As refugees suffer, UN throws a grandiose humanitarian summit and other top stories.

• As refugees suffer, UN throws a grandiose humanitarian summit

  While tens of millions of people endure displacement, starvation and violent death from long-running wars and unexpected disasters, the United Nations is hosting an international humanitarian summit, hoping to shake up a tottering global aid system. But the much ballyhooed summit is taking place without President Obama or Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The U.N.’s top humanitarian relief official, Stephen O’Brien, has described the two-day Istanbul meeting, which continues through Tuesday, as a “once-..

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• North Korean Official Who Survived Purge Now Leads Kim's Economic Plan

  

  Kim Jong Un is looking to one of North Korea’s more experienced technocrats -- who once narrowly escaped being purged -- to revive the economy in the face of punishing international sanctions.Kim this month named prime minister Pak Pong Ju, 77, to the five-man standing committee of the ruling Workers’ Party, making him the highest-ranking official to lead a new five-year economic plan. The regime’s leader announced the blueprint at the first full party congress in 36 years, held as he seeks to ..

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• Analysis: No easy victories in battle to liberate Falluja from ISIS

  

  But how long it will take to reach that moment is difficult to say. ISIS has proven to be a formidable foe, and every victory over the group has come at a high cost. To paraphrase that classic line attributed by war correspondent Peter Arnett to an American officer in the Vietnam War: To save cities from ISIS, Iraqi forces have had to destroy them. The Iraqi air force has dropped thousands of leaflets over Falluja urging civilians to leave, but ISIS is reportedly preventing them from doing so. T..

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• EgyptAir: Crashed flight MS804 'did not swerve'

  

  Media captionFootage of items found by the Egyptian military and the search (no sound on this video) An EgyptAir flight that crashed in the Mediterranean did not swerve and change direction before disappearing, an Egyptian official says.The Airbus A320 was en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard when it vanished from radar early on Thursday.Greece's defence minister said the plane turned 90 degrees left and then did a 360-degree turn towards the right before plummeting.But a seni..

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• Austria election: Unity call after close defeat for far right

  

  Media captionAlexander Van der Bellen: "Thank you for that trust you put in me" Austria's new president has vowed to listen to the people's "fear and anger" after his far-right opponent narrowly missed out on a landmark victory.Independent Alexander Van der Bellen beat the Freedom Party's Norbert Hofer by just 31,000 votes among the 4.64 million cast in Sunday's election.The victor accepted there was a "rift" but said: "We are two sides of the same coin. Together we make up Austria."Mr Hofe..

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