Politics

Bloomberg Ukraine’s anti-establishment political turn is poised to accelerate in Sunday’s snap general elections, with ex-comedian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s movement on track to sweep traditional forces out of power. Half a decade after street protests that toppled Russian-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych, Zelenskiy has tapped into voter anger over the lack of progress in flushing dirty officials out of state institutions ...

Bloomberg Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari condemned attacks that killed 37 people in the Goronyo community in the northern state of Sokoto. “This frequent and large scale killings of poor villagers by gangs of mass murderers must be met with the fiercest force the government can mobilise,” the president said in a statement emailed by his spokesman Garba Shehu, without stating ...

Bloomberg National Security Adviser John Bolton has left for Japan and South Korea as the US faces a range of issues in the region from trade tensions between its two allies to North Korea’s threat to scrap nuclear talks. Bolton “departed for Japan and South Korea to continue conversations with critical allies and friends,” Garrett Marquis, spokesman for the National ...

Bloomberg Taiwan’s presidential election next year will be a test of its democracy and value system, President Tsai Ing-wen said at the end of a US trip that drew rebuke from China. “Voters in Taiwan will be focussed on the future of our country, especially whether we can keep our democratic and freedom way of life,” she said at a ...

Bloomberg China issued a defense of its policies in the Xinjiang region where its detention of ethnic Uighurs has drawn criticism from the US and other western nations. Xinjiang is an “inseparable part” of China, and internal and external hostile forces including separatists, religious extremists and terrorists are distorting history and facts to split the country apart, the official Xinhua ...

Bloomberg Tens of thousands of Hong Kong protesters marched through the city centre to the vicinity of government headquarters, ignoring a police-approved end point and defying a ruling that shortened the planned route. The march marked the sixth straight week of anti-government rallies that have put increasing pressure on the financial hub’s administration. Organizer Civil Human Rights Front said the ...

Bloomberg Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is holding a British oil tanker, after seizing it in the Strait of Hormuz amid soaring tensions in one of the world’s critical energy chokepoints. UK officials demanded the immediate release of the vessel. Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) said the UK-flagged Stena Impero crashed into a fishing vessel and had been taken ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump will push Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, to pressure the Taliban into signing a permanent ceasefire in Afghanistan, an administration official said. Trump will demand that Pakistan’s government free Shakil Afridi, a physician imprisoned after helping the US government locate and kill Osama bin Laden, the official said. The Trump administration will judge Pakistan in part ...

Bloomberg The US government said an overwhelming crush by immigrants crossing the southern border justifies a new rule restricting asylum applications from Central Americans who haven’t sought protection from persecution or torture in another country through which they passed. The Justice Department filed its response to a request by immigrant rights’ groups for an emergency court order to halt enforcement ...

Bloomberg Pressured by his closest advisers to force a snap election, Matteo Salvini is hesitating. The usually hyper-active deputy premier is keeping the country waiting as he considers whether to take his biggest political gamble yet and pull out of Italy’s fractious populist coalition. The leader of the rightist League is looking to capitalise on his victory in May’s European ...