Pretoria / AFP An offensive to encircle Iraq’s second city of Mosul should begin “in the next few weeks”, Britain’s Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said Friday, after a visit to the country. Mosul has been held by Islamic State jihadists since June 2014 and British jets are part of a US-led coalition flying missions against them in Iraq and ...

  United Nations / AFP The United Nations, African Union, European Union and a fourth international organization made a joint appeal on Saturday to the government and opposition in the Democratic Republic of Congo to exercise restraint amid violent political unrest. The three main international bodies were joined by the 57 International Organization of La Francophonie, which held a high-profile ...

  Libreville / AFP Libreville’s nearly empty streets were under the watch of a heavy police and military presence on Saturday after Gabon’s top court upheld President Ali Bongo’s re-election in bitterly disputed polls. Security force checkpoints dotted routes into the capital’s centre, helicopters hovered overhead and elite troops protected the presidential palace, but no violence had been reported. The ...

  Aden / AFP An apparent US drone strike has killed five suspected Al-Qaeda members in Yemen in the third such attack this week, a security official said on Saturday. Washington is the only government to operate drones over Yemen but only sporadically releases statements on its long-running bombing campaign against the country’s powerful Al-Qaeda branch. The Friday evening strike ...

  Bloomberg Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-Ying pledged to provide more land to build apartments for low-income people in a bid to lower housing prices in the world’s least-affordable city. Only a small portion of Hong Kong’s 11 million square kilometers (6.8 million square miles) of land has been developed, and is the reason housing is expensive and land ...

  Montreal / AFP Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called for strong relations with Canada as he wrapped up a three-day visit to the important trading partner. “We have no excuses,” Li told a Canadian-Chinese business council in Montreal. “China and Canada must have win-win cooperation.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Li announced on Thursday an agreement to begin talks ...

  Bloomberg Hundreds of Takata Corp. airbag inflators pulled from cars in the auto industry’s biggest recall later ruptured in testing, showing the potential risks to drivers. Documents released Friday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reveal that of 245,000 recalled airbag inflators pulled from cars and tested, 660 ruptured. As many as 15 deaths worldwide have been ...

  Bloomberg An Indian court issued arrest warrants for Malaysian billionaire T. Ananda Krishnan and Ralph Marshall, deputy chairman at Krishnan-controlled Astro All Asia Networks Plc, in connection with an investigation into alleged phone-license corruption. Krishnan controls Malaysia’s Maxis Group. A court in New Delhi said on Saturday it will split the matters into separate cases for allegations against Krishnan ...

  Bloomberg Six years ago, India’s biggest share sale was in commodities. Now, as the IPO market heats up again, the key to investors’ hearts lies in finance. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance’s float has attracted strong demand, drawing orders of 10.5 times the amount of stock available to raise as much as 60.6 billion rupees ($909 million). It’s the nation’s ...

  Los Angeles / AFP Police were searching on Saturday for a gunman who killed five people during a shooting at a mall in the US state of Washington, amid a raging national debate over gun control. Four women and one man were killed, police said in an updated toll. The man had been taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries, ...