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Bloomberg Kim Jong-un is grappling for a way out of his stalemate in nuclear talks with Donald Trump as he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time on Thursday, seeking diplomatic support. The North Korean leader is expected to highlight his Kremlin counterpart’s backing for easing international sanctions on his tiny and battered economy when they meet on ...

Bloomberg A Hong Kong court sentenced Occupy protest organiser Benny Tai to 16 months in prison on charges he conspired to commit public nuisance, capping the China-backed government’s push to punish leaders of 2014’s mass pro-democracy demonstrations. Tai, 54, an associate law professor at the University of Hong Kong, was ordered to begin serving his time immediately by District Court ...

Bloomberg Shorn of their most important campaign weapon, scandal-ridden former President Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s biggest opposition parties are turning to populism as they scramble for votes in the most competitive election since the end of apartheid. The two main challengers to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) are increasingly echoing the anti-immigrant and race-baiting bias that’s come to dominate ...

Bloomberg The Indonesian government rejected opposition allegations of “massive fraud” in the presidential vote and urged supporters of Prabowo Subianto to allow the election commission to peacefully complete the election process. The opposition has claimed widespread tampering of voters list and accused the country’s independent election commission of colluding with President Joko Widodo’s administration to deny a win for Prabowo, ...

Bloomberg The leader of Scotland’s pro-independence government vowed to push for another vote on leaving the UK within two years to protect the country from the consequences of Brexit. Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of the semi-autonomous administration in Edinburgh, said the political system in London had failed Scotland, ignoring its vote to stay in the European Union and undermining the ...

Even as the US and China seem headed towards a truce on trade, their rivalry is heating up in other areas. The threat of espionage taking place under the cover of routine activities appears to be a particular concern. As many as 30 Chinese academics and policy experts have had their US visas cancelled or reviewed in the past year, ...

President Trump and his officials have taken steps lately to make things harder for Cuba, aiming to persuade its government to stop helping Venezuela’s embattled tyrant, Nicolas Maduro. That’s a worthy goal, and Cuba’s material support for Maduro is certainly objectionable, but this is the wrong way to get results. The administration just announced that US citizens will be able ...

After adding more than 1.3 million inhabitants since the early 1990s, New York City has been shrinking since mid-2016. According to estimates released last week by the US Census Bureau, the New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan area lost population in the 12-month periods ending July 2018 and July 2017 as well. This raises an important question: Is New York shrinking because ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is going to boost human productivity in a thousand ways, transforming everything from transportation to health care to agriculture. Some enthusiastic computer scientists even think we will find a “master algorithm” that will fix our politics and make lives “longer, happier and more productive.” In the grandest of these visions, smart computing machines could automate all of ...

Is it a waste of money to spend the billions of euros that will be needed to rebuild Notre-Dame de Paris? A lot of people seem to consider the whole thing no more than a “vanity project” for the uber-rich. I disagree. One reason is that I’m not so keen on telling other people how to spend their money. Another ...