Politics

Bloomberg The US is ready to engage in talks about North Korea’s nuclear program even as it maintains pressure on Kim Jong Un’s regime, Vice President Mike Pence said, signaling a shift in American policy. Pence and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in agreed to pursue dialogue with North Korea during conversations at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, the Washington Post ...

Bloomberg South African President Jacob Zuma’s fate is set to be sealed when the top leadership of the ruling African National Congress meets to conclude the transition to a new administration. The National Executive Committee was expected to assemble on Monday in the capital, Pretoria, as Zuma, 75, has defied growing pressure to resign since his deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa, replaced ...

Bloomberg Israel is counting on Russian President Vladimir Putin to keep confrontations with Iran and Syria from spiraling into war as the Trump administration mostly watches from the sidelines, a senior aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “The American part of the equation is to back us up,” but the US currently “has almost no leverage on the ground,” ...

Bloomberg Conservatives’ infighting over how to engage with the rest of a united Europe has helped bring down the party’s past three prime ministers. Now, Theresa May has given her government a few weeks to forge a position—and flesh out details—they can all get behind as the UK negotiates its way out of the European Union. With interlocutors in Brussels ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she’s determined to serve another full term, rebuffing party critics who say she sold out to the Social Democrats to extend her 12 years in office. Faced with a backlash against last week’s coalition agreement and calls by some in her Christian Democratic Union to start thinking about a successor, Merkel defiantly brushed aside ...

Bloomberg A Russian plane with 71 people on board crashed in the Moscow region on Sunday and prosecutors said there were no survivors. The Saratov Airlines An-148 took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport at 2:21 p.m. local time (6:21 a.m. EST) headed for Orsk and disappeared from radar 7 minutes later, Sergey Izvolsky, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Authority, ...

Bloomberg Israel and Iran moved closer to confrontation in Syria as rising tensions erupted into the most serious standoff between the sides since the Syrian civil war began seven years ago. The Israeli military on Saturday said it struck 12 targets in Syria, including four belonging to Iran, in a “large-scale attack” after an Iranian drone penetrated its airspace. An ...

Bloomberg North Korean leader Kim Jong Un deployed a new weapon at the Olympics to fight back against the Trump administration’s sanctions and threats of a preemptive strike against his nuclear program: His sister. Kim Yo Jong shook hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, cheered enthusiastically for a unified Korean team, and displayed a sense of humor in weekend ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump decried lives “being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation” at the end of a week that saw the departure of two White House aides amid accusations of domestic violence. “There is no recovery for someone falsely accused – life and career are gone,” Trump tweeted. “Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?” ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump will appoint Nadia Schadlow to replace Dina Powell as his deputy national security adviser, according to an administration official familiar with the decision. Schadlow, currently a senior director of strategy on the president’s National Security Council, was a driving force behind the writing of the National Security Strategy, a voluminous document released in December that outlines ...