Antalya / AFP Ankara will abandon a deal with the European Union to reduce migrant flows if its citizens are not granted visa-free travel to most of the bloc, Turkey’s foreign minister has warned. With the two sides locked in an increasingly-bitter standoff, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said it was “impossible” for Ankara to change anti-terror laws that ...

  Paris / AFP Seven suspected extremists, including the brother of one of the suicide bombers in last November’s Paris attacks, went on trial in Paris on Monday. The men, now aged between 24 and 27, travelled to Syria at the end of 2013 and returned to France a few months later. Arrested in May 2014, they all deny having ...

Bloomberg Splits in the UK Conservative Party pose a growing threat to David Cameron’s chances of remaining prime minister after the Brexit referendum as “blue-on-blue” attacks become increasingly acrimonious. Bookmakers cut the odds on Cameron’s ouster this year as former London Mayor Boris Johnson and Justice Secretary Michael Gove, prominent Conservative campaigners to leave the European Union, said the premier’s ...

  TIRANA / AP NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly urged alliance members on Monday to stand up to Russia’s military assertiveness and to do a better job sharing the burden of collective defense. A unanimously approved declaration called on alliance members “to provide reassurance to those allies who feel their security is under threat, focusing on the eastern and southern flanks of ...

  Jakarta / AFP Beijing insisted on Monday a Chinese boat detained close to Indonesian islands had been fishing legally, in a fresh flare-up of tensions between the countries in the South China Sea. The Indonesian navy seized the Chinese boat in waters near the Natuna Islands on Friday for allegedly fishing illegally, the military said. The boat was towed ...

  Manila /AFP Rodrigo Duterte snubbed his proclamation as the next Philippine president on Monday, reinforcing his image as a maverick outsider intent on challenging the nation’s political establishment. A joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate in Manila endorsed the official count of this month’s election, which saw the trash-talking politician who revels in threats to ...

WASHINGTON Maybe the middle class isn’t quite so stressed any more. We in the media are rightly criticized for a pessimistic bias. We cover the unfortunate, the grim and the tragic. News is what people don’t know and, as often as not, is sad or shocking. Our prism on the world distorts reality, because reality is often predictable and reassuring ...

  Rising oil prices may give the European Central Bank (ECB) a rare opportunity to revise upwards its price growth forecasts when it meets on Thursday. Brent and WTI crude oil topped $50 per barrel on Thursday and remained above $49 on Friday. However, overall inflation remains very low and the euro area slipped back into deflation in April, with ...

  Mark Whitehouse Greece and its creditors may have averted a crisis by agreeing on the release of another dose of bailout money, but the deal does little to address a deeper problem: Europeans still don’t want to put their money there. The flow of capital between the rest of the euro area and Greece offers a useful indicator of ...

One of the major issues within New Zealand over the past few months has been the rapidly increasing cost of housing, particularly in the country’s largest city and commercial hub, Auckland. High prices combined with moderate incomes have pushed the city into becoming one of the most expensive places in the world to buy a house. The press have been ...