Politics

Bloomberg South Korea has officially asked North Korea to explain why it cancelled dispatching an advance team to the South to prepare for concerts during the yeongchang Winter Olympics, according to Yonhap. Pyongyang suddenly withdrew an earlier offer to send an advance team over the weekend to South Korea to check performance venues. The team, led by Hyon Song Wol, ...

Bloomberg The Trump administration accelerated its timetable for moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, weighing a plan to retrofit the existing consulate there by the end of 2019 in order to fulfill a key campaign pledge by the president. Building a new embassy would have taken too long and is “cost-prohibitive” so “we’re going to retrofit an existing facility,” Steve ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition plans face a make-or-break vote this weekend as the Social Democrats decide whether to help usher in her fourth term or walk away from government and risk pushing Europe’s biggest economy further into political uncertainty. Germany’s oldest political party is split over its future direction, and those divisions will play out at a national convention ...

Bloomberg The leadership of South Africa’s ruling party decided that President Jacob Zuma must leave office but didn’t set a time-frame for his exit, according to six senior party officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The newly-elected top six leaders of the party will manage the transition that will concentrate power in the hands of his deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa, ...

UNITED NATIONS / Reuters Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Iran nuclear deal cannot survive if the United States pulls out of the agreement. US President Donald Trump said a week ago that European allies and Congress have to work with him to fix “the disastrous flaws” in the nuclear pact or face a US exit. Trump wants it ...

Bloomberg The US has told the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians that it will contribute only about half of a $125 million payment to the body, while demanding a “fundamental reexamination” of the social-service agency’s mission and funding before deciding whether to pay the rest. “It is time other countries, some of them quite wealthy, step in and do ...

LONDON­­­­ / Reuters US President Donald Trump and European Union leaders should increase pressure on President Bashar al-Assad and his allies Russia and Iran to return to talks to end Syria’s civil war, Syria’s chief opposition negotiator said. Nasr Hariri said that unless the West forced Assad and his big power allies to seek peace then Syrian civilians would continue ...

Bloomberg Germany’s deeply divided Social Democrats are starting to face up to political reality. Confronted with a crucial vote this weekend on whether to enter formal coalition talks with Angela Merkel’s bloc or cast themselves into the wilderness to rebuild the party, many SPD members are coming to the conclusion that a return to government carries the lesser risk. Senior ...

Bloomberg Romanian President Klaus Iohannis is meeting political parties as the Black Sea nation looks to appoint its third prime minister in a year following this week’s shock unraveling of the government. The Social Democrats, who won a landslide election victory in late 2016, proposed European Parliament lawmaker Viorica Dancila to replace Mihai Tudose as premier. The ruling party is ...

Bloomberg The threat of large-scale cyberattacks and a “deteriorating geopolitical landscape” since the election of US President Donald Trump have jumped to the top of the global elite’s list of concerns, the World Economic Forum said ahead of its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The growing cyber-dependency of governments and companies, and the associated risks of hacking by criminals or ...