Moscow / AFP Four armed “bandits” were killed and two wounded in a shootout following an attack on police in the capital of Russia’s Chechnya region, strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov said. Regional boss Kadyrov said a “group of armed people” attacked a police officer and stole his car in the capital Grozny late Saturday. A shootout erupted as law ...

  Sydney / AFP Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has renewed his call for a republic, but only after Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, as he outlined a road map for breaking away from the British monarchy. Turnbull—a staunch republican who led the cause before a failed referendum in 1999—said his support for an Australian head of state stemmed from patriotism. ...

  Algiers / AFP Amnesty International on Sunday urged Algeria to adopt a law on the right to asylum and to open an investigation into the deportation of sub-Saharan migrants from the country this month. “The authorities should decriminalise irregular immigration, adopt a law on (the right to) asylum and fight racism against sub-Saharans in the country,” the group’s Algeria ...

  Caracas / AFP With protests rocking his unpopular government, embattled President Nicolas Maduro delayed until January 2 taking Venezuela’s highest denomination bill out of circulation. The 100 bolivar bills would temporarily remain legal tender, Maduro said Saturday, but the borders with Colombia and Brazil will remain closed to hit what he claims are “mafias” hoarding Venezuelan cash abroad in a ...

  Yangon / AFP Myanmar’s army has seized an important outpost from a powerful rebel faction during a bout of intense fighting, state media and insurgents confirmed on Sunday, in the latest blow to peace efforts. Fighting has blighted Myanmar’s border regions for decades, pitting various ethnic minority groups seeking autonomy or independence against the notoriously abusive military. The latest ...

  There is no mystery about Barack Obama’s greatest presidential achievement: He stopped the Great Recession from becoming the second Great Depression. True, he had plenty of help, including from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and from the top officials at the Treasury and Federal Reserve. But if Obama had made one wrong step, what was a crushing economic slump ...

  The unemployment rate is down to 4.6 percent, which sounds pretty good. But the unemployment rate doesn’t count people who’ve given up looking for jobs, which is why the employment-to-population ratio, especially the “prime-age” ratio for those 25 through 54, may be a better measure of the health of the labour market. After I wrote about this metric, several ...

  If only congressional Republicans were as confident in their ideas for replacing Obamacare as they are in their plans to repeal it. Then maybe the quick strike against the law that they have scheduled for the new year would be accompanied by a constructive debate about the vast yet troubled federal program that tens of millions of Americans have ...

  The Pentagon has accused China of seizing an unmanned naval probe in international waters in the South China Sea. The incident can stoke tensions around Beijing military presence in the disputed area. Reports that emerged after the incident said that the underwater vehicle was taken around 50 nautical miles (90 kilometers) northwest off Subic Bay in the Philippines. The ...

  This week, after four and a half years of faithful service, I finally replaced my old laptop. I will not bore you with the litany of troubles that led to this decision. The only interesting thing about my decision to replace my old 15-inch Macbook Pro is what I chose to replace it with: a nearly identical Macbook, about ...