 55. Nkurunziza suffered a heart attack on June 8, two days after playing a volleyball match, the government said. He was due to step down in August, after an election last month won by ...

Bloomberg The US and Russia will send senior officials to Vienna on June 22 for a new round of arms-control talks, a State Department official said, as the Trump administration tries to enlist Moscow’s help bringing China into broader negotiations to limit all three countries’ nuclear weapons stockpiles. The official didn’t rule out that the US may be willing to ...

Bloomberg North Korea said it was shutting a liaison office it shares with South Korea from Tuesday and severing communication over a leaders’ hot line, putting pressure on Seoul to break with Washington’s effort to isolate the country. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the state was taking the move because South Korean authorities had “connived” to ...