Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s Eurowings arm will start flights from Munich next year to combat rivals such as Easyjet Plc, in a strategy switch that will see the discount unit make its first major incursion at one of its parent’s German hubs. “Low-cost carriers are quite active already,” Karl Ulrich Garnadt, the Lufthansa board member responsible for Eurowings, said ...

  Bloomberg IAG SA, the owner of British Airways and Spanish carrier Iberia, is considering reining in fleet plans as worldwide economic growth slows and the company grapples with the effects of Britain’s referendum to exit the European Union. “Without doubt all airlines, including airlines within IAG, are reassessing their requirements for new aircraft,” as the outlook for growth has ...

  Sydney / AFP Australian carriers Qantas and Virgin Australia told customers on Thursday not to use or charge Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 during flights after faulty batteries in the new smartphone caused some handsets to explode. Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone maker, said last week it was suspending sales of its latest flagship mobile device and recalling 2.5 million ...

  Bloomberg EasyJet Plc Chief Executive Officer Carolyn McCall said financial markets “overreacted” to Britain’s decision to exit the European Union, as a feared drop in travel demand hasn’t been as severe as investors expected. There was a “short-term” impact from the collapse of the pound in the aftermath of the referendum, McCall said on Thursday in London. While that ...

  Bloomberg U.S. carriers climbed the most in almost two months after Southwest Airlines Co. said it would slow capacity growth next year, bringing the supply of seats and flights more in line with demand and possibly relieving pressure on fares. Capacity will expand less than 4 percent next year, down from this year’s pace of 5 percent to 6 ...

  Bloomberg When the going gets tough, Brits buy 4K TVs and fancy food mixers. Dixons Carphone, one of the retailers most exposed to the fall-out from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, reported first-quarter sales that beat analyst expectations, and said it had seen “no detectable impact” from the referendum result on UK consumers. Britons it seems, have ...

  Vientiane / AFP US President Barack Obama warned Beijing on Thursday it could not ignore a tribunal’s ruling rejecting its sweeping claims to the South China Sea, driving tensions higher in a territorial row that threatens regional security. The dispute has raised fears of military confrontation between the world’s superpowers, with China determined to cement control of the strategically vital ...

  Vientiane / AFP With months left in office, US President Barack Obama said on Thursday he was not ready to give up on an eight-year-old promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Obama urgently wants to shutter the facility before he leaves the White House at the start of next year but his efforts have been continually thwarted by ...

  Paris / AFP Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the sole surviving member of the extremist team that attacked Paris in November 2015, on Thursday refused to answer questions from French anti-terror judges for a third time. “He exercised his right to silence,” Frank Berton told reporters after his 26-year-old client appeared at Paris’s main courthouse. The lawyer said he was ...

  Berlin / AFP Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Bavarian allies have called for tougher immigration rules in Germany that favour migrants from Europe’s “Christian-occidental cultural sphere”, according to a party paper seen by AFP on Thursday. The CSU party also has demanded a ban on the Muslim full-face and partial-face veils, an end to dual citizenship, iron-clad rules that newcomers socially ...