Politics

Bloomberg Allies of Pakistan’s former premier Imran Khan are moving to dissolve two of the four provincial assemblies in a bid to force Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to call for national elections well before November. The assemblies of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces will be dissolved on Saturday to make way for local polls, said party officials from Khan’s Pakistan ...

Bloomberg Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will seek public support for his robust new security strategy from US President Joe Biden at their upcoming summit, after criticism from China. Kishida arrived Thursday in Washington on the last leg of a whirlwind tour that has taken him to most of the Group of Seven countries before Japan hosts the body’s summit ...

  Bloomberg Congressional Democrats added to pressure on President Joe Biden to kick Jair Bolsonaro out of the country, even as US officials stick to a wait-and-see approach in hopes that the former Brazilian president will make good on a promise to return home on his own. In a letter dated Thursday, 46 congressional Democrats urged Biden to remove Bolsonaro ...

Bloomberg The European Union and the UK are preparing to enter an intense phase of negotiations starting next week aimed at overcoming the dispute over the post-Brexit trading relationship well ahead of the anniversary of Northern Ireland’s peace agreement in April, according to people familiar with the matter. The aim is to move into a negotiating “tunnel” after UK foreign ...

  Bloomberg The US hasn’t changed its policy on sending Navy vessels through the Taiwan Strait, the Pentagon said, describing a decline in the number of transits last year as nothing out of the ordinary. “Many factors affect the planning and execution of these operations including ship and aircraft availability, other military operations and exercises both in the Indo-Pacific and ...

  Bloomberg Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used a historic address in Papua New Guinea to call for a “swift conclusion” to negotiations over a bilateral security agreement, in the latest move by Canberra to counter Chinese influence in the Pacific. In an address to Papua New Guinea’s Parliament on Thursday, Albanese praised the close historic ties between Australia and ...

  Bloomberg Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu changed the military leadership in Ukraine, appointing Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, as head of the nation’s combined forces. General Sergei Surovikin, who had held the post since October, will become one of Gerasimov’s deputies, the Defense Ministry said in a statement Wednesday. Oleg Salyukov, chief of the land forces, ...

  Bloomberg Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan ally won a confidence vote as chief minister in the Punjab Assembly, the latest electoral win for the popular opposition leader demanding early general elections. Chaudhry Parvez Elahi secured 186 votes from lawmakers in the 371-member house, speaker Muhammad Sibtain Khan announced the result in a session that lasted more than an ...

  Bloomberg India has relocated some troops from areas surrounding a sinking Himalayan town that’s near a disputed border with China, Army Chief Manoj Pande said. Pande didn’t give details on how many soldiers would be moved away for safety but said over 20 military installations around the town of Joshimath in the northern state of Uttarakhand have sustained “medium ...

  Bloomberg China said the rising number of warplanes it sends toward Taiwan were due to the island’s “military collusion” with the US, shedding light on its motives for the threatening activity. The People’s Liberation Army “drills are a solemn warning against Taipei’s increased provocation, which damaged peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for China’s ...