Politics

Bloomberg President Donald Trump will skip two major summits in Asia in November, a move that could stoke concerns in the region about the US’s reliability as a counterweight to China. The White House said that Vice President Mike Pence would travel to Singapore for an 18-nation summit hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, before heading to Papua ...

Bloomberg India’s Supreme Court is set to hear a challenge to the arrest and detention of activists and lawyers in a nation-wide operation that human rights groups say is aimed at intimidating critics of the government. Those arrested work with India’s marginalised tribal and lower caste communities and activists said they’d been rounded up for criticising the government. In a ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pledging to move quickly towards changing Japan’s constitution, according to an internal campaign pamphlet seen by Bloomberg News, ensuring the divisive proposal is a key part of his bid for a historic third straight term as ruling party leader. Abe intends to have the Liberal Democratic Party submit the amendment in the next parliament ...

Bloomberg The UK and the European Union still say in public they want a Brexit deal wrapped up in the next seven weeks. Behind the scenes, though, senior officials on both sides admit this is unlikely. They now aim to finalise divorce terms by the middle of November at the latest, according to people familiar with the British and European ...

Bloomberg French President Emmanuel Macron joined a challenge issued by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, saying that Europe’s populist forces were right to see him as their “main opponent.” Macron was speaking after Orban and Italy’s Matteo Salvini met in Milan to discuss creating a united front of Europe’s anti-immigrant political forces ahead of elections to the European Parliament next ...

Bloomberg The US doesn’t plan to suspend more joint military drills with South Korean forces, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said, amid reports that North Korea was rejecting American demands for Kim Jong-un to give up his nuclear warheads. “We have no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon, adding that the Defense ...

Bloomberg One longstanding US ally still thinks North Korea poses an urgent nuclear threat. Another is steadily increasing economic ties with the regime. And Kim Jong-un is doing his best to exploit the divide. Less than three months after shaking Kim’s hand in Singapore, US President Donald Trump is confronting an increasingly fractured diplomatic landscape as his two key allies—Japan ...

Bloomberg The UK can still make a success of Brexit if it tumbles out of the European Union without a deal, Prime Minister Theresa May said, striking an upbeat tone as the clock ticks down on Britain’s departure from the bloc. Speaking to reporters on the plane as she headed to South Africa on a five-day visit to three African ...

Bloomberg A United Nations report says Myanmar’s top generals should be investigated and prosecuted for committing genocide and war crimes against the Muslim Rohingya minority, raising pressure on the international community to act against the country’s military and civilian government. The UN Human Rights Council-mandated fact-finding mission’s report found Myanmar’s security forces systematically murdered, tortured, sexually assaulted and enslaved civilians, ...

Bloomberg Russia is to hold its biggest military maneuvers since the height of the Cold War next month, mobilising about 300,000 troops and including the participation of thousands of soldiers from China, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said. The Vostok-2018 exercises in Russia’s eastern and central military districts—spanning from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific coast—from September 11-15 will involve almost ...