MOSUL / AP An airstrike by the US-led coalition on Wednesday “disabled” the fourth bridge on the Tigris River in Mosul, leaving the northern Iraqi city with a single functioning bridge and further disrupting the Islamic State group’s supply lines amid the government offensive against IS militants. The extremist group’s media arm, the Aamaq news agency, and a top ...

  Muzaffarabad / AFP At least nine people were killed and seven others wounded in cross-border fire which hit a Pakistani bus in disputed Kashmir on Wednesday, officials said, in the latest deadly skirmish between India and Pakistan. The incident came a day after India said three of its soldiers had been killed by Pakistani troops and threatened “retribution”, a claim ...

  Istanbul / AFP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that a European Parliament vote set to back a freeze of membership talks with Ankara over its relentless post-coup crackdown would have “no value”. The non-binding vote set for this week threatens to escalate tensions between the European Union and Turkey, which reached new heights in the wake of ...

  Phnom Penh / AFP Cambodia’s UN-backed court upheld life sentences for two top former Khmer Rouge leaders on Wednesday for crimes against humanity, delivering a blow to their hopes of release as they face a second trial for genocide. “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, 90, and ex-head of state Khieu Samphan, 85, were the first top leaders to be ...

  Yangon / AFP Scores of Rohingya Muslims have been killed in a Myanmar army crackdown since early October, when sword-wielding assailants raided police posts in the remote marshlands bordering Bangladesh. The military struck back with ground clearances, most recently backed by helicopter gunships. Access to the conflict areas is heavily restricted, but witness testimony has seeped out alleging mass rapes, ...

  Bloomberg A glut of North Sea oil that’s helped depress global prices and heap pressure on OPEC is poised for short-term relief after traders booked tankers to take as much as half of the region’s key oil flow to Asia. Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc booked Forties crude onto tankers that typically haul 2 million ...

  KHOBAR / Reuters Saudi Arabia plans to more than triple the contribution of its mining industry to national wealth as measured by GDP by 2030, the energy minister said. The kingdom is finalising a mining strategy aimed at raising annual mining revenues from 64 billion riyals ($17.07 billion) to 240 billion riyals by 2030, Khalid Al Falih told reporters ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Arabian construction firm Abdullah Abdul Mohsin al-Khodari and Sons said on Tuesday that projects worth 362.2 million riyals ($97 million) had been delayed due to factors ranging from clients’ funding shortages to slow visa issuance. The pace of construction in Saudi Arabia has cooled in the past two years as lower oil prices stall project ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Aluminium Bahrain has approached banks for a $750 million loan towards the financing of its Line 6 expansion project, sources said. Alba will become the world’s largest single aluminium smelter complex, boosting its annual output by 540,000 tonnes to 1.5 million tonnes per year by adding the sixth “potline”, used in producing the metal from raw ...

  CAIRO / Reuters Pharmacies across Egypt are running short of medicines, some of them life-savers, as a plunge in the value of the Egyptian pound coupled with strict government price caps has made scores of products unprofitable to produce or import. The shortages include some cancer treatments as well as basic items like insulin, tetanus shots and contraceptive pills. ...