Politics

Bloomberg As the newest cooperator for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Rick Gates gives prosecutors a powerful weapon in pursuing former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and possible election collusion with Russia. Gates, who pleaded guilty in Washington, was Manafort’s right-hand man and worked with him for a decade in his political consulting firm lobbying on behalf of Ukraine before joining ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said it may be “very, very unfortunate” for the world if US sanctions fail to stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, as he imposed the largest US penalties package yet against the rogue regime. “Phase 2 might be a very rough thing,” if the sanctions don’t succeed, Trump added at a joint press conference with Australian ...

WASHINGTON / Reuters The United States said it will open its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem in May, a move from Tel Aviv that reverses decades of US policy and is bound to trouble US allies who have already objected. US President Donald Trump announced last December that the United States recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, infuriating even Washington’s Arab ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel came to Brussels armed with a fresh demand that eastern European Union countries accept refugees and ended up sparking criticism from western allies in the bloc. At her first EU summit since striking a German coalition agreement, Merkel touted the idea of tying generous European regional-development aid for nations such as Poland to their willingness ...

WASHINGTON / Reuters Pakistan need not kill or capture militants such as members of the Haqqani network that use its territory to launch attacks in Afghanistan but could push them across the border instead, a senior US official said. Evicting the militants would put them at risk of attack from Afghan and US forces trying to keep Afghanistan from becoming ...

Bloomberg Pro-government forces pounded the rebel-held district of eastern Ghouta outside the Syrian capital Damascus, in a surge of violence that a war monitor said had killed at least 250 people since Sunday night. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the highest 48-hour death toll in the Syria conflict since a 2013 chemical attack on eastern ...

Bloomberg US Vice President Mike Pence was willing to meet with Kim Jong Un’s envoys earlier this month during the Winter Olympics in South Korea, but the North Koreans backed out, the Trump administration said. “North Korea dangled a meeting in hopes of the vice president softening his message, which would have ceded the world stage for their propaganda during ...

Bloomberg Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called President Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem a “dangerous” development in a speech before the United Nations, then walked out before US envoy Nikki Haley retorted that “we will not chase after you.” The encounter before the Security Council reflected the tensions in US-Palestinian relations since Trump’s declaration ...

Bloomberg Venezuela’s main opposition parties say they will shun this year’s presidential elections, claiming the vote has been rigged to guarantee a victory for President Nicolas Maduro. Justice First, the country’s largest opposition party, announced that it would not be participating in April 22 elections. “We won’t help out a dictatorship that only cares about maintaining power on the backs ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump ordered a ban on gun accessories known as “bump stocks” that allow semiautomatic rifles to be fired more rapidly, taking the administration’s first concrete measures in response to a Florida school shooting last week. Trump said that he had signed a memorandum directing the Justice Department to come up with rules prohibiting “all devices that turn ...