ISTANBUL / AP The Turkish military says its warplanes have pounded Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq, killing 18 militants. The airstrikes late Monday targeted Qandil, the mountainous stronghold of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK. Ankara and its Western allies designate the PKK as a terrorist organization. The organization has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that ...

  Baghdad / AFP The IS group broke through Kurdish defences in northern Iraq on Tuesday and killed an American service member of the US-led coalition fighting the extremists, officials said. The service member, whom the Pentagon confirmed was American, was at least the third killed by enemy fire in Iraq since IS overran swathes of the country in 2014. ...

  Stuttgart / AFP Defence Secretary Ash Carter warned on Tuesday that NATO would defend its allies against Russian “aggression” as he presided over the passing of the alliance’s European command to a new general. Carter said NATO would “keep the door open for Russia” for cooperation on global security challenges if Moscow abandoned its “sabre-rattling”. “But it’s up to ...

  TOKYO / AP North Korea, the world’s last great master of Cold War-era spectacle, is likely to deliver a big one when its ruling party holds its first congress in 36 years later this week. What exactly is in store during the congress, which opens Friday and will be presided over by leader Kim Jong Un, remains a well-kept ...

  MADRID / AP Spain’s king signed a decree on Tuesday dissolving parliament and setting a new election for June 26 after legislators chosen in an inconclusive December vote failed to agree on the country’s next prime minister. King Felipe VI signed the order in the presence of parliamentary speaker Patxi Lopez after the midnight Monday deadline for installing a ...

China continues to militarize the South China Sea, with the manifest intention of making its claim of sovereignty thereto impossible to challenge. China has made clear that it does not plan to accept a likely unfavorable decision, forthcoming in a month or so, by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Moreover, China has so far refused to discuss ...

  In a bid to reduce the impact of pollution on public health, governments worldwide have begun to take serious measures to check the fouling of the air in congested cities. Some of these steps would rock many industries and affect livelihood of many people at certain point. The current global crackdown on pollution will not only improve public health, ...

  Mark Whitehouse How did the U.S. economy perform under President Barack Obama? Better than it could have, but still poorly enough to leave a lot of people unhappy. Obama’s economic track record has come under renewed scrutiny as the race to replace him heats up. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has called the economy “already reasonably crippled.” Obama, in a ...

  As in any U.S. national election without an incumbent president, the candidates are painting a not very pretty picture: The country is “going to hell,” bluntly asserts the Republican front-runner Donald Trump. The Democratic challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders, isn’t much kinder and even Hillary Clinton is starting to focus more on challenges than successes. To many voters the message ...

  Dubai / WAM The United Arab Emirates (UAE) can become the clean energy finance capital of the world, according to Dr. Nasser Saidi, former chief economist of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), and Chairman of the Clean Energy Business Council (CEBC). Dr. Saidi said that UAE’s capital markets could ‘own the clean energy finance space’ and in doing ...