April, 2019

• 27 April

  Sanchez front-runner as ‘Spain’ charts political path

  

  Bloomberg For many Spanish voters now mulling their choice for prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, the incumbent, has made the most convincing case. Since calling a snap vote almost two months ago, the Socialist leader has watched opinion polls move in his favour. As voters contemplate their options on what is officially a “day of reflection” after the formal election campaign ...

  Read More »
• 27 April

  Kremlin wants to know details of US president’s arms-control initiative

  

  Bloomberg Russia is interested in the details of a potential US plan to push for new arms-control agreements, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters in Beijing. US President Donald Trump has questioned the cost of maintaining a nuclear arsenal and has asked administration officials to prepare options for potential new arms-control agreements with Russia and China, ...

  Read More »
• 27 April

  US: Suspected terrorists killed in Somalia air strike

  Bloomberg The US killed three suspected IS extremists in an airstrike in Somalia as part of a long-running campaign to curb the activities of extremist groups in the country. The raid took place in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, the US military said in a statement on Saturday. The area is on the Gulf of Aden, near the key shipping ...

  Read More »
• 27 April

  Macron’s policies faces Yellow Vest test

  

  Bloomberg Towns around France braced for the 24th Saturday of Yellow Vest protests in the first test of whether President Emmanuel Macron’s latest policy announcements will succeed in stilling months of unrest. Police prepared for a large turnout in Strasbourg after Yellow Vest organisers urged people from other countries to join the protest in the city that’s home to the ...

  Read More »
• 27 April

  N Korea: US pressures Seoul over sanctions

  

  Bloomberg North Korea accused the US of pressuring South Korea to follow a policy of implementing sanctions against the regime, its state media reported. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) report said there was a “serious situation of tension being created” on the peninsula amid halted denuclearisation talks with the US. The report was a commentary from the Committee for ...

  Read More »
• 27 April

  Russian agent sentenced to 18 months

  

  Bloomberg Maria Butina, the self-styled Russian gun-rights activist who befriended senior officials from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Republican party in the run-up to the 2016 election, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for failing to register in the US as an agent of a foreign government. Butina told US District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington that ...

  Read More »
• 27 April

  Putin says Russia may offer passports to all Ukrainians

  Bloomberg Russian President Vladimir Putin said he may extend an offer of citizenship to cover all Ukrainians after he sparked controversy by ordering passports to be made available to people in areas of the country controlled by pro-Moscow separatists. Russia’s offer of citizenship is “not only to the people who live” in the rebel-held areas of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and ...

  Read More »
• 27 April

  US must break out of its ‘terrorism fatigue’

  

  One disturbing aspect of the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka was that the slaughter of 321 victims came at a time when America is suffering what might be described as “terrorism fatigue.” The wars against Al Qaida and the IS extremists are part of a painful past that policymakers and the public want to escape. Those Middle East conflicts ...

  Read More »
• 27 April

  The real crisis risk at the ECB

  

  The euro zone has only recently recovered from a double-dip recession, but there are already questions about how prepared it would be for a new crisis. All eyes are on the European Central Bank (ECB), which has been the strongest line of defense against an economic slowdown. While pessimists worry that the ECB has few tools left if it needs ...

  Read More »
• 27 April

  Britain’s embrace of Huawei is about Brexit

  British Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision not to ban Huawei Technologies Co. outright was the easier choice. That doesn’t mean it was the right one. The US has been vociferously pushing for countries to exclude telecommunications equipment made by the Chinese firm, saying it’s vulnerable to hacking by state-sponsored actors from its home nation. But Huawei also has some of ...

  Read More »