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 …