Politics

Bloomberg Pressure on Emmanuel Macron’s top three aides intensified after a French Senate committee recommended a probe, saying the officials may have misled lawmakers while testifying under oath in a scandal about the president’s rogue bodyguard. Citing “withholding, incoherence and contradictions,” a parliamentary investigation committee recommended that the president of the Senate ask the prosecutor’s office to conduct an inquiry ...

Bloomberg Syria accused the US of sabotaging improved ties with Arab nations that could be key to rebuilding the war-shattered country. The US has pressured allies to block Syria’s reinstatement into the Arab League, President Bashar Al-Assad’s media adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, said in an interview in Moscow. The restoration of Syria’s suspended membership could be more than symbolic, potentially transforming ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Theresa May is making a last-ditch attempt to save her Brexit deal and prevent Parliament seizing control of the UK’s divorce from the European Union. The British government sees May’s meeting on Wednesday with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels as a crucial chance to get legally binding changes to the so-called Irish border backstop, which ...

Bloomberg Barefoot and in pajamas, Milan Jovanovic watched flames engulf his Belgrade house after a Molotov cocktail crashed through a window in an attack before dawn. He and his wife survived only because she smelled the smoke. “They nearly burned us alive,” said Jovanovic, a 68-year-old investigative journalist who writes about government corruption. Jovanovic is the latest journalist in Serbia ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said his nation would retaliate if attacked by India, following New Delhi’s strongest accusations yet that its nuclear-armed neighbour was responsible for a major terrorist attack in Kashmir. “Pakistan will not think of retaliation, Pakistan will retaliate,” Khan said in a televised speech on Tuesday. “There will be no other option than retaliation.” Tensions ...

Bloomberg China largely abandoned a hacking truce negotiated by Barack Obama as President Donald Trump embarked on a trade war with Beijing last year, according to the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike Inc. A slowdown in Chinese hacking following the cybersecurity agreement Obama’s administration secured in 2015 appears to have been reversed, the firm said in a report released on Tuesday that ...

Bloomberg Bernie is back. Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator who finished runner up to Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, on Tuesday announced a second White House bid. He said one of his primary motivations is to defeat President Donald Trump, who beat Clinton in the that election. “I think the current occupant of the White House ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump called on the Venezuelan military to drop its support for Nicolas Maduro in a Miami speech critical of socialism, previewing attacks he may deploy against Democrats in his re-election campaign. “The twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere and frankly in many, many places around the world,” Trump said to an audience at Florida International ...

Bloomberg Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro fired a key political ally and cabinet member amid a campaign funding scandal, raising doubts over his government’s unity and the prospect of economic reforms. Secretary-General Gustavo Bebianno’s dismissal was confirmed by the presidential spokesman, after days of intense speculation. The ruling PSL party that Bebianno headed and Bolsonaro joined less than a year ago ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will press Donald Trump to raise the issue of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea when the US president meets leader Kim Jong-un next week for nuclear talks. Japan has been pushing to have its position heard on the emotive domestic issue of abductees during Trump’s summit with Kim, planned for February 27-28 in Hanoi. ...