SANTO DOMINGO / AP Dominicans faced a dizzying array of choices on Sunday in one of the most complex ballots in recent history, with eight candidates for president, all 222 members of Congress up for re-election and thousands of people vying for local offices around the country. For many voters it amounts to a referendum on whether to let President ...

  Bloomberg GN Store Nord A/S, the world’s third-largest listed producer of hearing aids, signed a conditional agreement to buy Audigy Group LLC in a deal that could value the U.S. audiology and hearing services company at as much as $151 million. GN will pay $91 million up front and as much as $60 million more depending on Audigy’s financial ...

  Bloomberg Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced undefined “military exercises” for the embattled nation, just a day after pledging to prolong his government’s special emergency powers. Speaking in Caracas’s Ibarra Square after a march on Saturday by several hundred supporters, Maduro said his opponents are orchestrating foreign military intervention in Venezuela. Exercises by the army and militia groups would prepare ...

  Bloomberg Federally mandated ethanol blending is adding extra pressure to the faltering profits of U.S. refiners. The worst crude oil downturn in a generation, which at first helped refiners’ profits, has now passed through to the fuel prices. Now, gasoline is cheaper than the ethanol that refiners have no choice but to use. Ethanol averaged 30 cents above gasoline ...

  Aden / AFP A suicide bombing claimed by the IS group and a second attack killed 37 police on Sunday in the Yemeni port of Mukalla where a year of Al-Qaeda rule ended last month, medics said. It was the second attack in days claimed by IS in the city of 200,000 people that was recaptured by government forces ...

  Beirut / AFP Fighting raging between rival extremist rebel factions to control a key opposition stronghold near Damascus since late last month has killed more than 300 fighters, a monitor said on Sunday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the clashes in Eastern Ghouta pitted Jaish Al-Islam faction, which has been taking part in peace talks in Geneva, against ...

  Baghdad / AFP Suicide attackers broke into a gas plant north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least seven people and setting fire to gas tanks, officials said. The attack on the Taji plant, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the capital, took place at around 6 am (0300 GMT). Eight suicide bombers broke into the gas plant ...

  Ankara/ AFP Members of Turkey’s right-wing MHP party were prevented from holding a congress on Sunday aimed at unseating longtime leader Devlet Bahceli and recovering ground lost to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party. Dissidents from the Nationalist Movement Party launched a campaign to oust Bahceli, 68, after a general election in November in which the party shed half its support—taking ...

  Jerusalem / AFP Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he told the French foreign minister that Paris’s support of a UNESCO resolution on Jerusalem cast doubt on the impartiality of a peace initiative it is promoting. “I told him that the scandalous resolution accepted at UNESCO with France’s support, that does not recognise the bond of thousands of ...

  Washington / AFP US authorities and Internet giants are boosting attempts to counter the IS group’s online propaganda, though it is unclear how effective these efforts are in hampering the extremists’ public-relations machine. With calls to holy war and highly produced videos of IS fighters in battle or killing captives, the IS group has long used the Internet and ...