Politics

Reuters Yemen’s steely former president of 33 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, made his last political gamble and lost on Monday, meeting his death at the hands of the Houthi movement, his erstwhile allies in the country’s multi-sided civil war. Officials in his General People’s Congress party (GPC) confirmed to Reuters that the 75-year-old Saleh had been killed outside the capital ...

Bloomberg The US and South Korea on Monday began a five-day joint air exercise on the Korean peninsula involving 230 aircraft and 12,000 American troops, in what North Korea has dubbed the largest-ever joint aerial drill. North Korea, which last week launched a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile, said ahead of the Vigilant Ace 18 drills that it would ...

Bloomberg The signatures of almost 300 foreign political leaders on a document praising Chinese President Xi Jinping’s contribution to world peace has provided him valuable ammunition to counter arguments by those who fear the country’s rising international clout. The so-called Beijing Initiative was signed at the end of a four-day Communist Party gathering that brought together hundreds of political representatives, ...

Bloomberg Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull won some relief from the chaos imperiling his leadership, with his deputy winning a special election. The next month could be much tougher for him. Barnaby Joyce was one of two lawmakers from the ruling coalition forced to re-contest their lower house seats because they were in breach of the constitution for being dual ...

Bloomberg The anti-establishment party Podemos is poised to become a key part of the puzzle when Catalan politicians come to piece together a new government after this month’s regional election. Polls suggest it’s a toss-up whether the three Catalan separatists parties retain their majority after the vote on December 21. If they fall short, Podemos’s Catalan ally, known as Catalunya ...

Bloomberg The Democratic Republic of Congo’s government recruited fighters from a rebellion it defeated in 2013 to suppress protests by opponents of President Joseph Kabila in December last year, Human Rights Watch said. Senior Congolese security officials mobilized “at least 200 and likely many more” M23 combatants from camps in Rwanda and Uganda, where many fighters have been based since ...

Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Theresa May is battling to put out multiple political fires at home as she prepa- res for a crucial meeting in Brussels that she hopes will end the deadlock in Brexit talks. Euro-skeptics including members of May’s own Conservative party set out new “red lines” for the negotiations ahead of a lunch meeting she’ll have on ...

Bloomberg Ireland is well on its way to meeting its objectives in the Brexit negotiations, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, as the European Union and the UK approach a deadline for moving on to talks about their future trading relationship. A day after European Commission President Donald Tusk said the EU would consult with Ireland before deciding whether to allow ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leader of the Social Democrats, Martin Schulz, agreed to keep talking as they stepped up joint efforts to break an impasse over forming Germany’s next government. Merkel told her Christian Democratic Union party’s board during a call that she and Schulz would continue to hold discussions on a way out of the political stalemate, ...

Bloomberg House Republicans announced a plan to pass a two-week extension of federal government funding without Democratic votes and avoid a shutdown on December 8. The legislation would push the next deadline to the Friday before Christmas, giving House and Senate lawmakers time to knit together their respective tax-cutting bills into a single piece of legislation to present to President ...