Tripoli / AFP Fighters of Libya’s unity government, backed by US air strikes, have recaptured more ground from extremists holed up in the centre of the coastal city of Sirte, loyalist forces said on Monday. “Our forces have retaken the internal security building used as a prison by the IS” group, as well as a courthouse, the Al-Naga district ...

  Beijing / AFP China’s state broadcaster has questioned the authenticity of the video of Syrian boy Omran which went viral worldwide, alleging it may have been faked as part of a Western “propaganda war”. The video showed the stunned-looking four-year-old covered in blood and dust after an air strike in Aleppo last week, with the US State Department calling ...

  Nairobi / AFP With a peace deal unravelling in South Sudan and extremist attacks continuing in Somalia, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi on Monday. The two discussed regional security and terrorism before Kerry met with the foreign ministers of Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda for talks focusing on a ...

  Cairo / AFP Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said his Russian counterpart and close ally Vladimir Putin wants to host an Israeli-Palestinian summit to revive peace talks, in an interview published on Monday. Sisi told state newspaper editors that he believed Israel was increasingly convinced of the need for a peace deal, saying it was a “positive sign.” But ...

  Nasiriyah / AFP A powerful typhoon struck near Tokyo on Monday, the first for 11 years to hit the densely populated region, temporarily shutting down Japan’s biggest airport and grounding more than 500 flights nationwide. Typhoon Mindulle made landfall at about 12:30 pm (0330 GMT) in Tateyama city, 80 kilometres (50 miles) southeast of Tokyo, the Japan Meteorological Agency ...

  Tehran / AFP Iran said on Monday that Russian raids on Syria from one of its airbases had ended for now, shortly after accusing Moscow of “showing off” when it revealed the bombing missions. “It was a specific, authorised mission and it’s over for now. They conducted it and they are gone now,” foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told ...

  Bloomberg Here’s an irony: US regulators looking to avoid bailouts of too-big-to-fail banks have passed so many rules that regional and local lenders are combining to stomach the costs. The result: Banks are bulking up. Mergers and acquisitions by US banks surged last year to about $18 billion, the highest level since 2009. This year, firms are set to ...

  Bloomberg Brazilian banks are charging more for everything from checkbooks to credit cards to help cover losses on bad loans, pushing the gap between bank-service fees and the nation’s inflation rate to the highest in more than four years. Prices for bank services, which have been rising faster than the benchmark inflation rate since August 2015, climbed 11.5 percent ...

  Bloomberg Nomura Holdings Inc. plans to hire bankers in the US, resuming a push to boost investment-banking business in a market that remains a priority for Japan’s biggest brokerage following a round of cost cuts. The Tokyo-based firm anticipates rising volumes of mergers and stock offerings in the U.S., said Chief Operating Officer Tetsu Ozaki, who is seeking bankers ...

  Bloomberg Urjit Patel will take over as India’s central bank chief at a time when monetary policy decision-making is being overhauled and an estimated $20 billion is set to flow out of the country. Patel is currently deputy governor in charge of monetary policy and has been a key architect of the central bank’s shift to a consumer-price-based inflation ...