BEIJING /AFP A top Chinese police official was elected president of Interpol on Thursday, setting off alarm bells among rights advocates over abuses and a lack of transparency within China’s legal system, as well as the potential misuse of the police organization to attack Beijing’s political opponents. Vice Public Security Minister Meng Hongwei was named as the first Chinese …

  Moscow/ AFP Russia’s security service said on Thursday it had detained several people in Crimea, accusing them of being saboteurs sent by Kiev to the Moscow-annexed peninsula to attack infrastructure targets. Russia’s FSB security service on Wednesday “detained members of a sabotage-terrorist group from the main intelligence directorate of the Ukrainian defence ministry,” it said in a statement. The …

  At dawn on Tuesday in West Quoddy Head, Maine, America’s easternmost point, it was certain that by midnight in Cape Wrangell, Alaska, America’s westernmost fringe, there would be a loser who deserved to lose and a winner who did not deserve to win. The surprise is that Barack Obama must have immediately seen his legacy, a compound of stylistic …