Politics

Bloomberg Kazakhs are voting in presidential elections that were called after longtime ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down following three decades in power. Seven candidates are competing to become only the second president of central Asia’s largest energy producer since it gained independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Polling, which began on Sunday and was expected to close at ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s deal with Mexico to get help on the border in exchange for withdrawing the threat of US import tariffs got a quick thumbs-down from Nancy Pelosi. The House Speaker released a statement saying Trump had “undermined America’s preeminent leadership role in the world” by hanging the threat of tariffs over Mexico. “We are deeply disappointed by ...

Bloomberg Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont led the field of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates in a poll of Iowa voters likely to participate in the first nominating contest, still almost eight months away. Biden has the support of 24 percent of likely participants in the Iowa caucuses. He’s followed by Sanders at 16 percent. ...

Bloomberg Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hinted that sharp divisions will mark the final weeks of a Supreme Court term that will include major rulings on the census and partisan gerrymandering. Speaking before the annual conference of federal judges in New York, Ginsburg suggested that more than a quarter of the court’s remaining 27 rulings will be decided by a single ...

Bloomberg Germany’s Green Party has a three-point lead over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the first national opinion poll since the country’s junior coalition chief resigned. The Greens stayed at 27 percent, while Merkel’s CDU-CSU alliance lost three percentage points at 24 percent, according to the Forsa GmbH poll, reported by German broadcasters RTL and n-tv. The country’s Social ...

Bloomberg The US and Russian navies sniped at each other after a near collision between warships in the Philippine Sea. The US 7th Fleet in a statement called the Russian ship’s actions “unsafe and unprofessional,” while the Russian Pacific Fleet said the US vessel’s moves were “unacceptable,” according to state news agency TASS. The tiff happened on the same day ...

Bloomberg The Pentagon reiterated promises to respond to any use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces as the Assad regime’s offensive against militants in a key northwestern province threatens to cause another humanitarian crisis in the country’s eight-year civil war. The US and its allies “will respond quickly and appropriately,” Michael Mulroy, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said he would drop plans for tariffs on Mexico that he’d been threatening to impose for the past week after the country promised new steps to stem an influx of illegal migration into the US. “I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico,” Trump said ...

Bloomberg Iran’s foreign ministry said new sanctions on Iran, announced by the US government, show President Donald Trump’s calls for negotiations with the Islamic Republic are empty, the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported. “It only took one week for the emptiness of the US president’s claim of wanting negotiations with Iran to be shown. The American policy of ...

Bloomberg The main UK opposition Labour Party unexpectedly held onto its Peterborough seat, slowing the march of Nigel Farage’s new pro-Brexit movement which bookmakers’ had expected to win the by-election. The result will alarm members of the UK’s ruling Conservatives — who were beaten into third place by Farage’s Brexit Party — as they weigh up who should take over ...