Washington / AFP A polarized America went to the polls on Tuesday to pick its 45th president, choosing to elect either Hillary Clinton as the nation’s first female commander in chief or billionaire businessman Donald Trump after a long and rancorous campaign that upended US politics. The winner will inherit an anxious nation, angry and distrustful of leaders in Washington. ...

  Tallinn / AFP Estonia’s Prime Minister Taavi Roivas on Tuesday refused to step down a day after his three-party coalition collapsed, opting instead to face a confidence vote in parliament, reports said. The small Baltic eurozone and NATO member that is due to assume the EU’s rotating presidency in the second half of 2017 plunged into political chaos on ...

  Seoul / AFP South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Tuesday agreed to dump her nominee for prime minister and cede control of some state affairs in a major climbdown forced by a corruption scandal battering her administration. The same scandal saw prosecutors carry out a morning swoop on the offices of South Korea’s largest conglomerate Samsung Electronics, looking for incriminating ...

  Colombo / AFP Sri Lanka slammed China’s ambassador on Tuesday for criticising Colombo’s attitude to aid in the local media, as the island nation distances itself from its once-close ally and economic lifeline. Colombo took exception to ambassador Yi Xianliang’s comments at a press conference last week, where he said his host nation should stop criticising “expensive” loans granted ...

  Budapest /AFP Hungary’s radical right Jobbik dealt all-powerful Prime Minister Viktor Orban a rare defeat on Tuesday as it blocked his bid to change the constitution to bar the resettlement of refugees. While all 131 MPs of Orban’s ruling right-wing coalition voted in favour, the bill failed to pick up an extra two votes to reach a required two-thirds ...

  Hong Kong/ AFP British banker Rurik Jutting was found guilty of the horrifying murder of two Indonesian women at his upscale Hong Kong apartment and jailed for life on Tuesday, in a case the judge said was “sickening in the extreme”. Cambridge graduate Jutting, 31, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih two years ago ...

  Bashiqa /AFP Iraqi Kurdish forces have seized the town of Bashiqa near Mosul from the IS group, an official said on Tuesday, as US-backed militia forces advanced on the extremists’ Syrian stronghold Raqa. Capturing Bashiqa was one of the final steps in securing the eastern approaches to Mosul, three weeks into an offensive by Iraqi forces to retake the ...

  Berlin /AFP German police on Tuesday arrested five men suspected of links to the IS organisation, who allegedly sought to recruit fighters for the jextremist group. “The five accused formed a pan-regional extremist network, with the accused Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A. taking on the leading role,” said a statement from the prosecutors’ office, referring to the 32-year-old Iraqi. “The ...

  Berlin / AFP Germany is open to providing protection for Turks who have been “politically persecuted” by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government in its widening crackdown following a failed putsch, a senior German official said on Tuesday. “Critics in Turkey should know that the German government stands in solidarity with them,” Michael Roth, state secretary at the foreign ministry, told Die ...

  Paris / AFP French investigators have identified a Moroccan-Belgian extremist based in Syria as a key plotter of attacks in Paris and Brussels, sources said on Tuesday, announcing a breakthrough in their multi-country probe. Oussama Atar, a 32-year-old believed to be a member of the IS group, was already a suspect in the March 22 attacks on Brussels but ...