Politics

Bloomberg More than 73 people died when a truck bomb exploded during rush hour at a busy intersection in Somalia’s capital, police said. An explosives-laden vehicle hit the taxation office near a junction in Mogadishu, Ahmed Abdi Hussein, a Somali police officer, told Bloomberg News by phone. Another police official said the target was Turkish engineers who were in a ...

Bloomberg A rocket attack on an Iraqi military base killed an American contractor and wounded several US and Iraqi military personnel, the Defense Department said. Iraqi security forces were “leading the response and investigation” following the assault on the base in Kirkuk, where coalition forces are based, the Pentagon said in a statement. The names of the contractor and the ...

Bloomberg Indian police have started using facial-recognition software to screen large crowds as protests over a new religion-based citizenship law intensify, the Indian Express newspaper reported, citing people it didn’t identify. The software, originally acquired in 2018 to find lost children, was used at a political rally for the first time on December 22, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi staunchly ...

Bloomberg Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz expects to strike a deal to govern in a coalition with the environmentalist Greens by mid-January, breaking new ground in Austrian politics half a year after his alliance with nationalists ended in scandal. Kurz, 33, and Werner Kogler, his 58-year-old counterpart at the Greens, said they will try to iron out any outstanding issues ...

Bloomberg Labor unions have called for marches and protests across France as they seek to maintain momentum in their month-long opposition to President Emmanuel Macron’s reform of the pension system. Protesters planned to gather at the Gare du Nord station in Paris to start one of the marches, while the CGT union’s railroad branch said they will block a train ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said that if North Korea tests intercontinental ballistic missiles, the US will “deal with it.” “I handle them as they come along,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. North Korea had long suggested it would use the end-of-year holiday season to deliver a “Christmas gift” to the US after demanding Washington ...

Bloomberg Burkina Faso said the army killed 80 militants in a two-pronged attack on a military post and the northern town of Arbinda, the latest deadly incident in an ongoing battle between the West African country and an extremist insurgency. Ground troops and fighter jets pursued the assailants following an intense battle that lasted several hours near the border with ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said he’s in a “very good position” in advance of an impeachment trial in the Republican-led Senate, and that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can do “whatever he wants.” “We have the majority,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “And it’s up to Mitch McConnell.” He praised the Kentucky Republican as a ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong riot police fired tear gas at crowds in popular shopping districts on Christmas Eve in confrontations that left about two dozen people injured as protesters took to streets and malls to demand greater democracy. Officers used the gas to disperse demonstrators in Mong Kok and outside the Peninsula Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. They also clashed with ...

Bloomberg The new leftist leaders of Germany’s Social Democrats have failed to give Angela Merkel’s junior coalition partners a lift in the polls. The SPD were stuck on 13% in the final Insa survey of the year for Bild newspaper, the same as the previous week and down from 20.5% in the most recent general election in 2017. Merkel’s CDU/CSU ...