Politics

Bloomberg South Korean President Moon Jae-in is seeking a detente with both North Korea and China in a bid to calm tensions a week before US President Donald Trump arrives in Seoul. South Korea and China on Tuesday agreed to move beyond a year-long dispute over Seoul’s decision to deploy a US missile shield, paving the way for closer ties ...

Bloomberg In the final days of Spain’s complex political chess match with Catalan separatism, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy made the best tactical moves. The longer game of keeping the country’s economic powerhouse in Spain may prove harder to win. Rajoy lined up backing from the opposition Socialists for his plan to sweep out the Catalan government while his diplomats ensured ...

Bloomberg Czechs moved closer to a rare minority government envisaged by billionaire Andrej Babis as his euroskeptic party failed to find coalition allies after winning this month’s general elections. President Milos Zeman said he won’t object if Babis proposes forming a government that lacks a parliamentary majority, because a single-party cabinet would rule more efficiently. While Babis, the second-richest Czech ...

Bloomberg Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s Progressive Party is considering triggering the third snap parliamentary elections since 2014 as it moves to further consolidate power in the European Union candidate. Vucic, a former ally of war-time leader Slobodan Milosevic, said his party are discussing early elections this week. His party won snap bal- lots in both 2014 and last year bef-ore ...

Bloomberg Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the landslide winner of a chaotic election rerun that his main rival Raila Odinga rejected as a sham. Kenyatta, 56, won 7.48 million votes, or 98.3 percent of the total cast on Oct. 26, Wafula Chebukati, the chairman of the Independent Electoral & Boundaries Commission, said in Nairobi, the capital. The turnout was ...

Bloomberg Theresa May’s government will step up its diplomatic efforts to win over skeptical European leaders as part of the UK’s drive to push stalled Brexit talks forward from discussing divorce to the future of trade. Brexit Secretary David Davis plans meetings in London and various EU capitals with senior officials from Germany and elsewhere, amid concerns that some member ...

Bloomberg One is China’s most reliable political springboard, the other is its largest regional economy. Both got new party chiefs in a weekend reshuffle that expands President Xi Jinping’s options for remaking the top leadership. Li Qiang, 58, a one-time top Xi aide, was appointed Communist Party secretary of the eastern financial hub of Shanghai on Sunday, the official Xinhua ...

Bloomberg Carles Puigdemont, the self-styled “president of the Catalan Republic,” failed to show his face at the government’s headquarters on Monday as Spanish officials tightened their grip on the rebel region. A few ousted Catalan officials posted pictures on social media of their arrival at work in a show of defiance after being fired by the Spanish government on Friday. ...

Bloomberg Reverend David Mwinamo spent Sunday praying with his congregation for a speedy end to Kenya’s protracted presidential election that’s cast the East African nation into crisis. Two votes since August have failed to produce consensus on who should lead the East African economic powerhouse of about 47 million people. President Uhuru Kenyatta claims a mandate from this month’s rerun ...

Bloomberg Iceland’s election delivered a path to power for the nation’s charismatic left-wing leader, Katrin Jakobsdottir, after a spate of scandals soured voters on the ruling conservatives. Saturday’s vote handed a potential center-left coalition a narrow majority, making the Left Green leader the most likely to get the nod to form a government, according to Stefanía Oskarsdottir, an assistant professor ...