Rabat / AFP The Islamist party which has headed Morocco’s coalition government since Arab Spring-inspired protests five years ago has beaten liberal rivals in parliamentary elections, results showed on Saturday. Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) took 125 seats out of 395, the interior ministry said after all ballots were counted. Its main rival, the ...

  Brussels / AFP Belgian police missed 13 opportunities to unmask the participants of the deadly Paris November attacks before the events, according to an internal report leaked to a newspaper on Saturday. The police report in the De Tijd daily shows that as early as February 2015, the force were in possession of phone records linking known terrorist suspects ...

  Tbilisi / AFP Georgians voted on Saturday in bitterly contested parliamentary polls that have sparked fears of political instability in the Caucasus nation, with two pro-Western parties tied after a fraught campaign. The knife-edge elections see the ruling Georgian Dream party, led from behind the scenes by billionaire ex-PM Bidzina Ivanishvili, grappling with the United National Movement (UNM), founded ...

Budapest / AFP Hungary’s biggest opposition newspaper has been suspended, its owner said on Saturday, stoking concerns about media freedom under right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The opposition Socialists called the halting of Nepszabadsag’s print and online operations was a “black day for the press” and called a demonstration outside the paper’s offices at 1600 GMT. Owners Mediaworks said however ...

  Srinagar / AFP Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city came under curfew again after thousands clashed with government forces during the funeral of boy killed in protests, police said on Saturday. Police and paramilitary troops fired tear gas, pellets and live rounds into the air to disperse the funeral procession of the 12-year-old as his body was carried to Srinagar’s “Martyr’s ...

  Vilnius / AFP Russia is again deploying nuclear-capable Iskander missiles into its Kaliningrad outpost bordering two NATO members, Lithuania said on Saturday, warning the move was aimed at pressuring the West into making concessions over Syria and Ukraine. “Russia is holding military exercises in Kaliningrad, and its scenario includes deployment of Iskander missile systems and the possibile use of ...

A reactionary is someone who wishes to return, usually unrealistically, to an earlier and more appealing era. We have two reactionaries running for president. Both peddle agendas that promise to re-create a reassuring past. We are being fed different varieties of nostalgia. Neither will work. Donald Trump is most explicit. He pledges to “make America great again.” What does this ...

  If there’s a golden rule for central bankers in the 21st century, this is it: Seek clarity and avoid uncertainty. A central bank’s target should be clear. The data it uses should be known. The analysis it conducts on that data should be comprehensible. And, certainly, politics should have nothing to do with its decisions. Negative Interest Rates Yet ...

Canada is an unlikely model for climate-change policy. As things stand, it’s a long way from keeping the promise it made as part of the Paris agreement to sharply cut carbon emissions. But its government is now proposing to make this right — and with an approach that deserves to be widely copied. The Cost of Carbon This week Prime ...

  2004: Tropical Storm Jeanne claims around 2,800 lives. 2010: Earthquake leaves more than 250,000 dead. 2016: Hurricane Matthew kills more than 800. Natural disasters have been visiting Haiti with alarming regularity (every six years). It has received massive foreign funding during these crises. But sadly, the foreign intervention has failed to build local capacity and assist masses in bringing ...