Kiev / AFP Ukraine on Thursday unleashed a barrage of missile tests near Russian-annexed Crimea in a show of strength and defiance bound to irritate Moscow. The two-day military drills near the Black Sea peninsula are a first for the former Soviet republic and a sign that it is regaining assertiveness in the face of its arch-foe Russia. “No one ...

  Sydney / AFP High-risk terror offenders in Australia may now be kept in jail even after serving their sentences, under legislation passed on Thursday that strengthens laws to tackle the threat posed by extremists. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull flagged the move in July, prompted by the frequency and severity of attacks around the world. It will allow Attorney-General George Brandis ...

  Medellín / AFP The pilot of a charter plane carrying a Brazilian football team radioed frantically that he was out of fuel minutes before slamming into a hillside near Medellin with 77 people on board, an audio recording showed. Details of the doomed aircraft’s last harrowing minutes emerged on Wednesday as fans mourned the loss of all but six people ...

  Bloomberg While the first OPEC production cuts since 2008 were inked as Asia slept, the winners and losers from the surprise deal are already becoming clear in the world’s biggest oil-consuming region. US crude is hugging $50 a barrel following Wednesday’s 9.3 percent surge, the biggest since February, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is projecting further gains of more ...

  Bloomberg OPEC’s decision to shrink oil production is both a blessing and a curse for natural gas markets. It’s bad news for the US gas bulls enjoying a rally that has propelled prices to the highest in two years. Crude explorers have more incentive to drill with oil futures surging on the promised cuts by the Organization of Petroleum ...

  Reuters Sonatrach boosted natural gas sales to Italy by 140 percent in the first 10 months of the year as Algeria looks to bolster energy exports after years of stagnation, two senior officials from the state company said. More effective exploitation of existing fields and expanded pipe-line capacity is helping boost sales, Sonatrach Deputy General Manager for Marketing Omar ...

  Reuters A version of Shamoon, the destructive computer virus that four years ago crippled tens of thousands of computers at Middle Eastern energy companies, was used two weeks ago to attack computers in Saudi Arabia, according to U.S. security firms. CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks Inc and Symantec Corp. warned of the new attacks on Wednesday. They did not name ...

  Bloomberg Let OPEC celebrate. For now. The oil club is dizzy with its own success after a harmonious meeting in Vienna, where it surprised the world by agreeing to its first production cut in eight years. In hurried notes just hours after the end of the meetings, analysts joined the party. “OPEC resurrection,” Neil Beveridge at Sanford C. Bernstein ...

  An important trial started at the Court of Justice of the European Union, the EU’s top judicial authority. The judges are trying to determine whether Uber is a taxi company or merely a tech platform that enables customers to find drivers, and the decision, which is not likely to come before April, will serve as a precedent for other ...

  The monthly US jobs report for November that will be released on Friday is unlikely to be so bad that the Federal Open Market Committee would upset market expectations and refrain from hiking interest rates in mid-December. Instead, the data are likely to validate what fixed-income markets have already priced in when it comes to short-term interest rates. The ...