Politics

Bloomberg US-led reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan since 2002 are linked to the deaths or injuries of more than 5,100 people in addition to more than $130 billion in financial costs, according to a new report on America’s longest war. Some 2,214 people were killed and another 2,921 wounded while taking part in reconstruction and stabilisation missions across the war-ravaged nation ...

Bloomberg Ukraine is pressing Iran to send the so-called black box recorders from the Boeing Co plane that crashed after taking off from Tehran last month, Ukrainian foreign minister Vadym Prystaiko said. “The black box and cooperation with Tehran was the very difficult issue from the beginning and we will try to keep the message” focussed on recovering the data, ...

Bloomberg The race to lead Germany was thrown wide open on Monday when Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer announced that she will step down as leader of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and won’t run as the party’s candidate for chancellor in the next election. Kramp-Karrenbauer, widely known by her initials AKK, has struggled to stamp her authority on the party since ...

Bloomberg A cruise ship in Japan was reported to have about 60 more coronavirus infections, adding to the 70 already confirmed, according to TBS. The global death toll from the coronavirus outbreak reached 910, as the World Health Organization’s chief voiced concern over the spread of the disease from people with no travel history to China. Coronavirus cases traced to ...

Bloomberg Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon vowed to maintain pressure on the UK for another referendum on independence and said the standoff with PM Boris Johnson over the issue is just a “phony battle.” In an interview with Bloomberg Television in Brussels on Monday, she also repeated the possibility of asking the courts to decide whether the Scottish Parliament already ...

Bloomberg The Department of Justice announced charges on Monday against four members of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for the 2017 hack of Equifax Inc, according to US Attorney General William Barr. Barr said the charges stem from “breaking into the computer systems” of the credit-reporting company and stealing intellectual property and sensitive personal information at a unprecedented scale. At ...

Bloomberg Attorney General William Barr acknowledged for the first time on Monday that President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has been giving the Justice Department (DOJ) information he collected in Ukraine, bringing what was a stealth campaign into official government channels. Barr said, however, that information coming from Ukraine must be carefully vetted to ensure it is accurate and ...

Bloomberg President Rodrigo Duterte plans to order the termination of a longstanding military pact with the US, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported, though the US State Department reiterated that relations between the nations remain strong. The Inquirer report, citing presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo, follows Duterte’s threat in January to end the agreement after Washington cancelled a visa for a senator ...

Bloomberg The new coronavirus may have infected at least 1 in 20 people in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the global outbreak, by the time it peaks in coming weeks, according to scientists modeling its spread. The typically bustling megacity, where the so-called 2010-nCoV virus emerged late last year, has been in lockdown since January 23, restricting ...

Bloomberg Irish PM Leo Varadkar’s party defied pre-election surveys to stay in contention to keep power, as an exit poll showed the nation’s three biggest political parties in a dead heat, with Sinn Fein on track for a historic breakthrough. Varadkar’s Fine Gael won 22.4% of votes in the election, according to the poll, state broadcaster RTE said, confounding surveys that ...