Politics

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 ...

RAWALPINDI / WAM A Pakistani military aircraft on a training flight crashed in a built-up area in the garrison city of Rawalpindi killing all five crew members and 12 civilians and setting off a blaze that left a pile of smoking rubble, Reuters has reported. A statement from the Pakistani military said the aircraft was on a routine training flight ...

Bloomberg At least 52 prisoners were killed during a prison riot in the northern Brazilian state of Para, with 16 of the victims decapitated, according to a statement from prison authorities. The superintendent of the Regional Recovery Center in Altamira, Jarbas Vasconcelas, said that the violence broke out as a result of a territorial dispute between two rival criminal gangs ...

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 ...