Politics

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 ...

Bloomberg Tokyo prosecutors arrested a ruling party lawmaker on suspicion of receiving bribes from a Chinese company seeking to invest in the casino industry, dealing a blow to already unpopular plans to open the country to the gaming industry. Liberal Democratic Party politician Tsukasa Akimoto, who had served as a vice minister in charge of promoting the establishment of casinos ...

Bloomberg The looming dissolution of Thailand’s highest-profile opposition party is set to strengthen the military-backed government’s grip on power as authorities signal their next move against the movement’s popular leader. The Future Forward party of Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the third-largest in parliament, faces a trial as early as January for funding violations that it denies. Separately, Thanathorn and one other party ...

Bloomberg The US and its allies called on United Nations members to reveal whether they’re complying with UN-imposed sanctions requiring the repatriation of North Korean workers, part of an effort to squeeze Pyongyang of much-needed foreign currency inflows. As part of a series of resolutions passed in 2017, UN member states were required to send back all North Korean laborers ...

Bloomberg In a landmark summit, the leaders of Japan and South Korea signaled they wouldn’t let relations spin out of control even as they made little progress in resolving disputes that have plunged relations to new depths. South Korean President Moon Jae-in told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that cooperation was crucial in the face of regional security threats as ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government said it will start building a comprehensive identity database of all those living in India, amid a growing public uproar over the administration’s move to grant citizenship to undocumented migrants based on religion. The plan to create a National Population Register has been criticized by the opposition as a precursor to countrywide citizens register ...

Bloomberg An intensifying storm struck the Philippines on Christmas Eve, disrupting holiday travel plans in Asia’s largest Catholic nation. Typhoon Phanfone, called Ursula locally and upgraded from a tropical storm, hit the central Philippines on Tuesday, stranding thousands of travelers and prompting authorities to advise residents in flood- and landslide-prone areas to leave their homes. Phanfone made landfall in Eastern ...

Bloomberg Democrats scored a series of damaging revelations about Donald Trump when they launched their impeachment investigation, but now they’ll begin a crucial election year with the challenge that the most dramatic moments are likely behind them. Even by the time Nancy Pelosi banged her speaker’s gavel on Trump’s impeachment — once for abuse of power, again for obstruction of ...