Politics

  Bloomberg Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron kick off the final week of the French presidential campaign with major rallies in Paris after weekend sparring on subjects ranging from the euro to the environment. With a week to go in the campaign, Le Pen appeared to step back from her single most distinct policy, saying on Saturday that there ...

  Bloomberg European Union governments threw down the gauntlet to the U.K. ahead of Brexit talks, listing demands Prime Minister Theresa May must satisfy before they will discuss the trade deal she wants and urging her to be more realistic in her expectations. Any doubts about the scale of the task facing Britain in withdrawing from the EU after four ...

  Bloomberg Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte joined China in pleading with the leaders of North Korea and the US to tone down their nuclear brinksmanship, even as he agreed with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that negotiations to end the standoff would be useless. “We have to caution everybody including those who’d give the advice to the two players because ...

  Bloomberg South African businessman Mathews Phosa said he accepted a nomination to stand as president of the ruling African National Congress. Phosa will challenge Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former chairwoman of the African Union Commission, who are seen as the frontrunners to succeed President Jacob Zuma as the party’s leader at a conference in December. ...

  Bloomberg North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile just hours after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson mounted an effort at the United Nations to rally pressure against Kim Jong Un’s regime. The missile was fired at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday local time from northeast of Pyongyang and appears to have failed, according to a text message from South Korea’s ...

  Bloomberg The Turkish government agency in charge of internet technologies blocked access to Wikipedia on Saturday, without giving a specific reason for the decision. The ban was imposed after “technical analysis and legal consideration,” the Information and Communication Technologies Authority said, without citing any violation of Turkish law. The agency didn’t respond to calls placed outside regular business hours. ...

  Boomberg Millions of Brazilians were stranded without public transport and faced shuttered banks and schools as labor unions staged a nationwide strike against President Michel Temer’s reform agenda. Groups of protesters clashed with police in Brazil’s major cities as buses, commuter trains and metro lines ground to a halt. Access roads to airports in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo ...

  Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel laid down a tough line for Brexit talks with the UK, reminding Britain it can’t expect preferential treatment as she warned that some officials in London were harboring “illusions.” Addressing the German parliament before the remaining 27 European Union leaders meet on Saturday to discuss Britain’s exit, Merkel said the bloc will put its ...

  Bloomberg Turkey suspended 9,000 police officers, including more than a dozen tasked with protecting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family, extending a crackdown on suspected followers of a U.S.-based cleric who the government blames for orchestrating last year’s attempted coup. The officers were suspended for ties to the “terrorist network of Fethullah Gulen and for posing a threat ...

  Bloomberg Russia and the U.S. are preparing for a possible first meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump before the two presidents attend July’s Group of 20 summit in Germany, according to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. “There are preparations,” Ryabkov said on Thursday in a text message. “The issue of whether the schedules of both leaders can ...