Tokyo/ AFP The lacklustre global economy should take centre stage as world leaders gather in Japan this week, but with no agreement likely on igniting growth, Barack Obama’s visit to the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima looks set to capture the limelight. A gathering Chinese slowdown, weak oil prices and the looming threat of Britain’s exit from the European Union ...

  Kiev / AP Seven Ukrainian soldiers have died in the war-torn east over the past 24 hours, the biggest casualty toll in a single day this year, Kiev said on Tuesday. The latest violence came as the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine called for the implementation of a peace deal in the separatist east during late-night talks ...

  Ramallah / AFP Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah on Tuesday dismissed an Israeli proposal for direct negotiations instead of a French multilateral peace initiative, calling it an attempt to “buy time”. Hamdallah made the comments as he met French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who held talks in Israel and the Palestinian territories this week to push Paris’s peace initiative. ...

  Hanoi / AFP US President Barack Obama told communist Vietnam on Tuesday that basic human rights would not jeopardise its stability, in an impassioned appeal for the one-party state to abandon authoritarianism. In a sweeping speech, which harked back to the bloody war that defined both nations but also looked to the future, Obama said that “upholding rights is ...

  London / AFP Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed said he has been granted refugee status in Britain, after being toppled from power and jailed in a “slide towards authoritarianism” that has forced him into exile. Nasheed, the country’s first democratically elected leader, was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment on controversial terrorism charges last year, but was allowed to travel ...

Brasília /AFP Acting Brazilian president Michel Temer’s government faced its first major crisis when a key minister stepped aside following a leaked recording in which he appears to discuss using Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment to derail a huge corruption probe. Planning Minister Romero Juca said in a hurried appearance before television cameras that he would step aside from Tuesday. Although he ...

  ANKARA A tour of the war zones in Iraq and Syria with the top American commander ends, appropriately enough, here in Turkey, the strongest power in the region and the place where the modern troubles began a hundred years ago with the collapse of the Ottoman empire. The abiding strategic fact about the current war against the IS is ...

  Rapprochement between Washington and Hanoi has moved an extra mile towards deeper engagement following the US decision to lift a decades-old ban on lethal arms sales to Vietnam 40 years after a the bitter US– Vietnamese war ended. Amid growing tension with China over a maritime dispute, the lifting of arms embargo is vital as it will allow Vietnam ...

  Jonathan Bernstein With a bunch of new polls released over the weekend, speculation about how a general election race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ends is beginning to matter. Just not in the way you would think, based on all the hype. We have three ways to predict what will happen, each with strengths and weaknesses. First, there ...

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have propelled their campaigns in part by appealing to globalization’s losers. The blue-collar American workers who have seen wages shrink and jobs disappear offshore have responded strongly to Trump’s China-bashing and Clinton’s newfound suspicions about free trade. Free Trade Feud The reality, though, is that neither candidate is going to bring manufacturing jobs back ...