BEIRUT / Reuters Syrian rebels in a besieged area northeast of Damascus have been told they must accept state rule or leave, a rebel group said on Tuesday, as the government and its Russian ally seek to wipe out the last pockets of opposition territory near the capital. The ultimatum to the rebels of eastern Qalamoun was served to civilians ...

BEIJING / Reuters China appreciates North Korea’s “important efforts” to ease tension on the Korean peninsula, senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi told the North’s foreign minister on Tuesday, hours after he called on all sides to stay focussed on talks. China has traditionally been secretive North Korea’s closest ally, though ties had been frayed by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s ...

GENEVA / Reuters United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the warring sides in Yemen on Tuesday to reach a political settlement to end a four-year-old conflict that has left 22 million people in urgent need of aid. Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi echoed the call for a return to the negotiating table and said that his internationally-recognised government was working ...

BERLIN / Reuters German prosecutors filed a request to a regional court on Tuesday for the extradition of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to Spain, where he faces charges of rebellion over the region’s campaign for independence. Puigdemont has been held in a detention centre in the northern German town of Neumuenster for just over a week after he was ...

LONDON / Reuters Britain is looking for a “proportionate way” to respond to the threat posed by Russia, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday, after a retired Russian army official said the poisoning of a former spy could start a new world war. “We need to respond in a proportionate way to this aggressive behaviour from ...

JERUSALEM / Reuters Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he was cancelling an agreement with the UN refugee agency to relocate thousands of African migrants, bowing to right-wing pressure to scrap the deal. Hours after announcing the arrangement, which also would have given thousands of other migrants the right to stay in Israel, Netanyahu posted on his Facebook ...

Trade-related topics that had been a sleeper have become a front-burner issue for investors. Equity prices and Treasury yields plunged on March 23 after the US announcement of a 25 percent tariff on up to $60 billion of Chinese exports. Over that weekend, both sides expressed interest in reconciling differences and markets reversed path when they opened March 26. If ...

Just as the market’s love for the FANG stocks turns to angst, the US government is looking to ban Chinese investments in its technologies. That’s a bigger problem for the country’s expensive chipmakers than their would-be Asian acquirers. Semiconductors and 5G wireless communications are among areas that would be placed off-limits under plans to invoke a law reserved for national ...

From West Virginia to Arizona, public-school teachers are in revolt. They are demanding better pay, and they deserve it — so long as their salaries are tied to their performance. It’s not that US teachers are underpaid; the median income for the country’s 1 million high-school teachers, for example, is more than 50 percent higher than that of the general ...

Everyone loves an underdog, unless it’s Rodrigo Duterte and the Philippine peso. The Philippines is Asia’s worst stock and currency market this year. A 6 percent slump in the benchmark index combined with a 4.6 percent slide in the peso means US dollar-based investors are looking at double-digit losses. Year-to-date, foreigners pulled more than $580 million from shares, after inflows ...