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Beirut / AFP Double car bomb attacks killed at least 57 people in Syria’s central city of Homs on Sunday as international efforts to bring about a ceasefire in the war-torn country floundered. More than 100 people were injured in the twin bomb attacks in the Al-Zahraa district, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. Syrian state ...

Ankara / AFP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has defended his country’s fight against Kurdish fighters in Syria as “legitimate defence”, after international powers urged Ankara to rein in its cross-border bombardments. Turkey has been shelling targets in northern Syria for the past week in a bid to stem the advances of a Kurdish-led coalition that has seized territory in ...

Hong Kong / Bloomberg Hong Kong’s developers, who are throwing in enticements from iPhones to wine coupons in response to the slowest home sales in 25 years, might be running out of gimmicks to stoke demand. Most buyers aren’t biting as property analysts predict prices will fall as much as 25 percent this year after declining 11 percent since September. ...

ALMATY / Emirates Business Majid Al Futtaim Retail, the retail arm of Majid Al Futtaim, the leading shopping mall, retail and leisure pioneer across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), has announced the opening of its first Carrefour hypermarket in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in line with the company’s rapid expansion across the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Russia. The ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Dr. Amal Abdullah Al Qubaisi, Speaker of Federal National Council, FNC, has received Ilyas Umakhanov Deputy Chairmen of the Federation Council of Russia and the accompanying delegation, at FNC headquarters in Abu Dhabi. During the meeting, they discussed ways to strengthen friendship and cooperation between the UAE and Russia in various fields, especially in the parliamentary ...

Beijing / Bloomberg The head of China’s securities regulator has been removed from his post after last year’s $5 trillion stock-market bust, an unprecedented government rescue and a renewed crisis as plunging Chinese equities last month reverberated around the world. Xiao Gang, 57, a former head of Bank of China Ltd., had been chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission ...

Washington / Bloomberg President Barack Obama and thousands of other mourners paid respects to the late Justice Antonin Scalia as his flag-draped casket lay in the US Supreme Court’s ceremonial hallway. Pallbearers carried Scalia’s casket up the court’s marble staircase into the building as his somber, and in some cases tearful, former colleagues waited along with family members, former law ...

Seoul / AP Sounds of explosions caused South Korean residents of a front-line island to prepare to evacuate early Saturday, but it was later determined the noise came from a North Korean artillery drill across the rivals’ disputed maritime border, officials said. The false alarm was indicative of the high anxiety between the Koreas in the wake of the North’s ...

Yangon / AFP The US embassy in Yangon said it was “deeply concerned” over clashes involving ethnic armed groups and the military in northern Myanmar that have displaced thousands of people, warning that the violence threatened to unravel the country’s delicate peace process. Heavy bouts of fighting broke out last week in Shan state between two ethnic rebel groups in ...

United States / AFP Western powers rejected a Russian bid at the United Nations to halt Turkey’s military actions in Syria, as France warned of a dangerous escalation in the nearly five-year conflict. The emergency Security Council meeting came as US Secretary of State John Kerry cautioned there was “a lot more work to do” for a ceasefire to take ...