Baghdad / AFP Iraqi forces advanced on Thursday after declaring a new phase in their offensive on eastern Mosul, stepping up efforts to reclaim the IS group’s last major stronghold in the country. Elite forces have reconquered several parts of eastern Mosul since beginning the massive operation to recapture the northern city from the extremists on October 17, but ...

  Kiev / AFP Ukraine on Thursday reported the first death of a soldier since Kiev agreed a new “indefinite” ceasefire deal with pro-Russian insurgents in the separatist east last week. The military said the death occurred on Wednesday in the village of Kurti Blaka, some 15 kilometres (nine miles) north of the militias’ de facto capital of Donetsk. The rebels ...

  Manila / AFP At least 39 people have been injured in two separate bomb attacks in the Philippines, authorities said on Thursday. In the first incident, two bombs exploded late Wednesday in the central island of Leyte, wounding 33 people who were watching a boxing match in Hilongos, government officials said. Another unexploded bomb was also found in the town, ...

  Tokyo / AFP Japan’s hawkish defence minister prayed on Thursday at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo the day after accompanying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a symbolic visit of reconciliation to Pearl Harbor, drawing condemnation from China and South Korea. Yasukuni Shrine honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead, but is contentious for also enshrining senior military and political ...

Seoul / AFP South Korea’s ambassador to France was grilled by investigators on Thursday over allegations that the government blacklisted thousands of cultural figures deemed critical of impeached President Park Geun-Hye. Ambassador Mo Chul-Min, who served as senior presidential secretary for education and culture from 2013 to 2014, returned home on Wednesday following a summons from a special prosecutor probing ...

  Taipei / AFP A top Taiwanese intelligence official on Thursday urged the island’s former agents not to travel to China, citing safety risks as relations with Beijing grow increasingly tense. Kuo Chung-hsin, deputy director of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, told reporters in parliament that “the current atmosphere is not suitable” for former and retired intelligence officers to visit China. “China ...

Beijing / AFP Chinese police have shot dead three people who allegedly attacked a Communist Party office in the restive Xinjiang region on Wednesday, state media said, in the bloodiest such incident in months. The three “rioters” drove up to a local party office in Moyu County and “detonated (an) explosive device”, killing two and injuring three others, the official ...

  Spend much time with economists around this time of year, and you will, eventually, get around to hearing about the dreadful inefficiency of exchanging gifts. You desperately wrack your brains for something, and then buy a supply of scented bath oil for someone who has only got a shower; they return the favor by giving you three books you ...

  Plenty of M&A deals have destroyed value for the acquirer’s investors but few have done so quite as quickly, or egregiously, as Westinghouse Electric’s purchase of CB&I Stone & Webster Inc., a U.S. nuclear construction business. On Tuesday, Westinghouse’s parent company Toshiba Corp. said a reassessment of the $229 million deal, announced barely a year ago, might oblige it ...

  The notion that we’re getting worse at generating big, world-changing ideas has been gaining currency. As the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip wrote earlier this month: Outside of personal technology, improvements in everyday life have been incremental, not revolutionary. Houses, appliances and cars look much like they did a generation ago. Airplanes fly no faster than in the 1960s. ...