COLOMBO / AFP Massive landslides triggered by torrential rains crashed down onto three villages in the central hills of Sri Lanka, and more than 200 families were missing on Wednesday and feared buried under the mud and debris, the Sri Lankan Red Cross said. Sixteen bodies have already been recovered and about 180 people have been rescued from the ...

  Yangon / AFP A US decision to pare back economic sanctions on Myanmar could unclog investment as the country claws its way out of poverty, Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government said on Wednesday, welcoming the move. Suu Kyi’s party took power in March after clinching a majority at last year’s election, the freest in generations for a nation ...

  Washington / AFP Hillary Clinton claimed a narrow victory in Kentucky as she sought to put away Bernie Sanders, but her resilient rival for the Democratic presidential nomination bounced back to snatch a win in Oregon. With the Kentucky race too close for most US networks to call a winner, Clinton declared victory shortly after Kentucky’s secretary of state ...

  Washington / AFP Donald Trump said he would speak with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in what would be a dramatic shift in US policy. “I would speak to him, I would have no problem speaking to him,” the Republican presumptive presidential nominee told Reuters in an exclusive interview. Until now, the US strategy has been to try and ...

  Caracas / AFP Public outrage over sweeping new emergency powers decreed this week by President Nicolas Maduro was expected to spill onto the streets of Venezuela on Wednesday, with planned nationwide protests marking a new lowpoint in his unpopular rule. The demonstrations mark the strongest challenge yet to Maduro’s controversial declaration of a state of emergency. Opposition-led marches in ...

  Hong Kong / AFP Hong Kong protesters angry at a visit by a top Beijing official shouted pro-democracy slogans on Wednesday but were kept well away from a mission seen as an attempt to bridge the city’s growing political divide. The three-day trip by Zhang Dejiang, who chairs China’s communist-controlled legislature, is the first by such a senior official ...

U.S. President Barack Obama’s impending trip to Japan for the G7 summit looks likely to be overshadowed by his planned visit to Hiroshima, a first for a sitting U.S. president. There has been extensive debate both among scholars and in the public arena about the justification for the use of nuclear weapons against Japan. This debate mirrors debates that were ...

  Given its crucial role as an investment gateway to mainland China, Beijing is striving to appease a sullen Hong Kong during the visit of high ranking Chinese official, Zhang Dejiang, who chairs China’s communist-controlled legislature. The world’s second largest economy is set to strike a compromise between the strategic position of Hong Kong as an investment hub on one ...

  Have some money you want to donate, with the goal of bringing about political change? Whatever you do, don’t give it to Hillary Clinton. Or Donald Trump. It isn’t that there’s anything particularly wrong with either candidate. It’s that money donated to presidential general-election candidates is mostly wasted. This is the lesson the Koch brothers have apparently learned. In ...

  Luke Hunt SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS When Cambodia announced plans to reintroduce tigers into the wild, the response was predictably negative. The country’s overarching reputation for corruption and mismanagement rose to the fore with its critics using an endangered species to carp about well-documented inadequacies. The Indochina tiger has been functionally extinct for several years. It was initially reported ...