Tokyo / Bloomberg Takata Corp. has ruled out using bankruptcy as a way of mitigating liabilities from its record air-bag recalls and is instead seeking buyers that could take a controlling stake and carry the company through its safety crisis, a person with knowledge of the restructuring process. Lazard Ltd., Takata’s financial adviser, will meet manufacturers as well as financial ...

  Beirut/ AFP Syria’s opposition chief negotiator in UN-brokered peace talks has announced his resignation in what analysts said amounted to a warning the Geneva-based process was on its “last legs”. Mohammed Alloush, a member of the Saudi-backed rebel group Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), said on Twitter late Sunday he was resigning over the talks’ failure to produce any ...

  Sydney / AFP An Australian man has been killed in Syria fighting IS extremists, the country’s third national thought to have died alongside Kurdish forces, reports said on Monday. Former Australian soldier Jamie Bright, in his 40s, was named on social media as having been “martyred” in recent days. The Kurdish People’s Protection Unit said on its Facebook page ...

Antalya / AFP Turkey is offering to “join forces” with Washington for a special operation inside Syria on condition it doesn’t include a Syrian Kurdish militia blacklisted by Ankara but seen as an ally by the US, the foreign minister said. Washington’s support of Kurdish fighters in Syria in the fight against IS extremists has angered Ankara, especially after AFP ...

  Baghdad / AP Iraqi forces thrust into the city of Fallujah from three directions on Monday marking a new and perilous urban phase in the week-old operation to retake the extremist bastion. Led by the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS), Iraq’s best trained and most seasoned fighting unit, the forces pushed in before dawn, commanders said. “Iraqi forces entered Fallujah ...

  BAGHDAD / AP A wave of bombings claimed by the IS group targeted commercial areas in and around Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 24 people. The bombings by IS, which has been behind several recent deadly attacks in Baghdad and beyond, are seen as an attempt by the militants to distract the security forces’ attention away from the ...

  Antalya / AFP Ankara will abandon a deal with the European Union to reduce migrant flows if its citizens are not granted visa-free travel to most of the bloc, Turkey’s foreign minister has warned. With the two sides locked in an increasingly-bitter standoff, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said it was “impossible” for Ankara to change anti-terror laws that ...

  Paris / AFP Seven suspected extremists, including the brother of one of the suicide bombers in last November’s Paris attacks, went on trial in Paris on Monday. The men, now aged between 24 and 27, travelled to Syria at the end of 2013 and returned to France a few months later. Arrested in May 2014, they all deny having ...

Bloomberg Splits in the UK Conservative Party pose a growing threat to David Cameron’s chances of remaining prime minister after the Brexit referendum as “blue-on-blue” attacks become increasingly acrimonious. Bookmakers cut the odds on Cameron’s ouster this year as former London Mayor Boris Johnson and Justice Secretary Michael Gove, prominent Conservative campaigners to leave the European Union, said the premier’s ...

  TIRANA / AP NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly urged alliance members on Monday to stand up to Russia’s military assertiveness and to do a better job sharing the burden of collective defense. A unanimously approved declaration called on alliance members “to provide reassurance to those allies who feel their security is under threat, focusing on the eastern and southern flanks of ...