Idomeni / AFP Some 700 refugees and migrants were being held in Macedonia on Tuesday after they managed to slip across the border from Greece, a frontier that has been shut for a week. Dozens of others who failed to cross were returning to the overflowing Idomeni camp on the Greek side, where some 14,000 people are stuck in increasing ...

Naypyidaw / AFP Myanmar’s lawmakers on Tuesday elected a close aide and longtime friend of Aung San Suu Kyi to become the first civilian president in decades, a historic moment for the formerly junta-run nation. Htin Kyaw, 69, hailed his elevation to the top post as “Suu Kyi’s victory”, a clear nod to her plan that he serve as a ...

London / AFP Kurdish rebel leader Cemil Bayik warned Turkey to expect payback for the deadly clashes that have raged following the collapse of a fragile truce, in an interview published in Britain’s Times daily on Tuesday. Bayik, one of the leaders of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), said to expect fighting “everywhere” and insisted its guerillas were justified ...

United Nations / AFP UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon angrily told Morocco’s foreign minister that protests organized in Rabat against his remarks on Western Sahara were disrespectful. Ban “expressed his deep disappointment and anger regarding the demonstration that was mobilized on Sunday, which targeted him in person,” said a UN statement released after his meeting with Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar in ...

Geneva / AFP UN investigators welcomed a “significant decrease” in violence in Syria on the fifth anniversary of the start of the brutal conflict on Tuesday, saying they finally glimpsed hope of an end to the war. “Now, for the first time, there is hope of an end in sight,” said Paulo Pinheiro, head of the UN Commission of Inquiry ...

Seoul / AFP North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered an upcoming nuclear warhead test and multiple ballistic missile launches, escalating Pyongyang’s face-off with the international community just days after being slapped with tough UN sanctions. The order came after Kim monitored what was described as the successful simulated test of the warhead re-entry technology required for a long-range nuclear ...

Bloomberg Malaysia is reviewing plans to bar foreign political donations after Prime Minister Najib Razak became embroiled in a scandal over a $681 million contribution that ended up in his personal bank account. A Malaysian committee working on a framework to regulate political funding also determined that anonymous donations should not exceed 1,000 ringgit ($242) and contributions must be held ...

There’s no subtlety about Democrats’ tax plans. Between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, details differ, but the central themes are identical: Soak the rich. To hear Democrats tell it, the country’s main budget problem is that the rich don’t pay their “fair share.” If they did, the fiscal outlook would brighten. We can now test this proposition, because the Clinton ...

The decision of Bank of Japan (BoJ) to keep monetary stimulus unchanged sent mixed messages to the stock markets, with Tokyo shares closing down 0.68% after the announcement, while the yen strengthening against all its 16 major peers. The yen’s reaction on Tuesday threw the ball in the court of Japan’s central bank chief to convince the market of the ...

Is Donald Trump benefiting, at least in the short term, from the focus on protests and violence at his rallies? If so, his ability to deflect attention from his rivals’ substantive attacks on him has worked again. From the beginning, we’ve talked about the Red Queen race: Trump must do increasingly outrageous things to maintain his dominant share of press ...