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(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson will find out Tuesday evening whether he has any chance of getting his Brexit deal through Parliament -- and whether he can do it ahead of his Oct. 31 deadline.Having twice been denied a vote on whether members of Parliament support his deal, Johnson has introduced the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which would implement the deal in law, and plans to push it through Parliament at a breakneck pace. His moment of truth will come at around 7 p.m. in London, with what’s known as the Second Reading vote -- on whether Parliament agrees with the general principles of the bill.An analysis of MPs’ previous votes and statements suggests Johnson probably has just about enough support to win that vote. But it will be immediately followed by a second, on whether MPs agree to his rapid timetable for pushing the bill through. If he doesn’t pass that hurdle, he could still deliver Brexit, but he has little chance of doing it on time.“The public doesn’t want any more delays, neither do other European leaders and neither do I,” Johnson said in an emailed statement. “Let’s get Brexit done on Oct. 31 and move on.”Johnson was reluctantly forced to write to the EU asking for an extension to that deadline after failing in his first attempt to get Parliament to endorse his exit deal on Saturday. The EU leadership will give its own update on the state of play on Brexit on Tuesday morning when Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, brief the European Parliament. ‘Ram Through’Johnson has not given up delivering Brexit by his Oct. 31 deadline and has proposed an express timetable for passing the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in Parliament. It sparked an immediate backlash in the Commons, with MPs attacking the the government for attempting to “ram through” the bill.The government’s schedule looks like this:The bill will then go to the House of Lords, Parliament’s upper chamber.Losing the Second Reading vote would kill the bill. Losing the subsequent Program Motion, which sets the timetable for the rest of debate, would simply make it very hard to hit his deadline.Defeat on either vote would be a blow for the prime minister, but would feed his public narrative that Parliament is trying to frustrate Brexit. Some of his actions in recent weeks have looked like efforts to pick fights. On Monday, he attempted to repeat the same vote he’d held Saturday, something that Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow predictably ruled to be out of order. “We’re disappointed that the Speaker has yet again denied us the chance to deliver on the will of the British people,” Johnson’s spokesman, James Slack, told reporters in London.If Britain’s departure from the European Union is delayed, and Johnson gets to call the election he has been pushing for, his slogan will be: “Get Brexit done.”Johnson was forced Oct. 19 to request a three-month delay to Brexit from… Read more »

Brexit is 9 days away.(Bloomberg) -- Sign up here to get the Brexit Bulletin in your inbox every weekday.Today in Brexit: Boris Johnson vowed the U.K. would leave the European Union on Oct. 31. A vote in Parliament today may determine whether he can keep his promise.What’s happening? Prime Minister Boris Johnson is giving Parliament only a few days to debate the most important change to Britain’s constitution in almost 50 years. His government, thwarted again on Monday in its plan to put Johnson’s Brexit deal to a straight vote in the House of Commons, will instead today begin a rapid attempt to pass key implementing legislation in time to leave the EU on Oct. 31. By the end of this evening the Commons is scheduled to have voted several times on aspects of the prime minister’s plan, giving a clear indication of how the final stages of this lengthy divorce might play out. There are opportunities for Johnson, as well as major potential pitfalls. Bloomberg’s Tim Ross and Robert Hutton have the full timetable and details here.The choreography will see a legislative process, which often takes weeks to play out, compressed into three days of debate. Here’s how the government sees things unfolding.It probably won’t be that simple. Lawmakers only got to see the 110 pages of the legislation, known as the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, on Monday evening. It comes with 125 pages of explanatory notes. As Hutton noted last night, there is more to scrutinize than simply reading the documents.There are two moments to watch today: The first vote, known as the Second Reading, should take place at about 7 p.m. in London. That will give a broad indication of how much support Johnson’s plan has. The next vote, called the Program Motion, could be the battle royal.Lots of MPs want to back the bill and leave the EU, but don’t like the idea of rushing the legislation through in double-quick time. Voting down the Program Motion would scupper the government’s proposed timetable — and probably ensure the process won’t be done in time to leave on Oct. 31. The Institute for Government has a helpful explainer on how it all unfolds.Expect drama. Johnson could pull or drop support for his own bill if the timetable slips. He could resume his efforts to call a general election. And the EU would be forced to consider approving a delay to Brexit. Johnson grudgingly requested that on Saturday night but prefers to “get Brexit done and move on.”Today’s Must-ReadsThe plan to fast-track Brexit throws up a host of related perils for Johnson, from Scottish nationalism to a new no-deal cliff-edge in 2020, reports Bloomberg’s Edward Evans.  The pound is rising on Brexit news, and this time it looks like the markets have it right, John Authers writes for Bloomberg Opinion. No matter how the tortuous process of leaving the EU ends, those who supported Brexit as a way of curbing immigration will have to accept that their country will remain economically reliant on foreign workers for decades, writes Bloomberg’s Mark Gilbert.                       How are we doing? Time is running out to tell us what you think… Read more »

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- No matter how the U.K.’s tortuous process of leaving the European Union ends, those who supported Brexit as a way of curbing immigration will have to accept the immutable mathematics of demographics: Britain will remain economically reliant on foreign workers for decades to come.The Office for National Statistics has just published its latest projections for the size of the country’s population for the next 25 years, with a breakdown by age group. It should be required reading for any politician seeking, to coin a phrase, to take back control of Britain’s borders.While the population is expected to continue growing in the coming decades, the pace will slow. Between mid-2018 and mid-2043, the total will increase by just 9%, down from the 15% expansion in the previous 25 years.And as it grows, the population will age. The proportion of people aged 85 or older is expected to almost double in the coming quarter of a century, according to the ONS. From 2028, while both the working age community and the number of children flatline, the gray contingent surviving long enough to qualify for a state pension surges.That risks creating an economic imbalance, with too few workers paying taxes and national insurance to support the retired crowd at the top of the demographic pyramid. The percentage of the population that’s old enough to draw a pension will increase to 22% by 2043, up from 18.5% in the middle of last year, according to the ONS figures.As the baby boomers born after World War II and into the 1960s start to die and the so-called replacement rate slows, the number of births and deaths starts to become almost equal from the mid-2030s. Hence the need for immigrants, who are typically of working age, to keep the population growing.The ONS bases its projection for net migration in the coming quarter-century on the annual average for the past 25 years of 190,000. Now, that could increase or decrease; in its previous projections, the statistics office used a lower figure of 165,000 per year to reflect the mean data for the quarter century to 2016.The statistics office is at pains to stress the impartiality of its data gathering. “National population projections do not attempt to predict the impact of political circumstances such as Brexit,” the study says. Nevertheless, the data is incontrovertible. Given its ageing population, Britain needs immigrants and their economic output to support the retirement population. Even if it succeeds in eventually extricating itself from the EU, the U.K. can ill-afford to raise the drawbridge to overseas workers.To contact the author of this story: Mark Gilbert at magilbert@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Melissa Pozsgay at mpozsgay@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering asset management. He previously was the London bureau chief for Bloomberg News. He is also the author of "Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019… Read more »

The latest breakdown in talks with Ethiopia over its construction of a massive upstream Nile dam has left Egypt with dwindling options as it seeks to protect the main source of freshwater for its large and growing population. Talks collapsed earlier this month over the construction of the $5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is 60% complete and promises to provide much-needed electricity to Ethiopia's 100 million people. Speaking at the U.N. last month, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said he would "never" allow Ethiopia to impose a "de facto situation" by filling the dam without an agreement. Read more »

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Maneuvers in the U.K. Parliament to delay or prevent Brexit just keep coming. But don’t be misled: Amid the chaos, the politics have shifted profoundly. Whatever happens between now and his Brexit deadline of Oct. 31, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has won an important victory. Brexit could be delayed or cancelled altogether, or it might yet end in a cliff-edge exit causing huge disruption — but Johnson kept his word, and his political opponents are in trouble.The starting point is to see that the agreement Johnson reached with the European Union is a tolerable outcome, and at any rate a big improvement over the deal reached by his predecessor, Theresa May.One widely popular narrative among Johnson’s critics is that in settling for a “Northern Ireland only” version of the notorious “backstop,” he has acceded to a deal that May found unacceptable, and that he himself had strongly opposed. Thus his “deal” is not so much a win as a humiliating reversal.This is blatant nonsense. Johnson’s version includes two vital components, both of which had previously been dismissed by the EU.The first is an arrangement for collecting and rebating tariffs that lets Northern Ireland remain in the U.K. customs union. This is a messy and costly proposal, to be sure, and it does create a kind of customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., which is opposed by the North’s Democratic Unionists.Even so, the difference between this and the earlier EU proposal, which simply annexed Northern Ireland to the EU for trade-policy purposes, is no mere legal nicety: In practical terms, it means that Northern Ireland will participate in new U.K. trade deals with third parties, an opportunity that Johnson rightly emphasizes. If the U.K. negotiates zero-tariff agreements with partners outside the EU, consumers in Northern Ireland would see import prices (for final goods not bound elsewhere) fall as in the rest of the country.Moreover — here’s the second difference — that first EU backstop proposal would have kept Northern Ireland, and then at May’s insistence the entire U.K., inside the EU customs union and locked to the single market (with no say in its policies) for as long as the EU saw fit. The terms provided no exit clause for the U.K. or the province.Indeed the EU laughed at the idea that such a clause might be granted. The backstop is an insurance policy, it said. What’s the point if it can be cancelled just like that? The EU’s many spokesmen loyally parroted this line. Well, under the terms negotiated by Johnson, the decision rests with Northern Ireland. The province stays inside the U.K customs union and aligned with the EU single market for goods unless Northern Ireland chooses otherwise.There’s also a simpler point, decisive in political terms. For months after May’s capitulation, the EU said the withdrawal agreement she’d agreed to was Europe’s last and final offer. May accepted this ridiculous declaration (when has any decision in Europe ever been final?) even… Read more »

(Bloomberg) -- When NATO jets bombed Serb forces 20 years ago to push them out of Kosovo, Albin Kurti was packed onto a red bus with other political prisoners to be used as a human shield.He was beaten in custody, convicted of terrorism by a Serb court and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Fearing he’d never leave jail alive, it was only when Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic was ousted in 2001 that he was let go.What he found was a Kosovo free of Serb soldiers but stuck in a limbo he now likens to going from a “Serbian prison to an international hospital.” Now the strategically important nation, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, is at the center of a struggle for influence in the Balkans contested by Russia, the European Union, China and Turkey.And it will probably be up to the bookish IT engineer, who has ditched his signature long hair and flannel shirt for a crisp suit and white pressed shirt, to turn the nation of 1.9 million around after his party won this month’s snap elections.Kurti may be designated prime minister as early as this week, when his first task is to try to form a government. Then he’ll have to get to work trying mend ties with Serbia -- a key requirement to starting accession talks with the EU. But he’s a controversial choice.As an anti-corruption crusader, he organized protests targeting the international administrators who oversaw Kosovo’s transition from war-torn territory to fledgling democracy. In 2007, two activists from his ethnic-Albanian party died and dozens were injured in a clash with United Nations police. Kurti, 44, was himself arrested and detained for nine months.He’s also a fierce critic of both Kosovo President Hashim Thaci -- who comes from a rival political party -- and his Serb counterpart Aleksandar Vucic, calling them “authoritarian leaders.” He denounced them for trying to reach a secret reconciliation deal last year that he said could lead to more violence in Europe’s most volatile region.Army GeneralsThe scars between Serbs and Kosovo’s Albanian majority run deep. The 1998-99 war killed 13,535 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Now Kosovo is recognized by the U.S. and most EU members. Five nations from the bloc joined Russia and China in siding with Serbia, which refuses to acknowledge Kosovo’s sovereignty.That poses a hurdle for Kurti, who must now find a way sit down at a negotiating table with Thaci and Vucic. Also, unlike Thaci or former Premier Ramush Haradinaj, Kurti wasn’t a guerrilla fighter. And he wasn’t part of Milosevic’s close circle, while Vucic served as the late Serb leader’s information minister.Kurti has been a harsh critic of the Brussels-mediated talks since they started in 2013, saying there’s little to negotiate apart from war damages from Serbia, which he says “owes us a lot.” And he staked out a tough position before the election, slamming a proposal from Thaci and Vucic to redraw borders so the neighbors can incorporate areas inhabited by their… Read more »

Boris Johnson’s Brexit extension letters are in, but Brussels is in no hurry to respond. With Westminster still very much in a political fog, the 27 other nations of the European Union are biding their time before replying to the U.K. government’s (reluctant) request to extend the deadline for Britain’s departure beyond October 31. If Johnson can get the deal through parliament, along with the necessary domestic legislation, in time for a Halloween exit, then the EU may not need to make a decision at all. Read more »

President Trump's perception of Ukraine being a corrupt country was reinforced by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who made disparaging comments about the country during conversations with Trump, U.S. officials told The Washington Post.This information was shared by George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state, during his closed-door testimony last week as part of the House impeachment inquiry against Trump, the Post reports. The officials said that Putin and Orban did not directly encourage Trump to request Ukraine launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, or push the debunked conspiracy theory that Kyiv was behind the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee. Instead, Trump was driven by his own belief in the conspiracy theory, also peddled by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.National security officials were ready for Putin to try to damage the U.S. relationship with Ukraine, the Post reports, and a former official said that during a conversation with Trump in early May, Putin "did what he always did," which was say that Ukraine "is just a den of corruption." Such conversations made it harder for White House officials to get Trump to support Ukraine's new president, who was elected in April, and it didn't help that many people who backed aid to Ukraine, including former Defense Secretary James Mattis, had left the administration. Read more about how Trump is shaped by his relationships with authoritarian leaders at The Washington Post. Read more »

The president, according to people familiar with testimony in the House impeachment investigation, sees the Eastern European ally, not Russia, as responsible for the interference in the 2016 election that was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller. It's a view denied by the intelligence community, at odds with U.S. foreign policy and dismissed by many of Trump's fellow Republicans, but part of a broader skepticism of Ukraine being shared with Trump by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his key regional ally Viktor Orban of Hungary. Trump's embrace of an alternative view of Ukraine suggests the extent to which his approach to Kyiv — including his request, now central to the impeachment inquiry, that the Ukraine president do him a "favor" and investigate Democrats — was colored by a long-running, unproven conspiracy theory that has circulated online and in some corners of conservative media. Read more »

(Bloomberg) -- Huawei Technologies Co.’s lobbying spending spiked in the third quarter as the Chinese telecom giant hired a fundraiser for President Donald Trump with deep ties to Republican leadership to help it fight back against the administration’s blacklisting of the company from the U.S. market.Huawei spent a company record of $1.8 million on federal lobbying in the three months ending in September, up from $30,000 in the same period last year, when it had largely shut down its lobbying presence in Washington and whittled its office down to a skeleton staff.Of the total, Huawei spent an eye-popping $1.7 million to pay lobbyist Michael Esposito, according to federal disclosures. Esposito, whose hiring was disclosed in August, describes himself a member of Trump Victory, the joint fundraising committee that includes the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee, according to a biography on the website of his firm, Federal Advocates Inc.Even by K Street standards, the sum is extraordinary, and it exceeded the third-quarter spending of many trade groups considered among Washington’s most powerful players, such as the Consumer Technology Association, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Federation of Independent Business, each of which spent more than $1 million.Huawei hired Esposito to help with its fight over a five-month-old ban by the Commerce Department, which blocks U.S. companies from selling components to China’s largest technology company in the name of national security. Huawei denies that it’s a threat.Crab Cakes and ShrimpEsposito lobbied at the White House, the Commerce Department and its Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees the so-called entity list that bans Huawei, according to a federal disclosure that he filed.Huawei and Esposito didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.Huawei is also pursuing a legal and public-relations campaign against the ban, which requires American firms to obtain a government license in order to sell to it. The company has been increasing its outreach to the press. Last week, Huawei hosted a reception for journalists during the International Monetary Fund meetings at the rooftop bar of a swank Washington hotel blocks from the White House.Journalists nibbled on shrimp tempura, crab cakes and pork belly with views of the Washington Monument and Commerce Department in the background as they mingled with company executives, including Andy Purdy, a former security official for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. Guests received tote bags containing a collection of interviews with the company’s founder and chief executive officer, Ren Zhengfei.In March, Huawei registered lobbyists for the first time since 2012, including Samir Jain, a Jones Day partner who was a cybersecurity official under President Barack Obama. The company also hired Boston-based Racepoint Global Inc., a communications firm specialized in technology matters, and BCW LLC, a communications firm owned by global advertising and marketing group WPP Plc.Huawei also has engaged law firms Sidley Austin LLP, Steptoe & Johnson LLP and Squire Patton Boggs. The company is fighting a U.S. criminal case for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. Sidley… Read more »

Among those she saw were senators who have sponsored a bipartisan measure sanctioning Turkey until it halts its invasion of northern Syria. Two of those sponsors are South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham and Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen. Graham said the U.S. should guard Syrian oilfields, and he called for an international force to guard a demilitarized zone between Turkish and Kurdish forces. Read more »

Delil Souleiman/GettyIn the southeastern Syrian desert, near the Jordan and Iraq borders, far from the ruins of the Caliphate or the carnage of the Turkish invasion, lies the terminal phase of a U.S. war. A dusty garrison outpost called al-Tanf, or sometimes at-Tanf, is now the last redoubt for the American forces in Syria that have occupied it since 2016. It has little to do with the war against the so-called Islamic State, the ostensible purpose of the U.S. in Syria, and far more to do with a confrontation against an entirely different adversary: Iran. The Oct. 6 phone call between presidents Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a prelude to the betrayal of the U.S.’ Syrian Kurdish partners, prompted a highly confusing U.S. withdrawal from the Syrian northeast, one that’s been misunderstood as a full withdrawal from Syria. Instead, according to a knowledgeable U.S. official not cleared to speak with reporters, hundreds of U.S. special operators and general-purpose troops have pulled back to al-Tanf. For however long they remain in Syria—now that the Turks have invaded and the Kurds have turned to the Syrian government and its Russian patrons for protection, the U.S. presence may be untenable—al-Tanf and the 55-kilometer “exclusion zone” surrounding it will be where they operate. In a coda for the war, the missions U.S. forces can execute from al-Tanf are unclear. Along with a proxy force the U.S. has trained for years at al-Tanf, the Syrian Arab Magahwir al-Thawra, the U.S. occasionally intercepts ISIS fighters. But officials familiar with the area note that the base is far from where the bulk of ISIS is. Whatever military utility al-Tanf has in 2019 has more to do with a conflict with Iran. The base is positioned along a crucial highway stretching east into Iraq, and onward to Iran, and west toward Damascus. Thwarting Iran and its proxies from accessing the Mediterranean coast, bringing weapons and money along the way, has been an undeclared priority of hawkish U.S. officials in both the Obama and Trump administrations, as well as regional allies like Israel. “Al-Tanf grew as a sop to Jordan, grew because Donald Trump delegated authorities to ground commanders, and was repurposed as an anti-Iran thing, despite the very real fact that Iranian aircraft fly over it on a routine basis,” said Aaron Stein, director of the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Al-Tanf has no obvious military purpose,” added Sam Heller of the International Crisis Group. “The real justification is, to my knowledge, denying the Syrian government and its Iranian ally access to the neighboring al-Tanf/al-Walid border crossing with Iraq. That blocks a key trade route that would better integrate Syria with its regional surroundings and help government-held Syria get on a more stable economic footing, which some in DC believe would diminish U.S. leverage to force a political resolution to the war.” Several former Trump administration officials, including ex-national security adviser John Bolton and cashiered Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have wanted to use the U.S. presence in Syria to… Read more »

(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. said it will set up a dedicated U.K. operations center during the next election, to counter misinformation networks, fake news stories and outside interference from other countries.Britain has consistently criticized Russia for attempting to manipulate elections around the world, while insisting there’s no evidence of interference in U.K. votes such as the 2016 Brexit referendum. But Facebook has been accused of hosting misinformation and advertisements seen only by narrowly targeted audiences.Writing in the Telegraph newspaper, after the company announced it had discovered four separate misinformation networks tied to Iran and Russia, Facebook executive Richard Allan said the company knows that “social media can bring significant new risks to the political process.”“People who want to interfere unlawfully with the outcome of an election will use every available means to try and do so, including platforms like ours,” wrote Allan, vice president for public policy in Europe. “We’ve built stronger defenses to prevent people using our platforms to interfere with elections and we’re continuing to make improvements in several key areas.”Facebook has pledged to label content as “false” or “partly false,” using an independent fact-checker, and to expand scrutiny of ads that have political content.To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Andrew PollackFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P. Read more »

Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams is helping lead a campaign for a new international treaty to ban killer weapons that can select targets and fire without decision-making by a human being. Williams, who shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her key role in the successful campaign for a treaty banning land mines, came to New York with members of the killer robot campaign to meet with diplomats from the U.N. General Assembly's disarmament committee. "A machine is not a moral anything," Williams said. Read more »

The crowd hurled potatoes that thudded on the sides of the hulking U.S. armored vehicles. "What happened to Americans?" one man shouted in English up at the sole U.S. soldier visible on the back of a vehicle. It was yet another indignity in a U.S. withdrawal that has been carried out over the past two weeks with more haste and violence than expected — and which may now be partially reversed. Read more »