In his first budget request to Congress, President Joe Biden is set to propose $715 billion in defense spending — a 0.4% cut in real terms. After four years in which military spending increased substantially, the administration is right to take aim at Pentagon excess and seek greater value for taxpayer dollars. But perhaps the biggest obstacles to realising those ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Boris Johnson is celebrating triumphant early results in UK elections, but he faces trouble ahead with Scotland cementing support for its independence movement. In a key set of local and national votes, Johnson’s ruling Conservatives tightened their grip on the pro-Brexit former industrial heartlands of northern England. They took the parliamentary seat of Hartlepool, which overwhelmingly backed ...

Bloomberg China is asking United Nations member states to stay away from an event organised by some Western countries that will address human rights issues in its Xinjiang region, Reuters reported. The virtual event is “politically motivated” and interferes with China’s domestic affairs, the report said, citing a memo by the Chinese UN mission. It’s being organised next week by ...

Bloomberg After dipping into his savings to weather India’s snap pandemic lockdown last March, Manoj Kumar was just getting his head above water again earning 600 rupees ($8) a day as a construction worker in the tourist hotspot of Goa. He’d squirreled away enough for a trip last month to his native village in Bihar some 1,490 miles away for ...

Bloomberg The New York State Attorney General’s Office is expanding its investigation into Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter. The probe, focused on harassment allegations against Cuomo, will now look at whether one of the governor’s top advisers linked support for the governor to access to coronavirus vaccines.

Bloomberg President Joe Biden’s White House released its first set of records detailing visits by official guests, returning to a practice set by the Obama administration and dismissed by the Trump team, disclosing 400 visits during his first 12 days in office. While hundreds of visitors might have visited the White House complex on an ordinary pre-pandemic day, the sparse ...

Bloomberg The top leadership of South Africa’s ruling party excluded its suspended Secretary-General Ace Magashule from a meeting on Saturday, confirming the sidelining of one of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s biggest detractors. Magashule was ordered to vacate his post after he ignored an order by the African National Congress (ANC) to step aside while he faces trial on graft charges. He ...

Bloomberg Global central banks are starting to wind down the trillion-dollar money printing machines set in motion to rescue their economies in 2020. Getting ahead of them is becoming this year’s biggest currency trade. Early changes to bond-buying programs from Canada and Britain have been rewarding for foreign-exchange players. Meanwhile, Norway, which hasn’t needed to deploy more unconventional policy such ...

Bloomberg Housing Development Finance Corp (HDFC) plans to raise as much as $17 billion in bonds after India’s largest mortgage financier posted a better-than-expected rise in fourth-quarter profit. The Mumbai-based shadow lender’s fourth-quarter net income rises 43% to 31.8 billion rupees ($432 million) as it set aside fewer provisions for bad loans, it said in a statement. That beat an ...

Bloomberg Credit Agricole SA’s profits jumped in the first quarter, as the bank joined European peers in posting a strong trading performance and lower-than-anticipated charges to cover potential loan losses. Net income rises 64% from a year ago to 1.05 billion euros ($1.27 billion), after Credit Agricole provided 384 million euros against the possibility of souring loans, below the 564.5 ...