Politics

Bloomberg Europe struggled to find a unified response to the new coronavirus as Italy became the first democratic country since World War II to announce a nationwide lockdown. As countries across the region put in place their own piecemeal measures to slow the spread of the highly infectious virus, Austria said it will block travellers from Italy unless they can ...

Bloomberg The Afghan capital hosted rival presidential inaugurations after US efforts failed to broker a rapprochement between its two would-be presidents. Ashraf Ghani, the former president, took the oath of office on March 9, after he was declared the winner of the country’s contested presidential election. Abdullah Abdullah, the former chief executive who’s also declared himself the winner of the ...

Bloomberg Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi initiated an independent investigation into the death of the country’s head of military intelligence and said preliminary results suggested he’d died by hanging. The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the central African nation is assisting with the probe, which is expected to conclude soon, according to minutes from a meeting Tshisekedi had ...

Bloomberg The weeks-long ordeal of more than 1,000 Taiwanese stuck at the centre of China’s coronavirus outbreak shows how the global crisis has evolved into another battleground between Beijing and Taipei. Taiwan on Tuesday was set to airlift almost 500 of its residents from Wuhan, the original epicentre of an outbreak that has since spread across the globe and shaken ...

Bloomberg Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said he was “in good shape” after a failed assassination attempt his government branded an attack on the revolution that ousted the North African nation’s long-time dictator last year. Hamdok and his entourage were traveling to work in the capital, Khartoum, when they were targeted in a “terrorist bombing and shooting,” Information Minister Faisal ...

Bloomberg Two Republican lawmakers will self-quarantine in their houses after contact at a recent political conference with a person who later tested positive for coronavirus. Senator Ted Cruz will self-quarantine in his Texas home. He said he had a “brief conversation and a handshake” with the unnamed person at the recent CPAC conference in National Harbor, Maryland. “I’m not experiencing ...

Bloomberg Vietnam Premier Nguyen Xuan Phuc suspended the visa waivers for eight European countries amid growing concerns about the novel coronavirus outbreak. The decision to temporarily cancel visa-free travel for citizens of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Spain followed a recommendation by the national steering committee on coronavirus prevention and control, according to a posting ...

Bloomberg North Korea fired what appeared to be three short-range ballistic missiles off its eastern coast, raising regional security concerns as world leaders battle the spread of the coronavirus. The projectiles were fired in quick succession on Monday from a coastal area near Sondok, flying about 200 kilometers (125 miles) and reaching an altitude of about 50 kilometers before falling ...

Bloomberg It seemed Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy could breathe a sigh of relief as Donald Trump’s impeachment ended with his acquittal by the Senate. A phone call between the two presidents over military aid had handed Zelenskiy a starring role in the saga. But the political novice — until last year his homeland’s most famous TV comic — navigated the ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump hosted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where the two leaders discussed the US-led effort to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The two men are mutual admirers who won election by appealing to nationalist sentiment in their countries. Along with Venezuela, they spoke about a future trade deal, the Middle ...