Ansbach / AFP Democratic power players Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders offered contrasting heartfelt and hard-headed endorsements of Hillary Clinton, imploring a riven and feisty party convention to unite against Donald Trump. As polls showed Trump ahead of Clinton in the race to the White House, the first lady wowed the Philadelphia crowd as she impeached Trump’s character and hailed …

  Sydney / AFP The Australian government ordered an inquiry on Tuesday after graphic evidence emerged of prison guards assaulting teenage boys, with one shown hooded and shackled in scenes likened to Guantanamo Bay. National broadcaster ABC showed footage of offenders, many indigenous, being stripped naked, tear-gassed and held in solitary confinement for weeks at a youth detention centre in …

  Vientiane / AFP The United States warned North Korea on Tuesday that it faces “real consequences” over its internationally condemned nuclear and missile tests, which have inflamed tensions in East Asia. “Together we are determined… to make absolutely certain that DPRK (North Korea) understands that there are real consequences for these actions,” US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters …