Kabul / AFP Afghanistan launched a polio vaccination campaign on Monday aimed at reaching children in areas previously controlled by IS group militants, officials said. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic—a fact blamed on opposition to immunisation by extremist groups, who claim the vaccines are a conspiracy to sterilise Muslims …

  Karbala /AFP Attackers armed with suicide vests, rifles and grenades killed 18 people in the Iraqi oasis town of Ain Al Tamer, many of them guests at a wedding party, local officials said on Monday. “They were carrying Kalashnikovs, hand grenades. One of them blew himself up and the others were killed by the security forces,” said the head …

  Bloomberg Norway’s $890 billion sovereign wealth fund is acknowledging that rising withdrawals by the government could hamper its quest to manage more risk and generate greater returns as it takes on more and more negative yielding securities. The net outflows are “relevant for how we think about the risk-bearing capacity of the fund,” Egil Matsen, the deputy governor at …