Politics

Bloomberg The familiar ritual came full circle. Israel and Gaza Strip fighters reached a truce after the most intense round of fighting since their 2014 war, and life on both sides of the border returned to normal on Monday. The violence, which claimed the lives of 27 Palestinians and four Israelis, had threatened to undo months of Egyptian-brokered efforts to ...

Bloomberg Two US warships sailed near disputed islands in the South China Sea on Monday, challenging Beijing’s claims for the third time this year amid simmering trade tensions. The guided-missile destroyers USS Preble and USS Chung-Hoon passed within 12 nautical miles of Gaven and Johnson reefs, said Commander Clay Doss, a spokesman for the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet. The China-occupied ...

Bloomberg Venezuelan soldiers loyal to embattled President Nicolas Maduro have trained members of South America’s most dangerous guerrilla force to use heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles, according to Colombian authorities. National Liberation Army fighters were instructed in how to use the Russian-manufactured IGLA surface-to-air missile system, according to General Luis Navarro, Colombia’s top-ranking soldier. The Marxist force known as the ELN has ...

Bloomberg Texas-educated businessman Laurentino Cortizo will almost certainly be Panama’s next president, after winning a contested vote count, the electoral authority said. Cortizo is the “virtual victor” of the election, after winning the preliminary vote count by a narrow margin, the authority said in a post on Twitter. The final official results are scheduled to be published on Thursday. Cortizo’s ...

Bloomberg Portuguese PM Antonio Costa prodded two opposition parties into supporting fiscal discipline, staking his claim as a champion of responsible budgets ahead of a national election on October 6. The maneuvering reduces the likelihood of political turmoil in a euro-area country that required a bailout in 2011 and gives additional signals about the terms on which parties will contest ...

Bloomberg Israel and Gaza-based fighters are digging in for extended fighting after a barrage of hundreds of rockets and retaliatory airstrikes boiled over into a second day, threatening to undo months of Egyptian-brokered efforts to reach a long-term truce. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he instructed the army to continue its “massive attacks” in Gaza and bolstered forces near the ...

Bloomberg Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido said he cannot rule out the option of the US military working with his nation’s armed forces to oust President Nicolas Maduro, telling the Washington Post that such an offer from the Trump administration would have to be voted on in the parliament he leads. Guaido, who is the National Assembly president and is ...

Bloomberg Kim Jong-un oversaw a live-fire military exercise that potentially included North Korea’s first ballistic missile launch since 2017 — challenging US President Donald Trump’s bottom line in nuclear talks. Kim watched as “large-calibre, long-range multiple-rocket launchers and tactical guided weapons” were fired off North Korea’s eastern coast, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The state media’s ...

Bloomberg Siyabonga Matlala is unequivocal about who he’ll support in South Africa’s May 8 election: the same party he’s backed since apartheid ended a quarter century ago. “I will always vote African National Congress,” the 49-year-old farm labourer said in Fisantekraal, a shantytown on Cape Town’s outskirts. The unwavering loyalty of voters like Matlala has underpinned the ANC’s grip on ...

Bloomberg Santu Adhikari scavenges with scarred hands through the rubble of a Tata Motors factory where he once hoped to work. But the plant was torn down before it was finished, and the 28-year-old now spends his days among its ruins in this field outside Kolkata, hunting for scrap iron to sell. Adhikari blames his grim predicament on one of ...