Washington / AFP Extreme poverty has been falling steadily around the world, but eliminating it by 2030 could be stymied by unequal distribution of the gains of economic growth, the World Bank said on Sunday. Unless the gains of growth are steered better to those at the bottom of a country’s economy, they could be left behind, warned the ...

  Bloomberg Italy’s bond-yield spread to Spanish securities climbed to the highest level in almost two years after the latest poll showed that the constitutional referendum, on which Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s political fate hangs, is too close to call. Italian 10-year government bonds declined, erasing last week’s gain, after a survey conducted by Ipsos PA for the newspaper Corriere ...

  Beirut / AFP At least 21 Syrian rebels fighting alongside Turkish troops in northern Syria against the IS group were killed by landmines laid by the extremist group, a monitor said on Monday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll was the highest loss of life for forces involved in the Turkish-led operation in northern Syria since ...

  Tripoli / AFP Forces loyal to Libya’s unity government said on Monday at least 80 extremists were killed at the weekend in the city of Sirte, a former stronghold of the IS group. “Commanders of front line units have counted at least corpses (of extremists) killed as they tried in vain to attack behind the lines” of the loyalists, ...

  Rabat / AFP Moroccan police have arrested 10 women who had allegedly pledged allegiance to the IS extremist group and planned to carry out suicide bombings across the country, authorities said on Monday. The all-female cell had “tried to obtain the chemicals used to make explosive belts” and were planning to attack “vital installations”, the interior ministry said. The women ...

  Ramallah / AFP The Palestinian high court on Monday ordered municipal elections to be held only in the West Bank and not in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, though a new date for the suspended polls was not set. The ruling could bring to an end hopes that the municipal elections would be the first polls since 2006 in which ...

  BAGHDAD / AP Militants on Monday unleashed a series of attacks in Shiite-majority neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 15 civilians, officials said. The deadliest attack took place in the southwestern neighborhood of Al Amil when a bomber set off his explosives-laden vest in a busy outdoor market, killing seven shoppers and wounding up to 25 ...

  Idlib / AFP The frail cries of four-month-old Wahida made the rescue worker who carried her out of the rubble in Syria’s Idlib break down in sobs. The full story is one of tragedy. “I was in the shop when the airplane began carrying out air strikes,” recalls 32-year-old father Yehya Maatouq almost matter-of-factly. He was speaking to AFP on ...

  Kunduz / AFP Explosions echoed across Kunduz as Afghan commandos began to push back a Taliban assault on Monday, forcing residents to shelter in their homes one year after militants briefly seized the strategic provincial capital. Government helicopters were targeting gunmen from the air in a bid to repel the attack, a day before President Ashraf Ghani is due ...

  Moscow / AFP Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered a halt to an agreement with the United States on plutonium disposal, citing Washington’s “unfriendly actions”. The deal, signed in 2000, was meant to allow both nuclear powers to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium from their defence programmes, a move seen as a key step in the disarmament process. The two ...