Politics

Bloomberg President Donald Trump labeled recent protests in Hong Kong as “riots,” adopting the language used by Chinese authorities and suggesting the US would stay out of an issue that was “between Hong Kong and China.” “Something is probably happening with Hong Kong, because when you look at, you know, what’s going on, they’ve had riots for a long period ...

Bloomberg The anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats won a by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire, reducing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s House of Commons majority to a single seat and making his balancing act more difficult as he seeks to deliver Brexit by October 31. Jane Dodds of the Liberal Democrats won 13,826 votes, beating Conservative Chris Davies on 12,401. Dodds overturned Davies’s majority ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump is serious about a possible US blockade of Venezuela, a senior administration official said, saying that the country’s president Nicolas Maduro has a short window to voluntarily leave power. Trump told reporters that he was considering a blockade or quarantine of the Latin American country, where the US has been trying for months to unseat Maduro. He ...

Bloomberg North Korea greeted US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s latest trip to Asia with twin signals of frustration: test-firing missiles and withholding top diplomats from a chance at nuclear talks. Kim Jong-un’s regime fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea on Wednesday, the South Korean military said, the second such test in less than a week. The launches ...

Bloomberg Russian authorities raided the homes of people involved in a Moscow demonstration, stepping up a crackdown that threatens to be the harshest since officials crushed large-scale protests in 2012. Interior Ministry officers and Federal Security Service agents were searching for information on electronic devices that proved participation in the unauthorised protest or how it was organised, the state-run Tass ...

Bloomberg US President Donald Trump plans to outline his “deal of the century” Middle East peace plan to Arab leaders at a summit before Israel’s September 17 election, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will invite the leaders to the summit at the Camp David presidential retreat during his swing through the Middle East ...

Bloomberg In its latest effort to increase pressure on Taiwan, Beijing said it will suspend a programme that allowed individual tourists from 47 Chinese cities to travel to Taiwan, citing the current state of relations between the two sides. The ban is effective from August 1, according to a statement from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and means that ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s decision to charge dozens of protesters with a colonial-era rioting charge that carries a 10-year prison term suggested that the government was heeding calls for a tougher response to the unrest. The arrests of 49 people — including 44 on the rioting charge — drew outrage from pro-democracy groups and spurred hundreds of demonstrators to surround a ...

Bloomberg The unified European approach to resolving tensions in the Persian Gulf showed signs of strain, with senior German officials warning that the UK may be drifting closer to an American-led operation that had previously been rebuffed by governments in Paris and London. While Germany stands by its resistance to use military forces to protect shipping in the region, Boris ...

Bloomberg China said recent violence in Hong Kong protests was the “creation of the US,” for the first time laying direct blame on Washington as their dispute over the unrest escalates. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the remark at a news briefing in response to comments by US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. The top American diplomat had ...