Politics

Bloomberg Germany has been mired in political turmoil, and a regional vote on Sunday to give an early indication of the fallout. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s succession plan collapsed on February 10 when her chosen heir, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, unexpectedly announced she would resign as head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Voters in the city-state of Hamburg were going to the ...

Bloomberg The British government plans to reject a European Union decision to lift sanctions on the wife of the late Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, suggesting its approach to financially targeting foreign individuals will diverge from the bloc’s, the Sunday Telegraph reports. The UK suspended an order freezing the assets of Grace Mugabe after the EU’s decision last week, because it’s ...

Bloomberg Anwar Ibrahim, the political leader touted as Malaysia’s next premier, said there are attempts to topple the ruling Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition which are being orchestrated by members of his own party along with PM Mahathir Mohamad’s political group. Anwar, who is president of the People’s Justice Party (PKR), said some in his group and Mahathir’s Bersatu party met with ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump felt blindsided when he learned belatedly that intelligence officials briefed House lawmakers that Russia is continuing to interfere in US elections — and that Democrats elicited their view that the Russians favour Trump’s re-election, according to people familiar with the situation. Trump blamed Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, for the episode and the ...

Bloomberg Police in Zambia say 43 people were killed and 23 others injured in mob violence across the country on people suspected of being responsible for attacking homes with poisonous sprays. Police have so far received 511 reports of incidents of “chemical spraying of poisonous substances on households” that have affected 1,687 victims, Inspector General Kaakoma Kanganja told reporters on ...

Bloomberg Bernie Sanders was expected to cement his front-runner status on Saturday as Nevada’s diverse electorate weighs in on the 2020 Democratic presidential field, but the day could deal a harsh blow to several other candidates limping towards Super Tuesday. Sanders holds a double-digit lead in the RealClearPolitics average of polls ahead of the vote, with Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged his government’s efforts to negotiate a solution to rail blockades across the country have failed and signaled he would be open to police intervention. Efforts by his ministers to reach out have not been productive and he has “no choice” but to stop making overtures and call for the barricades to come down, Trudeau ...

Bloomberg Almost all patients at a psychiatric ward of a South Korean hospital tested positive for the coronavirus, with local reports saying a religious sect with followers who were infected had attended a funeral in the same complex. South Korea’s two confirmed deaths from the virus were also from the Cheongdo hospital’s mental health division, Korea’s Centers for Disease Control ...

Bloomberg The US has stopped all offensive operations against Taliban extremists in Afghanistan as part of an effort to reduce violence in the country for seven days and pave the way for a peace agreement this month to end the US’s longest war. “Our operations are defensive at this point,” US General Austin Scott Miller said. “We stopped our offensive ...

Bloomberg US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said Iran must be held accountable for its proxies’ attacks on American forces in Baghdad, warning that such violence can’t become routine. “It cannot become ordinary course that the Iranians, through their proxy forces in Iraq, are putting the lives of Americans at risk,” Pompeo told reporters on his plane as he prepared ...