Paris / AFP The rain-swollen River Seine in Paris receded for the first time in a week after nearing its highest level in three decades, triggering a scramble to save artworks in riverside museums. The Seine stood at 6.06 metres above normal levels at 8:00am, down from a high of 6.10 metres overnight, the environment ministry’s Vigicrues flood watch …

WASHINGTON The West is suffering from what one leading strategist calls an “autoimmune disease” in trying to fight the IS. The self-defense mechanisms championed by Donald Trump and his European neo-populist counterparts have gone into toxic overdrive — weakening the West’s body politic and making the extremism fever far worse. David Kenning, a British counter-radicalization expert, made this provocative argument …

  China’s endeavours to spread its wings over South China Sea is causing tremendous alarm and tension among neighbouring states which view Beijing’s encroachment towards their sovereign regional waters as an outright use of force to commandeer their regional coasts. Given its strategic location, China, the world’s second largest economy, claims large swathes of one of the world’s busiest shipping …