Politics

BAGHDAD / ANKARA / Reuters More than 400 people were killed in Iran when a magnitude 7.3 earthquake jolted the country on Sunday, state media said, and rescuers were searching for dozens trapped under rubble in the mountainous area. At least six have died in Iraq as well. State television said more than 407 people were killed in Iran and ...

Bloomberg The UK Labour Party accused Theresa May of lacking the support within her Conservative Party to deliver a Brexit that will protect jobs, offering her a cross-party deal that will only add to pressure on the embattled prime minister. Keir Starmer, the party’s Brexit spokesman, wrote to May on Monday telling her there was a “sensible majority” in Parliament ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel is entering the final stretch of preliminary talks to form a new government as factions in the complex multi-party negotiations remain far apart on issues including migration, climate and European policy. Entering a fifth week of negotiations between Merkel’s Christian Democrats, her Bavarian CSU sister party, the pro-market Free Democrats and the environmental Greens, the ...

Bloomberg North Korea, a country in a “time warp” that feeds paranoia at home with propaganda about a hostile world, could secure its future by laying the groundwork for talks on its nuclear weapons program, according to South Korea’s foreign minister. While Kang Kyung-wha welcomed a two month hiatus in North Korean provocations after a rapid-fire series of missile tests ...

Bloomberg Political turmoil in Australia risks undermining fragile economic confidence as the loss of another lawmaker in the dual-citizenship fiasco left Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull leading a minority government. John Alexander, 66, became the second government member in the lower house to resign, when he acknowledged he likely inherited British citizenship through his father. While the government will survive with ...

Bloomberg US President Donald Trump once again waded into the controversy of whether he thinks Russia meddled in last year’s election, saying on Sunday that he believes “very much in our intelligence agencies.” A day earlier, the US leader said that Vladimir Putin believed he didn’t interfere, prompting questions about whether Trump actually took the Russian president at his word. ...

Bloomberg Turkey is expecting justice from the US, not a political arrangement to exchange prisoners held by each country, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said after a trip to Washington to meet with Vice President Mike Pence. “It’s not very ethical to do political bargaining on legal issues,” Yildirim said in an interview with Bloo-mberg at the Turkish consulate in New ...

Bloomberg Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a meeting with a Taiwanese politician on Sunday, hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping warned him not to break with past consensus on what Beijing regards as a renegade province. Abe held a 30-minute meeting with James Soong, head of the People First Party on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit ...

Bloomberg One of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s lawmakers resigned from parliament, saying he may be a dual citizen, leaving the government at least temporarily in minority status. John Alexander, speaking to reporters, said it’s possible he also holds British citizenship through his father. “Therefore it is my obligation that I must resign,” the 66-year-old said in Sydney. The citizenship ...

Bloomberg Embattled UK Prime Minister Theresa May faced a fresh challenge as the Sunday Times said 40 Conservative members of Parliament, nearly enough to trigger action, have agreed to sign a letter of no confidence in her. May’s opponents are now eight lawmakers short of what’s needed for a leadership challenge, the newspaper said, citing people with knowledge of the ...