Politics

Bloomberg South African lawmakers said they will summon the Gupta family and the son of former President Jacob Zuma to appear before an inquiry that is investigating the mismanagement of public funds at state-owned enterprises. The former chairwoman of South African Airways, Dudu Myeni, will also be subpoenaed after failing to heed two invitations to give testimony at the hearings ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel was formally elected to a fourth term in a parliamentary vote, extending her 12 years in office at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy. Merkel, 63, was backed by a majority of 364 lawmakers in the 709-member lower house on the strength of a coalition deal between her Christian Democratic-led bloc and the Social Democrats, ...

Bloomberg The White House hosted 19 nations, including Israel and Arab Gulf states, to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but the Palestinian Authority boycotted the meeting, angered by the Trump administration’s policies on Jerusalem. US President Donald Trump reversed decades of US policy in December, when he decided to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy ...

Bloomberg Italy’s center-right alliance led by the euroskeptic League has taken the first step toward negotiating with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, raising the prospect of a populist administration which investors regard with alarm. League leader Matteo Salvini has been given a mandate by his partners in the bloc to talk to Five Star and the center-left Democratic Party, spokesmen ...

Bloomberg Now that Republicans have terminated the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe, the biggest outstanding question is whether the public will ever see transcripts from dozens of its closed-door witnesses. Republicans on the Intelligence panel are reversing their earlier plans to release those transcripts, while Democrats say they plan to attach the documents to their final report. With Republicans and ...

Bloomberg US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was ousted on Tuesday after a turbulent tenure with President Donald Trump, blindsiding the former Exxon Mobil Corp CEO just hours after he returned from a nearly week-long trip to Africa. “I am proud to nominate the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, to be our new Secretary of State,” Trump ...

UNITED NATIONS / Reuters US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned that Washington “remains prepared to act if we must,” if the UN Security Council fails to act on Syria, as the Syrian army’s onslaught in eastern Ghouta continued unabated. The United States asked the Security Council to demand an immediate 30-day ceasefire in Damascus and rebel-held eastern ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Theresa May’s Cabinet met to discuss how to strike back at Russia over the poisoning of a former spy on British soil, ahead of a midnight deadline for the Kremlin to explain the attack. In a dramatic statement to Parliament, May announced that Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia had been poisoned more than ...

Bloomberg Opposition parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo formed a coalition that will back Moise Katumbi’s candidacy for president in elections scheduled for December. The announcement marks the start of what’s expected to be a series of declarations by candidates seeking to replace President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled the central African nation for 17 years and is barred ...

Bloomberg About 8,500 members of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group fled to neighboring Kenya after the military said it “mistakenly” killed nine civilians and injured 12 others in a market town that straddles their border. The ethnic Oromo refugees, mostly women and children, began arriving in northern Kenya on March 10, Halkano Halake, spokesman for the governor of Marsabit county, said ...