Politics

Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will spend the next few weeks pressing the European Union to negotiate a better Brexit deal, his office said, while preparing the country to leave the bloc in case he fails. A messy no-deal divorce is a scenario that has concerned business leaders and weakened the pound since Johnson won the contest to become ...

Bloomberg US calls for Japan’s help protecting shipping from Iranian attacks have put Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a bind between angering his country’s military ally and upsetting voters suspicious of overseas deployments. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo confirmed that the US has asked Japan to join naval patrols in the Strait of Hormuz, a subject of much speculation in ...

Bloomberg As some of the European Union‘s eastern members embrace more state-led economic models, Ukraine is turning to the playbook that helped rebuild the continent’s ex-communist wing back in the 1990s. With help from the International Monetary Fund, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wants to sell state companies, trim the budget deficit and relax rules for land ownership. The ideas have been ...

Bloomberg China said violent protests in Hong Kong wouldn’t be tolerated, its most high-profile response to unrest rocking the city after a chaotic weekend of unrest illustrated the government’s struggles in quelling a leaderless, unpredictable and widespread movement. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, which answers to China’s cabinet, reaffirmed its support for the city’s government and police in ...

Bloomberg Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny may have been exposed to “an unknown chemical substance” in prison that caused a severe allergic reaction for which he was hospitalised, according to his doctor, Anastasia Vasilieva. Navalny, 43, was taken by ambulance to a Moscow city hospital for what his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said was a major allergic reaction, something she said ...

Bloomberg Efforts to secure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz are ramping up as the UK said a second warship arrived in the area and South Korea may deploy its own unit as part of a multinational force. Tensions have flared in the strait in recent weeks as Iran pushes back against US sanctions that are crippling its oil ...

Bloomberg Iran doesn’t think the US is seeking talks or an agreement with the Islamic republic, Abbas Mousavi, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Tehran, said days after Secretary of State Michael Pompeo expressed willingness to travel to Tehran to address the Iranian people. This is a “defensive move” by American officials in response to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad ...

Bloomberg Days after being named chief of Venezuela’s feared SEBIN intelligence agency last fall, General Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera was called in by President Nicolas Maduro and asked where the enemy was. “I don’t understand the question, sir,” Figuera says he responded. “I want a report every two hours of what the political opposition is doing,” Maduro replied, listing some ...

Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson formed a war cabinet of six senior ministers to plan for exiting the European Union by October 31, as a key adviser said leaving without a deal had become a very real prospect, the Sunday Times reported. Johnson’s most senior aide, Dominic Cummings, a key leader in the 2016 Brexit campaign, called advisers to ...

Bloomberg UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said he’s ready for a general election at any time as Prime Minister Boris Johnson prepares to take the country out of the European Union without a deal. “We oppose no deal, and people should have a final say on it,” Corbyn said on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge programme on Sunday. “In the ...