Baghdad / AFP US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter held talks in Baghdad on Sunday to discuss the coming stages of the offensive to retake the city of Mosul from the IS group. Carter flew to the Iraqi capital on an announced visit to “survey key locations directly supporting the battle for Mosul”, the Pentagon said in a statement. The United ...

  Cairo / AFP A bomb blast tore through a church near Cairo’s Coptic cathedral during a service on Sunday, killing at least 25 people in the deadliest attack in recent memory on Egypt’s Christian minority. There was no immediate claim of responsiblity for the bombing. Coptic Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population. At least 31 people were ...

  Aden / AFP Forty-eight Yemeni soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing claimed by the IS group in the southern port city of Aden, officials said on Sunday in an updated casualty toll. “We have 48 dead and 29 wounded,” all soldiers, Abdel Nasser al-Wali, health department chief for Aden, told AFP, revising an earlier toll of 35 dead. The ...

  Istanbul / AFP Turkey observed a day of mourning on Sunday after twin bombings killed 38 people near an Istanbul football stadium in attacks authorities said were likely the work of Kurdish militants. A car bomb detonated Saturday night outside the home stadium of football giants Besiktas after a Super Lig match against Bursaspor, and less than a minute later ...

  Mogadishu / AFP More than 20 people were killed on Sunday in a suicide truck bombing in the Somali capital Mogadishu, police said, in a fresh strike claimed by the Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab group. “The tally we have made so far indicates that more than 20 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the blast,” said Ibrahim Mohamed, a Somali ...

  Bloomberg Pilots of at least three Indian flights, including one operated by market leader IndiGo, lied to air traffic controllers about being short on fuel to get priority landing at an airport, according to an investigation by the country’s aviation safety regulator. The incident occurred on November 30, when pilots of an IndiGo plane radioed traffic controllers at Kolkata ...

  AFP / Reuters Iran Air said on Sunday it had finalised a contract to buy 80 planes from US firm Boeing, the official IRNA news agency reported. “Fifty of the planes are 737 and the other 30 are the long haul 777 that will be delivered to Iran Air in a period of 10 years,” said Farhad Parvaresh, chief executive ...

  Bloomberg McDonald’s Corp. shrugged off Brexit by announcing plans to switch its non-U.S. tax base to the UK, ditching tiny Luxembourg where its fiscal arrangements are under attack from European Union regulators. In an apparent vote of confidence in the U.K., the hamburger giant said it’s creating a new international holding company based in Britain, which decided in June ...

  Bloomberg Alaska Air Group Inc. won U.S. antitrust approval for its acquisition of Virgin America Inc., a takeover that extends years of consolidation in the industry and expands Alaska Air’s access to the lucrative cross-country market. Under an agreement with the Justice Department announced, Alaska Air must reduce the scope of a marketing accord that allows it to sell ...

  Bloomberg Global airline earnings are set to decline next year after reaching a record in 2016 as higher oil prices clip margins, according to the industry’s main trade group. Net income across the sector is likely to total $29.8 billion in 2017, the International Air Transport Association said. That’s 16 percent lower than the $35.6 billion forecast for this ...