Politics

Bloomberg North Korean leader Kim Jong-un left Beijing after talking and dining with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to South Korean media, in a show of unity as they engage in delicate negotiations with President Donald Trump’s administration. Kim spent a little more than a day in the Chinese capital and was en route to Pyongyang on Wednesday, Yonhap News ...

Bloomberg The Republic of Macedonia will try to clear the biggest hurdle to joining NATO and the European Union this month with a decisive vote to change its name that will either open the path to membership or slam the door shut. The former Yugoslav state is at the centre of a tussle for influence over Europe’s most volatile region. ...

Bloomberg Japan’s Foreign Ministry summoned the South Korean ambassador to seek talks in an escalating standoff over forced labour claims that it has said risks undermining the legal basis for relations between the neighbours. The ministry summoned Ambassador Lee Su-hoon after a South Korean court this week approved the confiscation of assets in South Korea in a case involving Nippon ...

Bloomberg An alliance that helped deliver Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta two terms in office is fracturing, reviving tensions in the country’s Rift Valley region that was wracked by widespread violence a decade ago. The deputy chairman of the ruling Jubilee Party stepped down after saying Deputy President William Ruto shouldn’t be allowed to succeed Kenyatta. That undermines an arrangement in ...

Bloomberg Germany and France will deepen their 55-year-old alliance as the main defenders of European Union cooperation seek to counter forces tearing at the bloc’s bonds. Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will sign a treaty in the German border town of Aachen on January 22. The pact, which was signed off by Merkel’s cabinet, calls for joint ...

Bloomberg Kim Jong-un is making his fourth visit to China, in a sign that the North Korean leader is seeking Chinese President Xi Jinping’s counsel ahead of a possible second summit with Donald Trump. Kim left Pyongyang on January 7 for a visit slated to end on Thursday, North Korean and Chinese state media reported. Kim was invited by Xi ...

Bloomberg Elaine Duke was up against a deadline to extend Temporary Protected Status for 50,000 Haitians in the US and was inclined to do so, after repeated renewals since a massive earthquake in 2010 and a subsequent cholera outbreak devastated Haiti. But after John Kelly, then White House chief of staff, convened a meeting on November 3, 2017, Duke, the ...

Bloomberg An effort in the Senate to force President Donald Trump to impose new sanctions on Syria is getting caught up in the stalemate over the partial US government shutdown as top Democrats said they’d move to block any legislation that doesn’t reopen the government. The Senate was planning a procedural vote on Tuesday on the Middle East policy package, ...

Bloomberg Bolstered by a wave of nationwide protests, Hungary’s labour unions are mulling whether to hold their first general strike since the 1989 fall of the Iron Curtain. Industrial workers were among the more than 10,000 people braved freezing weather in Budapest over the weekend to demand Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government repeal a new law allowing companies to ask ...

Bloomberg India’s Supreme Court overturned the federal government’s decision to oust the chief of the country’s top investigative agency in a blow to PM Narendra Modi just months before he seeks re-election. The government in October removed Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) director Alok Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana after their rift — involving corruption allegations against each other ...