Mainz / DPA Archaeologist Daniel Markovic ascends from the dig in this ancient city on the river Rhine sweaty and covered in dirt. “I’m completely exhausted after a whole day of hacking, shovelling and carrying,” he says at the end of one of the hottest days in Germany this summer. Markovic has been exposing an ancient wall for scientific ...

  Abu Dhabi / WAM The Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC), master developer of major tourism, cultural and residential destinations in Abu Dhabi, announced on Monday that the construction of Mamsha Al Saadiyat, the first residential development within the Saadiyat Cultural District, is well underway. The project was awarded in April of this year to a joint venture between ...

  Quetta / AFP A Taliban suicide bomb packed with ball bearings tore through a Pakistani hospital on Monday and killed at least 70 people, as witnesses described tearful staff rushing towards the smoking blast site to help the wounded. The bomber struck a crowd of some 200 people gathered at the Civil Hospital in the Balochistan provincial capital Quetta ...

  Beirut/ AFP Syrian regime forces and rebel factions sent hundreds of reinforcements to Aleppo on Monday as opposition fighters announced an all-out offensive to take the country’s second city. The battle for Syria’s former economic powerhouse is intensifying after an opposition advance at the weekend broke through a three-week government siege of the city’s rebel-held east, dealing a major ...

  Tehran / AFP Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rumoured to be planning a political comeback, has asked Barack Obama to return $2 billion of assets frozen in the US in a letter made public on Monday. Ahmadinejad wrote that despite early promises by the US president to improve ties with Iran “the same hostile policies along with the same ...

  Washington / AFP Democrat Hillary Clinton has widened her lead over White House rival Donald Trump to eight points after both parties’ nominating conventions, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll out Sunday. Clinton led Trump 50 to 42 percent among registered voters, according to the telephone survey carried out August 1-4. She got a strong bounce in the ...

  Kathmandu / AFP A helicopter crashed into a hillside in Nepal on Monday, killing all seven people on board including a baby, an airline official said. The Fishtail Air helicopter carrying six locals to Kathmandu lost contact with air traffic control about 30 minutes after taking off from the western district of Gorkha. Rescuers have reached the crash site ...

  Montreal / AFP Anti-globalization activists will gather in Montreal on Tuesday for the first World Social Forum (WSF) to be held in the northern hemisphere, hoping the location will provide fresh impetus for the movement. A march through downtown Montreal is to kick off the event, which was first held in Brazil in 2001 seeking to promote alternatives to ...

  Bloomberg DBS Group Holdings Ltd.’s second-quarter profit declined 6 percent as provisions for troubled energy-services firm Swiber Holdings Ltd. overshadowed gains in interest and fee income. Net income fell to S$1.05 billion ($780 million) from S$1.12 billion a year earlier, Singapore’s largest bank said in an exchange filing Monday. That compared with the S$1.07 billion average of five analysts ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG’s Spanish asset-management unit is buying a shopping mall in Barcelona for 493 million euros ($547 million) from Northwood Investors LLC. The Diagonal Mar mall has shops operated by companies including Primark Stores Ltd. and Hennes & Mauritz AB and comprises 90,000 square meters (969,000 square feet) of leasable space, Deutsche Asset Management said in a ...