Bloomberg Pakistan’s former premier Imran Khan said his lawmakers are quitting regional legislative assemblies, ending his months-long protest, to mount further pressure for snap elections days after the appointment of a new army chief. “We won’t be part of this system anymore,†he said at a packed rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, an event that he pressed on ...
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Jokowi urges to pick ‘white-haired’ leader to secure legacy
Bloomberg Indonesian President Joko Widodo urged his supporters to vote for a “fully white-haired†leader, his most upfront show of support yet for a presidential hopeful. “Look at the leader’s hair too, if it’s fully white, that means they are thinking about the people,†Jokowi, as the president is popularly known, said to his almost 150,000 supporters gathered at a ...
Read More »Venezuela’s political factions restart talks
Bloomberg Venezuela’s battling political factions restarted negotiations in Mexico, signing a rare deal to work together on a humanitarian spending plan and setting the stage for the US to ease rules on Chevron to operate in the country. Representatives of the Venezuelan government and the opposition signed a humanitarian agreement that seeks to get access to some of the ...
Read More »UK searches for Brexit benefits as promised ‘freedoms’ fall away
Bloomberg Rishi Sunak faces another delicate Brexit decision after he was asked by senior civil servants to delay a planned “bonfire†of legislation dating from the UK’s membership of the European Union. The request by officials to shift the current 2023 deadline to remove some 4,000 EU laws from the British statute books by three years is a headache for ...
Read More »Germany rejects Polish call to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine
Bloomberg Germany’s defense minister dismissed a surprise request from Poland to station surface-to-air Patriot missiles in western Ukraine, saying such a deployment would have to be agreed by Nato. The request, disclosed late on Wednesday in a post on Twitter by Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak, came just days after the countries struck an air-defense deal that would see ...
Read More »A rival’s misstep helped Anwar finally land Malaysia’s top job
Bloomberg When Malaysia’s King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah asked the two men vying to be the next prime minister if they would agree to form a unity government after neither had majority, one of them completely rejected the idea. The politicians before him —opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and ex-premier Muhyiddin Yassin— were scrambling to draw support from parties and ...
Read More »Xi resumes in-person summits despite Covid spike
Bloomberg A maskless President Xi Jinping met Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel in Beijing, resuming his flurry of in-person summits even as a record Covid surge fanned lockdown fears in the Chinese capital. Xi expressed a willingness to “deepen trust†between the two nations during the talks, according to a video clip posted by state broadcaster China Central Television on Friday. ...
Read More »China vote-buying suspicions spur Taiwan to carry out raids
Bloomberg Authorities in Taiwan carried out raids and questioned a group of people on suspicion they were buying votes on behalf of China in Saturday’s island-wide election. Law-enforcement officers searched four locations and detained three people using warrants issued under the Anti-Infiltration Act, which was passed in late 2019 and bars “foreign hostile forces†from interfering in elections, Taiwan’s ...
Read More »Anwar faces many pitfalls after finally becoming Malaysia’s PM
Bloomberg Anwar Ibrahim, the almost man of Malaysian politics, finally clinched the country’s premiership after decades of waiting. Now, the reformist leader must make sure that he keeps the job. That won’t be easy in a nation that’s now had four prime ministers in four years. Former finance chief Anwar is likely to control an unstable majority and his administration ...
Read More »Poland wants German Patriot missiles to be deployed in Ukraine
Bloomberg The government in Warsaw asked Germany to send Patriot missiles to western Ukraine instead of Poland after another series of Russian attacks forced emergency blackouts amid below-zero temperatures. Germany made the offer to station surface-to-air Patriots in Poland less than a week after a missile strike killed two people in a village close to the border with Ukraine, ...
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