Mogadishu / AFP Guards thwarted a suicide attack on the Yemeni central bank on Saturday opening fire on the bomber’s vehicle and blowing it up before it reached the building, a security official said. The central bank has been based in the government-controlled second city of Aden since last month, when President Abedabbo Mansour Hadi ordered its relocation from ...

  Aleppo / AFP Fresh fighting shook Aleppo on Saturday as rebels battled to break a siege of the city by the Syrian regime, accused by Washington of using starvation as a weapon of war. Opposition fighters unleashed a barrage of rockets on the government-held western side of the divided city on Friday as they announced a major offensive aimed ...

  Istanbul / AFP The families of Turkish activists killed in a 2010 Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship say they will not drop their legal cases despite a deal between Turkey and the Tel Aviv. Nine Turks died when Israeli marines stormed the “Mavi Marmara”, which was part of an aid flotilla to break a naval blockade of the ...

  Mazar-i-Sharif / AFP Armed men have burned down a girls’ school in northern Afghanistan, officials said on Saturday, with police blaming the Taliban for the assault as the militants expand their foothold across the country. The attackers burst into the school in northern Jawzjan province on Friday night, beat up the security guards and set the building on fire, a ...

  Reuters Top global oil exporter Saudi Arabia is looking at new ways to sell crude to China, offering more cargoes at spot prices and more lenient payment terms after losing ground in the world’s fastest-growing oil import market to Angola, Russia and others. Independent refiners, known as teapots, have shaken up China’s oil industry this year, accounting for most ...

  VIENNA / Reuters Officials from OPEC and non-member oil producing countries met on Saturday aiming to build support for an OPEC plan to reduce output one day after OPEC members were unable to agree on how to implement the deal. Arriving for the meeting with OPEC’s High Level Committee of exporters, only the representative of non-OPEC Azerbaijan made comments ...

  Bloomberg Senior officials from Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Israel agreed to advance talks on a pipeline from Israel to Europe after an EU-sponsored study showed the project would be “very feasible,” Israel’s Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said in an interview. The study showed the pipeline, which would traverse Cyprus and Greece before reaching Italy, would cost about 5 billion ...

  CAIRO / Reuters Egyptian property company Palm Hills expects to sign a revenue-sharing deal with the government this year to develop what would be the country’s second-largest real estate project, one of its co-chief executives said. The country’s property sector has boomed in recent years as the population grew to more than 91 million, with demand driven higher by ...

  Brussels / AFP Belgium on Saturday officially signed the landmark EU-Canada trade accord after a drama that saw Belgian regions threaten to torpedo years of negotiations. “Nothing is simple in Belgium but few things are impossible,” tweeted Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders after signing the pact on behalf of his country. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malstrom, who negotiated the ...

  Bloomberg Volkswagen AG’s worker representatives will block investment decisions unless the German carmaker’s management commits to production programs that secure jobs, top labor leader Bernd Osterloh said in an interview. The hard-line stance sets up tense negotiations in the coming weeks over the so-called Future Pact. The labor agreement at Volkswagen’s namesake brand is aimed at cutting costs to ...