Politics

Bloomberg Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unleashed a populist election-year budget designed to shore up support ahead of national polls, but it may have come too late to dampen criticism of his government’s inability to create millions of jobs. The budget contained $13 billion worth of measures including payouts for farmers, a pension program for informal sector workers and tax ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump lashed out at US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her “bad for our country,” undercutting the White House’s message that the president plans to make an optimistic plea for bipartisanship in his State of the Union address next week. “I think she’s very bad for our country,” Trump said in an interview with CBS, referring to the ...

Bloomberg Opponents of Venezuela’s socialist regime marched in Caracas as pressure builds at home and abroad for President Nicolas Maduro to step down. Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who’s vying to set up a caretaker government, rallied his supporters to the streets as a deadline imposed by several European Union countries to hold a presidential election expires. The US and two ...

Bloomberg A month after President Donald Trump said he’d pull US forces from Syria, a critical global security question is unanswered: What to do with hundreds of IS fighters and their families —including Europeans and Americans—held by Kurdish forces in makeshift prisons? US officials estimate there are 800 prisoners who need to be dealt with at a series of Kurdish-run ...

Bloomberg Venezuelan lawmaker Jose Guerra dropped a bombshell on Twitter: The Russian Boeing 777 that had landed in Caracas the day before was there to spirit away 20 tons of gold from the vaults of the country’s central bank. The claim set off a welter of social media speculation and outrage. When asked how he knew this, Guerra provided no ...

Bloomberg Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci told US President Donald Trump he’s ready to reach a permanent agreement with Serbia. Serbia and Kosovo have been searching for a lasting solution in a process endorsed by the European Union, which asks them to normalize ties in order to join. But the process has stalled over issues including redrawing borders, Kosovo’s creation of ...

Bloomberg British Prime Minister Theresa May promised to renegotiate the most contentious part of her Brexit deal after it was ripped up by Parliament. She will now head to Brussels to face European Union officials who have already warned they won’t even consider her demands, with the threat of economic chaos still looming over her country. In a series of ...

Bloomberg Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini is facing pressure to force an early election this year from lieutenants frustrated by dealing with an unruly coalition partner. Several senior members of Salvini’s League are urging their chief to capitalize on a growing lead in opinion polls to ditch the anti-establishment Five Star Movement which is hampering their efforts to deliver ...

Bloomberg With the world anxiously waiting to see whether the Venezuelan military throws its weight behind interim leader Juan Guaido, the role of the armed forces in Latin America has been regaining prominence. After decades of democratization, with soldiers largely confined to barracks and borders, Latin American governments are turning to the military to run ministries, oversee state projects and ...

Bloomberg Increased surveillance and government interference with reporting amid a crackdown on Xinjiang’s Muslims fueled a “significant deterioration” in the work environment for correspondents in China last year, the country’s foreign journalists’ organisation said. Reporting grew much harder in the far western region, where the detention and “re-education” of up to 1 million minority Muslim Uighurs has attracted global outcry, ...