Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party won a state election in northern Germany, according to projections based on exit polls, handing her Social Democratic challengers their second straight defeat at the polls before the nation votes in September. The German leader’s Christian Democratic Union took 33 percent of the vote on Sunday to 26 percent for the Social Democratic Party, …

  Bloomberg Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry denied a report by Pakistan that 50 Afghan forces were killed in a skirmish last week, a spokesman said on Sunday. The border fight erupted in the past few days in Kandahar province and ended with both sides announcing a cease-fire, Najib Danish, a spokesman to the Interior Ministry, said by phone. Pakistan’s army had …

  ABU DHABI / WAM In yet another sign of the country’s resilient economic growth policy, the UAE’s non-oil foreign trade in 2016 hit AED1.564 trillion, a 1 percent growth over 2015, according to UAE Federal Customs Authority (FCA). Despite besetting economic pressures, the volume of UAE’s non-oil foreign trade, including direct trade and free zones’, increased to AED1.564 trillion in …