Politics

Bloomberg Hong Kong went into near shutdown as businesses closed and rail services were suspended for the first time in more than 20 years after overnight violence described by Chief Executive Carrie Lam as a “very dark day.” A person was shot and injured during a scuffle between a plain-clothes police officer and demonstrators who had attacked his car. The ...

Bloomberg Cameroon president Paul Biya has ordered the release of opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who was detained in January for organising demonstrations in the central African nation. The president ordered all proceedings pending before the Yaounde Military Tribunal against Kamto discontinued, according to a statement read on state radio by the secretary general. Supporters of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement had ...

Bloomberg When Fabian Picardo became chief minister of Gibraltar — the rocky relic of British colonialism at the tip of Spain — he could scarcely have imagined that his main concern one day would be keeping shelves stocked at the local supermarkets. That was before Brexit posed the greatest risk to the tiny territory and its 32,000 inhabitants in decades. ...

Bloomberg North Korea fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile designed for submarines, testing President Donald Trump’s tolerance for weapons tests just hours after agreeing to restart stalled nuclear talks with the US. The South Korean military said the missile was fired near North Korea’s eastern Wonsan area just after 7 am on Wednesday and flew 910 kilometers (570 ...

Bloomberg Mali’s government said 25 soldiers were killed in a gun battle with militants who broke into an army base near the border with Burkina Faso, the second-deadliest attack on the military since extremists tried to seize the north of the country in 2012. “During heavy gunfire from the terrorists our forces succeeded in retaking the base” in the town ...

Bloomberg Australian PM Scott Morrison denied being pressured by President Donald Trump to help probe the origins of the US Justice Department’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Morrison said he had a brief telephone conversation with Trump, in which the president asked for a point of contact within the Australian government to help Attorney General William Barr ...

Bloomberg A Hong Kong police officer who fired a bullet into the chest of an 18-year-old protester may have inadvertently given new life to the months-long movement challenging Beijing’s authority. Demonstrators hit the streets again on Wednesday following the release of videos showing the man getting shot at close range after striking the officer with a metal rod. The violent ...

Bloomberg Talks to end the five-year conflict in eastern Ukraine produced the first major breakthrough since a lapsed 2015 peace accord, paving the way for an international summit to cement progress. Negotiators meeting in the Belarusian capital of Minsk agreed on a schedule under which elections will be held in the breakaway regions and a new law will be passed ...

Bloomberg Boris Johnson outlined his plan for a new Brexit agreement and warned the European Union to compromise or watch the UK walk away from talks and leave the bloc without a deal. The UK prime minister declared that Britain is “ready” to break away from the EU without an agreement in four weeks’ time, if officials in Brussels do ...

Bloomberg President Xi Jinping presided over a grand display of China’s strength in Beijing — declaring that no force could stop the country’s rise — even as concerns grew over the condition of the first protester shot in Hong Kong after almost four months of unrest. Speaking at the start of a massive parade marking 70 years since the founding ...