Politics

Bloomberg Secretary of State Michael Pompeo travels to Ukraine this week to persuade the country that US support remains undiminished in the wake of the impeachment saga. President Donald Trump’s continued hostility towards Kyiv — and Pompeo’s own recent comments — make that a harder sell. Pompeo will meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other senior officials during a one-day ...

Bloomberg Burkina Faso said 39 people were killed in an attack by extremists on the northern village of Silgadji that appears to mark a shift from raids on mainly military targets to the execution of civilians. Security forces are helping residents to bury the victims after the “cowardly and barbaric” attack, in Soum province, the government said in a statement. ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump made sure Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was standing alongside him at the White House as he presented his long-delayed “deal of the century” for Middle East peace, a welcome distraction for two leaders fighting for their political futures. Yet the proposal — which makes far more demands of Palestinian than Israeli leaders — generated little enthusiasm, ...

Bloomberg China’s armed forces accused the US of “ill intentions” in the South China Sea after an American warship entered waters near the contested Spratly Islands last week. “The US ship’s deliberate provocation during the traditional lunar Chinese New Year festival, which harboured ill intentions, is a naked act of navigational hegemony,” Senior Colonel Li Huamin, spokesman for the People’s ...

Bloomberg The US military has begun issuing furlough warnings to almost 9,000 civilian South Korean employees, as Washington and Seoul remain at loggerheads over President Donald Trump’s demand its ally pay more money for its hosting of American troops. The notices inform workers at American military facilities in South Korea that they potentially face administrative furloughs as of April 1, ...

Bloomberg Alexander Vinnik, a Russian citizen accused by the US of having supervised a digital-currency exchange that helped criminals launder billions of dollars, will probably remain in France to face cryptocurrency-related charges there, his lawyers said in Paris. Vinnik was interrogated by French investigators, the same day he was extradited from Greece, his defense team said at a news conference. ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump announced what he called a detailed plan for Middle East peace that provides a “win-win” solution to make Israel and the region safer, skirting complaints that Palestinians have already rejected the proposal and didn’t take part in drafting the plan. Trump said on Tuesday his plan presents a “contiguous” territory for a Palestinian state once conditions ...

Bloomberg Afghan troops have clashed with Taliban fighters as they tried to reach the crash site of a US military aircraft that went down in eastern Afghanistan. The extremist group claimed it had downed a “special American aircraft” on an intelligence mission, while the US military said there was no indication the plane was hit by hostile fire. The police ...

Bloomberg Justin Trudeau’s top diplomat said Canada will keep pressing Cuba to help resolve Venezuela’s political crisis. Foreign minister Francois-Philippe Champagne made the pledge alongside Juan Guaido, the Venezuelan opposition leader seeking to oust President Nicolas Maduro. His comments come more than a year after the Canadian government began playing an activist role in the effort to help break Maduro’s ...

Bloomberg The Pentagon plans a “very aggressive” expansion of its hypersonic weapons efforts this year, with at least four initial flight tests of prototypes for glide weapons that can fly five times the speed of sound and maneuver en route, officials said. A new Hypersonics Transition Office that Congress funded this year will also bankroll a university consortium to conduct ...