Bloomberg Kim Jong-un oversaw a live-fire military exercise that potentially included North Korea’s first ballistic missile launch since 2017 — challenging US President Donald Trump’s bottom line in nuclear talks. Kim watched as “large-calibre, long-range multiple-rocket launchers and tactical guided weapons” were fired off North Korea’s eastern coast, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The state media’s ...

Bloomberg Siyabonga Matlala is unequivocal about who he’ll support in South Africa’s May 8 election: the same party he’s backed since apartheid ended a quarter century ago. “I will always vote African National Congress,” the 49-year-old farm labourer said in Fisantekraal, a shantytown on Cape Town’s outskirts. The unwavering loyalty of voters like Matlala has underpinned the ANC’s grip on ...

Bloomberg Santu Adhikari scavenges with scarred hands through the rubble of a Tata Motors factory where he once hoped to work. But the plant was torn down before it was finished, and the 28-year-old now spends his days among its ruins in this field outside Kolkata, hunting for scrap iron to sell. Adhikari blames his grim predicament on one of ...