Politics

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 ...

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. ...

  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 ...

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 ...

  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, ...

  Bloomberg The Estonian government plans to remove and demolish 244 Soviet monuments, which many people find offensive because they represent the Baltic nation’s decades-long occupation. A government committee formed in June, reviewed and decided the fate of 322 monuments, the majority of these being World War II memorials that will be destroyed and graves that will be re-interred at ...

Bloomberg Desperate to rescue their sons and husbands from the front lines in Ukraine, Russian women are putting pressure on the Kremlin in the latest sign of the spreading discontent caused by the war. The scattered efforts by wives and mothers took off after Vladimir Putin ordered 300,000 reservists called up on Sept. 21, forcing the authorities to pay attention. ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif named General Asim Munir as Pakistan’s next army chief, a choice that could harden former premier Imran Khan’s opposition to the government and stoke his high-stakes clash with the military. Khan, who as prime minister had removed Munir from the role of intelligence chief, would see the appointment as a possible obstacle to his attempt ...

  Bloomberg Estonia’s government is racing to identify facilities as bomb shelters amid growing fear of a possible attack from Russia. Authorities are sifting through public buildings, schools and shopping centers in search of spaces that could provide protection. Since June, dozens of colorful signs — blue triangles on an orange background — have popped up to mark public shelters. ...

Bloomberg The UK’s top judges threw out an attempt by the Scottish government to bypass Westminster and call a second independence referendum, thwarting nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon’s plan for a vote next year. The Supreme Court was asked by Scotland’s top legal adviser to assess whether the Scottish Parliament had the power to legislate unilaterally for a consultative referendum. The ...