New York / BLOOMBERG American International Group Inc. raised $1.25 billion selling shares of Chinese insurer PICC Property & Casualty Co. near the low end of a marketed range. The largest commercial insurer in the U.S. and Canada sold 740 million shares of PICC P&C at HK$13.08 apiece, after earlier offering them at HK$13.06 to HK$13.35, according to terms ...

  Aleppo / AFP The United States demanded that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s forces halt their bombardment of Aleppo and help restore a nationwide ceasefire, with Secretary of State John Kerry due to head to Geneva for talks on the conflict. Terrified residents fled a new wave of air strikes on rebel-held areas of the divided city as key regime backer ...

  BEIJING / AP Taiwanese officials have protested Malaysia’s deportation of 32 of the self-ruled island’s nationals to China to face wire fraud charges. The deportation follows the sending of nearly four dozen Taiwanese from Kenya to China last month, a case that has raised concerns Beijing is exerting diplomatic pressure over the island it considers its own territory. The Taiwanese ...

  Bashir / AFP Iraqi Kurdish and Turkmen Shiite forces have recaptured the town of Bashir from the IS extremist group, officials said. Pressure for an operation to retake the town had grown in March after IS launched a chemical attack from Bashir on the nearby town of Taza that killed at least three children. Kurdish peshmerga forces and Turkmen ...

  Ankara / AFP Turkish police on Sunday detained four suspected IS extremist who were allegedly planning an attack on May Day celebrations in the capital Ankara, the state-run Anatolia news agency said. Initial investigations showed that the four were Syrian citizens who had been in Ankara for some time, the agency added, without giving details on the nature of ...

  Istanbul / AFP A car bomb on Sunday hit the Turkish city of Gaziantep, a major refugee hub near the Syrian border, killing at least two policemen and wounding 22 other people, with the country on edge after a succession of militant attacks. In a separate attack in the province of Mardin to the east, three Turkish soldiers died in ...

  Bloomberg Iraq declared a state of emergency in Baghdad after supporters of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr breached Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and stormed parliament to protest against corruption and the country’s political paralysis. Mobile-phone video footage broadcast on Iraqi televisions showed hundreds of Al Sadr’s supporters inside the legislature on Saturday. Al-Sadr earlier accused lawmakers of sectarianism in ...

  Zamboanga / AFP Ten Indonesian sailors held hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants were freed in the southern Philippines on Sunday, officials said, less than a week after the gunmen beheaded a Canadian captive. Unknown men delivered the 10 tugboat crewmen outside the home of provincial governor Abdusakur Tan Jnr on the remote island of Jolo during a heavy midday ...

  BAGHDAD / AP Militants on Sunday unleashed dual car bomb attacks in southern Iraq, killing at least 33 people and wounding dozens, officials said, at a time when the country’s government is struggling with mounting public unrest in the capital over delays in promised reform plans. A police officer said two parked explosives-laden cars were detonated within minutes of ...

  MOSCOW/ AP The Ukrainian government says one soldier has been killed and several troops wounded in the country’s east in what seems to be a violation of a recently brokered armistice. Both sides in the deadly conflict between government forces and Russia-backed separatists had agreed to observe a cease-fire with the start of the Orthodox Easter and May Day ...