Zarzis / AFP Tunisian forces killed 21 extremists who attacked police and army posts near the Libyan border on Monday in a new spillover of violence that also saw four civilians killed. It was the second deadly clash in the border area in less than a week. The defence ministry said that a soldier was also killed in the fighting ...

Athens / AFP Their own wages and pensions have been slashed by the debt crisis, but thousands of Greeks are putting their own economic woes aside to help desperate refugees trapped in the country by the Balkan border blockade. People old and young, from couples with babies to pensioners and teenagers, came to Athens’ Syntagma Square on Sunday loaded with ...

Canberra / Bloomberg Already faced with higher capital requirements and a housing market past its peak, Australian banks have a new headache to contend with: corporate loans. Bad-debt provisions at the lenders are set to rise to their highest in eight years by 2018, as the chances of defaults in the mining, agricultural and dairy sectors increase, according to a ...

Bangalore / AFP A group of Indian banks has petitioned a court seeking the arrest of corporate honcho Vijay Mallya, the beleaguered businessman accused of defaulting on hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, a lawyer said. Heavily indebted Mallya has been deep in a financial fight over his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, which owes more than $1 billion to a ...

ABUJA / BLOOMBERG Nigeria’s biggest manufacturing body has lobbied the central bank to sell dollars directly to its members, bypassing commercial lenders as it looks to counter a shortage of foreign-currency it says threatens thousands of jobs in Africa’s largest oil producer. The Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria, which has about 2,700 members, proposed weekly auctions of dollars to manufacturing businesses ...

Bloomberg Banca Popolare di Vicenza SCpA’s owners approved a plan to raise as much as 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) in an initial public offering and transform the cooperative lender into a joint-stock firm, a crucial step toward ensuring its survival. The proposals passed at a meeting in Vicenza, Italy, after the European Central Bank (ECB) warned that without a ...

Zurich / AFP A fragile calm in global financial markets has given way to all-out turbulence, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) said, warning of a ‘gathering storm’ which has long been brewing. In its previous quarterly report, watched closely by investors, the BIS — which is known as the central bank of central banks — warned of an ‘uneasy ...

HONG KONG / Bloomberg Hong Kong residential home sales plunged 70 percent in February from a year earlier to a 25-year low, as falling prices and economic uncertainty deterred buyers. Last month, 1,807 homes were sold in Hong Kong, compared with 6,027 a year earlier, according to government statistics. Home sales fell from 2,045 in January, the data show. “The ...

BEIJING / Bloomberg Shanghai’s most-senior official said the city’s property market has “overheated” and should be more tightly controlled after a recent surge in residential housing prices. “An irrational and overheated sentiment have emerged in the Shanghai real estate market, and these sentiments have raised home prices,” Han Zheng, the city’s Communist Party chief, said at briefing during annual legislative ...

Doha / EMIRATES BUSINESS With a rapid increase in the number of people using primary healthcare services, a major expansion in the facilities is on the anvil in the Western region of the country that comprises a large geographical area. The new appointment system through the Wayyak telephone service has helped organise the functioning of health centres and improve performance. ...