Politics

Bloomberg Allies of President Rodrigo Duterte are set to dominate the Philippine senate after a midterm election marred by technical glitches including a stalled vote count. Nine of Duterte’s favoured politicians are among leading senatorial candidates, based on ABS-CBN data with 93.6 percent of the votes reporting. The likely winners of the 12 Senate seats include his former aide Bong ...

Bloomberg At least four people were killed and scores of others were injured in a bomb explosion at the Warta-Nabada district headquarters in the Somalia capital, Mogadishu, the Horn of Africa nation’s police said. The car bomb that was set off inside the headquarters also destroyed nearby houses, Abdi Shino, a Somali police officer, said. The al-Shabaab militant group, which ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump says he wants to meet with Vladimir Putin but Russia’s still waiting for an invitation, according to the Kremlin. While the US president announced that he’ll meet the Russian leader at the Group of 20 summit in Japan next month, that’s not Russia’s understanding, said Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. “So far, there are no agreements on starting ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the Oval Office, disregarding bipartisan objections from Congress that the nationalist leader has taken steps to limit freedoms in his central European nation. “People have a lot of respect for this prime minister,” Trump said. “He’s a respected man. I know he’s a tough man, but he’s a respected ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Theresa May was expected to meet with her cabinet on Tuesday as she comes under increasing pressure to pull out of Brexit talks with the opposition Labour Party and set a date for her departure. The latest in a series of cross-party meetings aimed at ending the parliamentary deadlock over leaving the European Union (EU) broke up ...

Bloomberg Japanese PM Shinzo Abe said North Korea violated UN resolutions with its missile launches this month, putting pressure on the US to raise the issue with the Security Council. Abe, who has long favoured a harder line against Kim Jong-un’s weapon programme, told a meeting of ruling coalition UN resolutions must be better enforced. That contrasted with US President ...

Bloomberg Malfunctioning machines and hundreds of arrests for suspected vote buying are disrupting the Philippines’ midterm elections, with polling down to its final hour. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is poised for a majority win in both houses of Congress, even with slowing economic growth and controversial policies including a deadly drug war. Over 18,000 government positions are up for grabs ...

Bloomberg Vietnam is increasingly jailing “prisoners of conscience” for comments made on social media platforms such as Facebook Inc, Amnesty International said, urging the US to challenge the government over the growing arrests during talks this week. The number of imprisoned activists has increased to 128 from 97 last year as the government implements a new controversial cyber security law, ...

Bloomberg France’s parliament has been asked to open a probe into far-right political leader Marine Le Pen’s ties to Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former adviser, and the potential access to top civil servants her party may have helped him get. The two chambers’ presidents will weigh the request by some lawmakers to investigate Le Pen for potential “collusion with ...

Bloomberg US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo made a surprise visit to Brussels on Monday just as European Union foreign ministers are meeting to discuss ways to salvage the landmark Iran nuclear accord that Washington has abandoned. Pompeo scrapped plans for a brief trip to Moscow and landed in the Belgian capital as his 28 EU counterparts gather. President Donald ...