Frankfurt / AFP Car parts supplier Continental upped its forecast for 2016 on Wednesday after strong performance in its tyres business. Chief executive Elmar Degenhart said the group would target an adjusted operating profit of “over 11%”, where previously the target had been set at “around 11%”. Continental’s net profit in the second quarter grew to 905mn euros, up ...

  Beirut / AFP Syrian regime forces bolstered by Russian air strikes recaptured territory overnight in the southwest suburbs of the battleground city of Aleppo, rolling back the short-lived gains of a rebel offensive. Rebels and their extremists allies launched an assault on Sunday in a bid to ease a more than two-week government siege of opposition-held districts of the ...

  London / AFP Coalition warplanes bombed one of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s palaces which was being used as a training base by the IS extremist group, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday. The palace in the IS stronghold of Mosul in northern Iraq was attacked in a joint operation by the US-led coalition on Monday, with British Tornado ...

  Istanbul / AFP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday asked forgiveness over his past alliance with US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen whom Ankara blames for last month’s attempted coup. In a rare show of public humility, Erdogan said he had failed to see the “true face” of Gulen, who cooperated closely with the Turkish strongman while he was mayor ...

  Riyadh / AFP Saudi Arabia promised “urgent” action to resolve the plight of some 2,500 Indian workers stranded without money in the kingdom after a plunge in oil prices sparked construction layoffs. Labour Minister Mufarrej al-Haqbani issued orders to allow the Indian workers “to immediately transfer their kafala (sponsorship) and renew their residencies,” the Okaz daily reported on Wednesday. Haqbani’s ...

  Kathmandu/ AFP Nepal’s parliament elected former guerrilla and Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal as prime minister on Wednesday after his predecessor resigned following deadly unrest over a divisive new constitution. Dahal, better known by his nom de guerre Prachanda or “the fierce one”, led a decade-long Maoist insurgency before transforming the rebel movement into a political party after a 2006 ...

  Hong Kong / AFP HSBC said on Wednesday net profit plunged in April-June and that the bank was heading into “a period of heightened uncertainty” after Britain voted to leave the European Union. Profit after tax sank 40 percent on-year to $2.61 billion, the firm said in a statement, but assured it had weathered the Brexit storm “securely”. The firm ...

  Paris / AFP French bank Societe Generale said on Wednesday its second-quarter earnings rose 8.1 percent from a year earlier, bolstered by the sale of its shares in Visa Europe. The bank reported a 1.5 billion euro ($1.7 billion) net profit for the period, higher than the 1.4 billion euros predicted by economists in a survey by FactSet. Selling its ...

  London / AFP The Bank of England (BoE) is expected to slash interest rates to a record-low 0.25 percent this week and could pump more stimulus into the economy as it battles the fallout from Britain’s vote to leave the EU, economists say. The announcement, due Thursday after the British central bank’s latest monetary policy meeting, would take rates to their ...

  Nairobi / AFP Kenya’s banking industry last year recorded the first decline in profit since 1999 as costs outpaced income in the wake of two failures and more onerous regulations. Pretax profit across the sector declined 5 percent to 134 billion shillings ($1.3 billion) in the 12 months through December, according to the central bank’s Bank Supervision Report, released in ...