Politics

Bloomberg Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said he’s expelling the top two US diplomats in the country after America imposed sanctions in the wake of a disputed election, saying that the men had meddled in internal politics. Charge d’Affaires Todd Robinson and Consul General Brian Naranjo were declared persona non grata and must leave Venezuela in 48 hours, Maduro said. The ...

Bloomberg Britain isn’t the only place where Roman Abramovich is having residency issues. While the Russian billionaire grapples with delays to his UK visa, a Swiss newspaper’s appeal to report on why Abramovich’s bid for residency in the ski resort of Verbier was scuppered last year has reached the country’s Supreme Court. A spokesman for the Lausanne-based court wouldn’t say ...

Bloomberg Centuries-old communal tensions across West Africa are taking an increasingly bloody turn, fuelled by competition for land and water and an influx of weapons and fighters from Libya. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has blamed that cocktail of guns and gunmen for the intensifying clashes between crop farmers and herders as well as robberies and kidnapping by bandit gangs. The ...

Bloomberg A leading Brexit minister in Theresa May’s government was forced into a painful political admission — the UK is legally bound to settle its divorce bill even if it doesn’t get a future trade deal with the EU. To make the bitter pill of 39 billion pounds ($52 billion) easier to swallow for the public and Brexit cheerleaders, May ...

Bloomberg South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a champion of talks between the US and North Korea, will look to restore momentum for an unprecedented summit between the foes in a White House visit on Tuesday. Optimism for next month’s meeting in Singapore between President Donald Trump and leader Kim Jong-un was punctured last week by a North Korean threat to ...

Bloomberg Lawyers for Paul Manafort accused prosecutors working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller of smearing their client through unflattering media accounts that originated with illegal grand jury leaks. The lawyers urged US District Judge TS Ellis III to hold a hearing focusing in particular on communications involving Andrew Weissmann, one of the Mueller prosecutors, with the Associated Press. Manafort, a ...

Bloomberg The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission questioned former Prime Minister Najib Razak over 1MDB, as a special task force hones in on recovering assets from the troubled state fund. The commission is compiling evidence and reaching out to two important witnesses to build a case on SRC International, a former unit of 1MDB, Mohd Shukri Abdull, chief commissioner at the anti-graft ...

Bloomberg India’s divided opposition has seized on a new way to counter Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s powerful Bharatiya Janata Party: bringing national and regional rivals together to take on the ruling party. The reversal of the BJP’s fortunes in the southern state of Karnataka — where it won the most seats but was ousted by a coalition composed of the ...

Bloomberg The way things are shaping up in Italy, the next prime minister will have to manage two heavyweight ministers with no power base of his own. And it’ll be his first proper job in politics. Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio said he’s proposed Giuseppe Conte, a 53-year-old law professor from Florence University to lead a coalition government after ...

Bloomberg Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has urged Theresa May not to contemplate calling another early election, after reports that members of parliament are preparing for a snap vote later this year because of the turmoil of Brexit. “We had a general election in June last year, which followed hard on the heels of a referendum, which itself followed hard on ...