Politics

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 ...

Bloomberg Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has moved out to a commanding lead in California with 32% support among likely Democratic voters in the critical Super Tuesday state, according to a poll released by the Public Policy Institute of California. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bloomberg and Pete Buttigieg were all bunched within the poll’s margin of error for the next ...

Bloomberg John Rood has stepped down as the top policy official at the Defense Department, according to two people familiar with the matter. The senior Pentagon official had faced pressure to resign from key figures who lost confidence in his ability to carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda, according to multiple administration officials who requested anonymity to speak about Rood’s ...

Bloomberg Boris Johnson’s government unveiled plans to end what it called the UK’s dependence on “cheap low-skilled labour” and deliver on its pledge to halt freedom of movement from the European Union after Brexit. Under a points-based immigration system to come into effect on January 1, 2021, workers must prove they can speak English, have a verified job offer and ...

Bloomberg After a decade and a half in Hong Kong, New Zealand native Ian Jacob is calling it quits. The owner of a construction-materials company, Jacob and his wife were worried last year about the political unrest, especially after the temporary suspension of schools. “We watched as the situation got worse and worse,” he said. With classes suspended again amid ...

Bloomberg Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said his country won’t let the flight recorders of the Ukrainian jet that was shot down in January leave Iran and be decoded without the presence of Islamic Republic envoys. “We have a right to keep the black boxes ourselves. We have a right to be present during any assessment of the black ...

Bloomberg Former National Security Advisor John Bolton raised alarm the Trump administration could block his memoir that describes his interaction with the president over Ukraine. “I hope it’s not suppressed,” Bolton said in a talk at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “This is an effort to write history, and I did it the best I can. We’ll have to ...

Bloomberg Afghanistan’s incumbent president, Ashraf Ghani, has been declared the winner of a disputed presidential vote that’s been tainted by accusations of vote-rigging. Ghani led the poll with 50.64% of the vote, defeating his top rival Abdullah Abdullah who obtained 39.52% in the bitterly contested poll started on September 28, Hawa Alam Nuristani, the chairwoman of the election commission, said. ...