Lauren DeCicca, Getty Images A Rohingya woman feeds her one month old baby at the school in the Baw Du Pha internal displacement camp on May 17, 2016 in Sittwe, Burma. A fire in early May left 56 homes destroyed in the camp and 2,224…

WASHINGTON — President Obama signed an executive order to detect and prevent mass atrocities Wednesday, proclaiming that the prevention of atrocities is a "core national security interest of the United States."

But the executive order doesn't lay out any policy changes or give the give the government any explicit new power. Instead, it mostly makes permanent an Atrocities Prevention Board that's already existed for four years.

"We’re making sure that the United States government has the structures, the mechanisms to better prevent and respond to mass atrocities," Obama said in 2012, heralding the first meeting of the board at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The board is designed to be a sort of early-warning system, alerting senior U.S. policymakers about a pending atrocity while there's still time to do something about it.

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The people of China, Germany and the UK are the most welcoming to refugees in the world, according to an Amnesty International survey on attitudes towards those fleeing war and persecution.

In a global survey of 27,000 people across 27 countries, nearly 70% said their governments should being doing more to help refugees, while 80% said they would accept refugees living in their country, city, or neighbourhood.

One in 10 would welcome a refugee to live in their own home, with the figure rising to 46% in China and 29% in the UK.

China and the UK were first and third respectively on Amnesty’s Refugees Welcome Index, with Germany in second place.

Of UK respondents: In Germany, a country that received 1.1 million asylum seekers in 2015, almost every respondent (96%) said they would accept refugees in their country, while only 3% said refugees should be refused entry. And 76% of German respondents said their government should be doing more to assist refugees.

• 84% agreed that “people should be able to take refuge in other countries to escape war or persecution”.
  
• 7o% believed the government should do more to help refugees fleeing war or persecution.
• 82% would welcome refugees living in their city, town, or village.
• 76% would welcome refugees living in their neighbourhood.
• 29% would welcome refugees living in their own home.

In many cases the response of people appears at odds with their country’s political culture, such as in Australia, which is fifth on Amnesty’s index.

While the country has hardline policies towards people seeking asylum on its shores, including mandatory and sometimes indefinite detention in remote island camps overseas, seven in 10 people believe the country should do more to help people displaced by war or persecution.

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Shamash Kassam and his son put the bison calf in the back of their SUV because they thought it looked cold.

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As risks for recession-hit Russia subside at home, top officials are sounding alarms about another gathering threat.

President Vladimir Putin hosts leaders from across Southeast Asia this week, and policy makers are increasingly turning their focus to perils from China. Any “problems” in the second-biggest economy will feed through to Russia via commodities markets, according to Deputy Finance Minister Maxim Oreshkin. Warning that the world economy isn’t yet prepared for a more flexible yuan, Bank of Russia First Deputy Governor Ksenia Yudaeva said it warrants a global discussion.

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