Cairo / AFP Egyptian state television said on Wednesday it had sacked its head of news after an old interview with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi was screened in error. Sisi, who is in New York for the UN General Assembly, was interviewed by the American PBS network for a second consecutive year. Instead of broadcasting the new interview on …

  PARIS / AFP France’s presidential race started in earnest on Wednesday as seven rightwing candidates including ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy were confirmed to contest a November primary, with the nominee seen as the likely winner of next year’s election. The stakes are high with polls showing that the winner of a duel between the two leading candidates from the Republicans …

  United Nations / AFP The landmark Paris agreement on climate change moved closer to reality on Wednesday after 31 countries joined during the United Nations General Assembly. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced confidence that the accord, through which countries commit to take action to stem the planet’s rising temperatures, would come into force by the end of the year. …

  Washington / AFP Iraqi security forces will be ready by next month for an assault on the IS stronghold of Mosul, the top general in the US military said on Wednesday. “We assess today that the Iraqis will have in early October all the forces marshaled, trained, fielded, equipped that are necessary for operations in Mosul,” General Joe Dunford, …

  Caracas / AFP Venezuela accused the United States of spying on a Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit it recently hosted, saying Venezuelan fighter jets had intercepted a US surveillance plane and forced it to turn back. President Nicolas Maduro’s latest beef with Washington comes after Venezuela hosted leaders from the 120-member group on the Caribbean island of Margarita last weekend, …

  United Nations / AFP US President Barack Obama urged countries to “welcome the stranger in our midst” at a summit that drew pledges from 50 countries to take in 360,000 refugees. Speaking at a US-led refugee summit at the United Nations, Obama praised Germany and Canada among other countries for opening up their doors to those fleeing the war …

  Tokyo / AFP Japan’s central bank on Wednesday unveiled a surprise overhaul of monetary policy, promising to redouble attempts to fuel inflation and kickstart the torpid economy. After a hotly anticipated meeting, the Bank of Japan said it would set a target for 10-year government bond yields to try to push them higher, while delaying a further cut in …

  Hong Kong / AFP Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC) is set to raise $7.4 billion in its Hong Kong initial public offering, which is expected to be the world’s biggest flotation this year, reports said Wednesday. The listing is also poised to be the biggest since Chinese internet giant Alibaba floated in New York in 2014, raising $25 billion. …

Bloomberg New global banking rules are set to be “heavily watered down” to a level banks European can manage without major capital raising, according to HSBC Holdings Plc analysts. The revamp of the capital framework under discussion at the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision will probably boost capital requirements by less than 10 percent when implemented in Europe, allowing banks …

  Bloomberg Two of the financial industry’s biggest names — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. — are in the race for Wall Street supremacy in the $3 trillion global market for exchange-traded funds. Goldman Sachs won the first leg by pulling in a couple billion dollars in ETF assets in a year. But the competition is …