Politics

Bloomberg The surprise resignation of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is a major loss to the small club of women leaders around the world. Though other women lead bigger countries, Ardern was one of the highest profile heads of government and a beacon for many feminists around the world. She became the youngest female government leader when she took ...

  Bloomberg The top US and China economic officials held their first face-to-face meeting Wednesday, pledging to improve communication as a way to avoid more serious confrontation during a period of heightened tensions. “We share a responsibility to show that China and the United States can manage our differences and prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict,” US Treasury ...

  Bloomberg Ukraine’s interior minister and at least 17 others were killed when a helicopter crashed near a kindergarten and a multistory apartment building just east of Kyiv, according to police. The emergency services aircraft went down in the town of Brovary, an eastern suburb of the capital, Ihor Klymenko, the national police chief, said on Facebook Wednesday. The fatalities ...

  Bloomberg Poland is working to convince European allies to send as many as 100 battle tanks to support Ukraine’s defense efforts against the Russian invasion, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Tuesday that he’s in talks with allies over potentially supplying German-made heavy Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but cautioned that any announcements would have to ...

Bloomberg Serbia, traditionally one of Russia’s closest allies in Europe, is trying to put some distance between itself and Moscow as the war in Ukraine strains ties between the two countries and their leaders. In an interview in Belgrade, President Aleksandar Vucic dismissed territorial claims in Ukraine by Vladimir Putin and predicted the “worst is yet to come” for the ...

Bloomberg Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu applied fresh pressure on Sweden to make concessions as he traveled to the US for talks on the sale of F-16 fighter jets, which may depend on Turkey’s ratification of the Nato expansion. Cavusoglu is expected to meet his US counterpart Antony Blinken in Washington later Wednesday to discuss the aircraft sale as well ...

Bloomberg The Pentagon is struggling to get China to resume military-to-military talks, according to a senior US defense official, underscoring continuing tensions between the two sides despite last year’s meeting between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. China cut off talks with the US on military, climate change and other issues after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in ...

  Bloomberg Indians view the US as the biggest military threat after China and place greater blame on Nato and Washington than on Vladimir Putin for his war in Ukraine, according to a new survey. Some 43% of the 1,000 respondents perceived China — with whom India has a long-lingering border dispute and has seen tensions flare again since 2020 ...

Bloomberg Russia will create new commands near Europe as it expands its military to 1.5 million people amid deepening tensions with the US and its allies over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. New structures in the regions around Moscow, St. Petersburg and Karelia on the border with Finland will be created under the program, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told commanders ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Olaf Scholz has put forth Boris Pistorius to be Germany’s new defense minister, filling a critical role in his cabinet after Christine Lambrecht resigned on Monday following a series of missteps. In a statement, Scholz praised Pistorius’s “strength and calmness,” and singled out his experience with defense policy. The 62-year-old is a veteran Social Democrat who has served ...