One man worked as a Turkish translator and was escorting tourists back to the airport. One woman, an airport worker, was looking forward to her wedding in 10 days. There were taxi drivers and a customs officer. And there was a Turkish couple who worked together, and died together, in the suicide attack on Tuesday night at Istanbul Ataturk Airport that killed at least 41 people and wounded more than 200.

Details about the victims began trickling out on Wednesday. At least 23 of them were Turkish, according to a Turkish official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the record about the attack.The victims reflected the cosmopolitan and international character of Istanbul, whose airport is among the world’s busiest, a hub for tens of millions of passengers each year connecting to Europe, West Asia, Africa and beyond. Among the victims were five Saudis, two Iraqis and one citizen each from China, Iran, Jordan, Tunisia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, the Turkish official said.

Flights resume

Hours after the attack, a limited number of flights resumed and workers continued clearing debris and replacing shattered windows at the airport.Unlike in Brussels, where a terrorist attack in March closed the airport for days, Turkey appeared determined to get back to business as usual. On Wednesday morning, cars streamed into the airport’s international terminal, where the attack occurred.

But traces of the blasts lingered: Police tape marked off the area of one of the explosions. Workers in yellow vests pounded long support bars into the concrete sidewalk, erecting a 7-foot high metal fence dividing the road from the airport entrance.An elderly woman, who said she was a refugee from Afghanistan, sat on gravel in the shade, near a pile of her belongings, and watched them. Passengers making their way through the first airport security check point on Wednesday seemed shaken.

“It was only God’s grace that separated us from the tragedies that happened here,” said Tanika Golota (26), a school counsellor from Chicago, who was holding her 1-year-old, Mila. The Golotas, on their way home from a vacation in Portugal with a layover in Istanbul, had left the airport just 40 minutes before the explosion. “You see it on TV and you know it happens, but we are naive to the fact that it could happen to us,” she said.

Rodrigo Duterte was sworn in Thursday as President of the Philippines, with some hoping his maverick style will energize the country but others fearing he will undercut one of Asia’s liveliest democracies amid threats to kill criminals en masse.The 71-year-old former prosecutor and longtime mayor of southern Davao city won a resounding victory in May’s elections in his first foray into national politics.Mr. Duterte, who begins a six-year term as President, captured attention with promises to cleanse the poor Southeast Asian nation of criminals and government crooks within six months an audacious pledge that was welcomed by many crime-weary Filipinos but alarmed human rights watchdogs and the influential Roman Catholic church.

Shortly after Mr. Duterte’s election win, policemen launched an anti-drug crackdown under his name, leaving dozens of mostly poor drug-dealing suspects dead in gunfights with police or in mysterious circumstances.Days before his swearing in, Mr. Duterte was threatening criminals with death if they wouldn’t reform.“If you destroy my country, I will kill you,” he said in a warning to criminals in a speech during the last flag-raising ceremony he presided as mayor in Davao city this week.

Vice President Leni Robredo, a human rights lawyer who comes from a rival political party, was sworn in earlier in a separate ceremony. Vice presidents are separately elected in the Philippines, and in a sign of Mr. Duterte’s go-it-alone style, he has not met her since the May 9 vote.In a country long ruled by wealthy political clans, Mr. Duterte rose from middle-class roots. He built a reputation on the campaign trail with profanity-laced speeches, sex jokes and curses that sideswiped even the widely revered pope and the United Nations.

Mr. Duterte is the first President to come from the country’s volatile south, homeland of minority Muslims and scene of a decades-long Muslim separatist insurgency, where he said his central Philippine-based family migrated in search of better opportunities