Bloomberg Donald Trump woke up on the anniversary of his inauguration with the federal government shuttered, a development that seemed almost predictable after a year of tumult in Washington. “This is the One Year Anniversary of my Presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present,” the president said on Twitter early on January 20. He said in ...

Bloomberg Mike Pence arrived in the Middle East, leaving his boss to fight Democrats over a federal government shutdown while he makes good on a three-country visit aimed at consolidating US partnerships in the region. The vice president was still crossing the Atlantic Ocean on Air Force Two when the shutdown started. He quickly punched out a statement of disapproval ...

KABUL / Reuters Gunmen dressed in army uniforms who stormed Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel battled Afghan Special Forces for 13 hours in an overnight siege that left at least five people dead, officials and witnesses said on Sunday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which saw more than 150 guests flee, with some shimmying down tied-together sheets from upper-floor windows ...

Bloomberg An advance team for North Korea arrived in Seoul on Sunday as Pyongyang reversed a decision to cancel the visit, a day after signing an agreement with the South to march under a unified flag at next month’s Winter Olympics. North and South Korea solidified plans to march together and agreed to compete with a joint wom-en’s ice hockey ...

Bloomberg China’s National Defense Ministry said the US should abandon a “Cold War” mindset and view Chinese national security and military efforts “rationally and objectively.” The instigators of militarisation of the South China Sea are “other countries” that don’t seem to want to see peace in the region and are using the banner of “navigational freedom” to undertake military activities ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s ruling party is intensifying pressure on Presid-ent Jacob Zuma to step down and allow his deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa, to accelerate his efforts to stamp out corruption and restore investor confidence in the economy. The African National Congress’s top leadership decided at a meeting that Zuma, 75, must leave office but didn’t set a deadline for his exit, ...

BAGHDAD / Reuters Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi met with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region’s Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani for the first time since conflict broke out over a Kurdish independence referendum, officials said. The Kurdish referendum on Sept. 25, which produced an overwhelming ‘yes’ for independence, angered Baghdad and Iraq’s neighbours Turkey and Iran, which have their own restive Kurdish ...

The National Science Foundation and the National Science Board have just released their biennial ‘Science & Engineering Indicators,’ a voluminous document describing the state of American technology. There are facts and figures on research and development, innovation and engineers. But the report’s main conclusion lies elsewhere: China has become — or is on the verge of becoming — a scientific ...

I think we can all agree that, absent a war or some deliberate strategy, a 14 percent drop in a country’s oil production in the space of one year is not a good thing. Even worse, though, is a 29 percent drop. These two realities, both undesirable, were presented for Venezuela in OPEC’s latest monthly report, out recently. The oil-exporters’ ...

If you’re hung up on the potential upside (or pitfalls) of Bitcoin mining for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., then you may be missing an even bigger story. Cash. Yup, good old cash. You remember the stuff; it’s used for tipping bellhops, filling red envelopes and shoving under mattresses. TSMC, which makes chips for Apple Inc. and for Bitcoin miners, is ...