We are now deep in the era of political shocks. One electorate after another has expressed its anger with mainstream parties and technocratic elites by favouring political outsiders and know-nothing anti-incumbents. But what explains the appeal of demagogues once they start governing and reveal themselves to be exponents of chaos? The widespread disorder predicted last November, when Prime Minister …

  Europe’s tale of two rescue funds is morphing into a worrying saga. The outlook for the region’s original crisis bailout vehicle, the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), to raise sufficient long-term funds to do its job is getting trickier. Despite last week being a pretty decent one for bond issuance, the EFSF stayed on the sidelines. Meanwhile, its more-popular …

  Over the last decade, WikiLeaks has heedlessly published sensitive diplomatic cables, classified military files, secret trade documents and politically explosive emails. Last week, it dumped thousands of new files it says are from the Central Intelligence Agency. If authentic, as seems likely, it may prove the most destructive disclosure yet. Most of the new material relates to tools used …

  UK Parliament gave Prime Minister Theresa May the power to trigger Article 50, a formal process to withdraw from European Union. She is expected to send the letter to begin the process by the end of March. European Union Bill reached UK Parliament to be discussed after House of Commons and House of Lords battled over the bill’s contents, …

  ANKARA/ AP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday directed fresh verbal attacks at the Netherlands amid their growing diplomatic spat, holding the country responsible for Europe’s worst mass killing since World War II. In a televised speech, Erdogan referred to the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia, in 1995, and blamed a …

  BRUSSELS / AP European Union lawmakers have voted to toughen the bloc’s gun laws and close loopholes exploited by attackers in France. The lawmakers passed the rules on Tuesday in a 491-178 vote, with 28 abstentions. It will force EU countries to beef up laws on certain arms that fire blanks so they can’t be easily converted to use …

  NEW DELHI / AP Police say assailants have shot and hacked to death a Sufi spiritual leader and his adopted daughter in northern Bangladesh. Local police chief Hamidul Alam said on Tuesday the bodies of Farhad Hossain Chowdhury and his daughter, Rupali Begum, were recovered late Monday from a shrine Chowdhury ran in Dinajpur district. Alam said police are …

  JERUSALEM / AP Israeli police have raided the east Jerusalem office of a prominent Palestinian cartographer, accusing him of working illegally on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Khalil Tufagji told The Associated Press that police had entered his office and were confiscating computers and files before the line went dead. His daughter Roleen later said her father had been …

  UNITED NATIONS / AP The Syrian government committed “slow-motion slaughter” of unknown numbers of Syrians trapped in besieged and hard-to-reach areas by willfully denying them food and health care, according to a new report on Tuesday from a civil rights group. Physicians for Human Rights says in the report that the Syrian government consistently exploited a new UN aid …

  MANILA / AP Libya’s eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar launched an assault by land, air and sea on Tuesday to retake two of the country’s key oil terminals, as fighting threatens to escalate in the holder of Africa’s largest crude reserves. Fighters were deployed near Ras Lanuf and Es Sider, according to three military sources who asked not to …