Politics

Bloomberg Since his 2018 election, Jair Bolsonaro has pushed for opening up the Amazon to mining and making Brazil’s indigenous population less like “animals in a zoo.” Now the government is helping those same communities seal themselves off from the outside world in a bid to hinder the coronavirus. As the vast state of Amazonas becomes one of Brazil’s virus ...

Bloomberg Foreign workers in Singapore know they are currently safer in the city-state than elsewhere including their own countries, a minister said, even as a massive coronavirus outbreak among that community shines a spotlight on cramped and oft-unsanitary lodging provided for the low-wage employees. The workers from overseas are “appreciative” of efforts that range from relieving overcrowding in current facilities, ...

Bloomberg Days after insisting he had absolute authority to steer the country’s economic recovery from the coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump instead handed over the keys to governors and businesses. Trump issued guidelines for states to consider as they decide whether to relax stay-at-home orders and other social-distancing measures enacted to curb the spread of the virus. The brief document ...

Bloomberg Russia recorded its largest daily increase in coronavirus infections, with the new cases rising by almost 5,000 in a single day. New infections jumped by 4,785 to 36,793, the official Russian coronavirus information center reported on its website. Forty people died in the past day, including 21 in Moscow, bringing the number of fatalities to 313. The pace of ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong police arrested 14 people on Saturday on suspicion of organising and participating in an unauthorised assembly in 2019, when months of pro-democracy protests upended life in the city. The police action was connected to unauthorised assemblies on August 18, October 1 and 20 in Hong Kong Island and Kowloon last year, Superintendent Lam Wing-ho said at a ...

Bloomberg Abba Kyari, chief of staff to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and an ardent supporter of state intervention in the economy, has died. His age wasn’t disclosed. “The Presidency regrets to announce the passage of the Chief of Staff to the President, Mallam Abba Kyari,” presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said on Twitter. Kyari had been hospitalised in the commercial capital, ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s campaign boasts it needed just 24 hours to switch into virtual mode after coronavirus lockdowns ended his signature, high-energy rallies. For Joe Biden, who thrives on the personal connection of retail politics, the transition is taking much longer. Trump’s digital operation dominates the digital space in no small part thanks to the presidential bully pulpit and ...

Bloomberg Indonesia has extended stricter social-distancing rules to millions of people living on the main island of Java, and in West Sumatra, as the world’s fourth-most populous nation strives to stem a spike in coronavirus cases. Large-scale social restrictions will be put in place across five regions in West Java that collectively house almost 9 million people, Health Minister Terawan ...

Bloomberg South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s ruling coalition scored the largest parliamentary election victory since the end of military-backed rule more than three decades ago, signalling to global leaders that a strong pandemic response can win votes. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea and its satellite group won 180 places in the 300-seat National Assembly, according to data from South ...

Bloomberg One of the highest-ranking North Koreans ever to defect made history by winning a parliamentary election in South Korea, running on a conservative platform where he lambasted both Kim Jong-un and the president of the country he now calls home. Thae Yong-ho, who once was a top diplomat representing what North Korea calls its “unique socialist political mode,” pulled ...