Politics

Bloomberg Taiwan urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to allow it to rejoin a key global health assembly later this month despite objections from China, as Taipei pushes for more inclusion in international bodies. Taiwan needs a seat at the WHO’s annual decision-making meeting, the World Health Assembly (WHA), on May 18 to allow it access to firsthand information about ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he will lay out the next steps in his UK government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak on Sunday, and some changes to the nationwide lockdown are likely to take effect the following day. As part of its plans to exit the lockdown, the government has already said it will roll out a mass program ...

Bloomberg On April 2, Zimbabwean finance minister Mthuli Ncube wrote to the International Monetary Fund and other leading multilateral lenders pleading for help. More than half of the population needs food aid, the economy collapsed even before the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic and the country’s health service is in tatters, he said. To date, he’s had no response. ...

Bloomberg China’s Ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, said British politicians who have called for a re-setting of the ties between the two nations risk poisoning the relationship. Anti-China rhetoric is in danger of undermining international solidarity in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, he said in a webinar on Tuesday. The ambassador’s comment is a thinly veiled warning to ...

Bloomberg Rising cases of unexplained deaths have put Nigeria’s second-biggest city of Kano at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Africa’s most populous country. Local news reports citing cemetery workers that emerged last month revealed a spike in mysterious deaths in the city with an estimated 8 million residents. Kano state Governor Abdullahi Ganduje initially blamed ailments such as ...

Bloomberg The European Union’s top court faced the most stinging attack in its 68-year history — not from Brexiteers, but from its German counterpart. In a long-awaited ruling on the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing (QE) program, Germany’s constitutional court in Karlsruhe accused the EU Court of Justice of overstepping its powers when it backed the ECB’s controversial policy. German ...

Bloomberg State governments across India rushed to restore order after violence and chaos broke out when the country started relaxing its stringent virus lockdown, with migrant workers clashing with police in western India. In Mumbai, India’s financial capital, local police said on Twitter that from Tuesday standalone shops would issue tokens to customers to avoid crowding around storefronts. It used ...

Bloomberg Senate Democrats are ready to challenge a vow of “fairness and impartiality” by Brian Miller, President Donald Trump’s nominee to oversee trillions of dollars being spent in the effort to rescue the economy from the coronavirus pandemic. “I will be vigilant to protect the integrity and independence of the Office of Special Inspector General” and will work “to uncover ...

Bloomberg US President Donald Trump promised a “conclusive” report on the Chinese origins of the coronavirus outbreak, showing relations between the world’s biggest economies are set to remain rocky at least until the next election six months from now. Trump pledged the report in a “virtual town hall” with Fox News, in which he added that he had little doubt ...

Bloomberg The Trump administration’s relentless attacks on China over the cause of the coronavirus outbreak are targeted at a domestic audience in an election year. But they may have the effect of emboldening Beijing’s leaders. President Donald Trump promised a “conclusive” report on the Chinese origins of Covid-19, shortly after Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said — without providing proof ...