Seoul holds military drills at islets disputed with Japan

Bloomberg South Korea’s armed forces started military training near disputed islands also claimed by Japan on Sunday amid increasing tensions between the two nations. The drills involving South Korea’s navy, marine corps, air force and army will run through Monday, the nation’s Defense Ministry said. Japan swiftly decried the move and called for a halt to the exercises, which it ...

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Tunisia’s Karoui arrest decried as ‘dangerous’

Bloomberg Two of Tunisia’s main parties criticised the arrest of a media mogul-turned presidential candidate on tax evasion changes and raised questions over the role of the judiciary in the North African nation’s politics. Nabil Karoui, the owner of Nessma TV and a self-proclaimed champion of the poor, was detained after the issuing of an arrest warrant in a case ...

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HK police use water cannons on protesters

Bloomberg Hong Kong police deployed water cannons for the first time after firing multiple volleys of tear gas at protesters as social unrest continued for the 12th weekend in the Asian financial centre. Police and protesters were involved in several standoffs in the western New Territories district of Tsuen Wan on Sunday. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam held a ...

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Swift slams US politics and Trump’s ‘autocracy’

Bloomberg Taylor Swift said US President Donald Trump probably thinks of the US as an “autocracy” and that she has become disillusioned with the state of American politics in an interview with The Guardian newspaper. The criticism of the president is unusually pointed for the singer, who for years declined to publicise her political beliefs. She now says she regrets ...

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Trade war shows reality of ‘America first’ in action

In a trade war, as in a real one, people are wounded by friendly fire from their side. Consider some casualties in Donald Trump’s “easy to win” — his promise — trade war. Begin with the company whose green machines bear the name of the blacksmith who, in the 1830s in Grand Detour, Illinois, invented a self-scouring plow that could ...

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Xiaomi has a secret money maker

Investors have been looking for reasons to forgive Xiaomi Corp. for its post-IPO slump. They don’t appear to have found them yet. Shares of the Chinese smartphone maker reversed a 2.1 percent gain to plunge as much as 5.5 percent in Hong Kong after the company posted second-quarter earnings. They’ve dropped 47 percent since the July 2018 listing. The stock ...

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Facebook finally meets a regulator with bite

In France, they call it taking mustard after dinner. In Germany, they talk about a child having already fallen in the well. In England, they speak of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. They all are good ways of describing how regulators have tended to deal with the world’s biggest tech firms. But when it comes to ...

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UK should break with Europe on palm oil

Post-Brexit, the UK will have a historic opportunity to strike a trade deal with one of the world’s fastest-growing regions and prove that it can shed European red tape and protectionism. The key is to rethink the European Union’s policy on palm oil. In 2017, the European Parliament approved a resolution to phase out and eventually ban biofuels made from ...

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What Boris Johnson fears more than no-deal Brexit

If UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson seems rather glib about the idea of his country crashing out of the European Union without a deal — an outcome that myriad authoritative bodies have predicted will be highly costly for the UK economy — it is most likely because there is something he fears more than that. Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party is ...

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