Syria / AFP Russian and Syrian warplanes pounded rebel-held areas of divided second city Aleppo on Saturday as government forces closed in on the rebels’ sole remaining supply line, a monitoring group said. An AFP correspondent in the rebel-held east of the city said the air strikes lasted throughout the night into the morning. Aleppo, which was Syria’s commercial ...

  New Delhi / AFP India has blamed regional rival China for blocking its entry to a nuclear trade group opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, after its members met in South Korea with no decision on India’s bid to join. India wants to become a member of the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) which works to prevent the ...

  Cambodia / AP Taiwan protested after Cambodia deported 25 Taiwanese internet scam suspects to rival China in the latest snub of the self-ruled island. The 25 Taiwanese and 14 Chinese were deported on a special plane dispatched by the Chinese government on Friday, said the chief of the Cambodian Interior Ministry’s Immigration Investigation Bureau, Gen. Ouk Haiseila. He said ...

  Istanbul / AFP A Turkish court has rejected a legal bid seeking the release of two journalists and an academic being held on “terror propaganda” charges, media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders said on Saturday. RSF Turkey representative and journalist Erol Onderoglu, journalist Ahmet Nesin and rights activist and academic Sebnem Korur Fincanci were charged on Monday in connection ...

  Marseille / AFP Two men were killed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a 14-year-old girl seriously wounded in a shooting early Saturday in the southern French city of Marseille, Police Commissioner Laurent Nunez said. The two men, whose identities were not revealed, were shot dead in their car in a carpark in the Consolat housing estate in a ...

  WASHINGTON The Leave campaign won the referendum on withdrawing Britain from the European Union because the arguments on which the Remain side relied made Leave’s case. The Remain campaign began with a sham, was monomaniacal with its Project Fear, and ended in governmental thuggishness. The sham was Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempt to justify Remain by negotiating EU concessions ...

    The UK has voted to leave the European Union, but the strenuous exit process could take years. Brussels wants an immediate start to it, while London insists it is a new Prime Minister who will negotiate with the EU in October. London’s position doesn’t augur well with sullen Brussels, apparently annoyed by UK’s unprecedented decision to leave the ...

    Catherine Putz SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS There are few topics bigger in the region than the question of China. EurasiaNet is running a five-part series addressing different aspects of Chinese engagement in Central Asia. Raffaello Pantucci tackles the overview, writing that “China’s rise in Central Asia marks one of the most consequential changes in regional geopolitics since the ...

  When Margaret Thatcher visited the College of Europe in 1988, she joked that a British leader coming to address an elite college of European civil servants was like Genghis Khan being invited to a peace conference. But in what became known as the Bruges speech, Thatcher’s message was anything but hostile. Nobody, she said, can deny that Britons are ...

  Alkesh Sharma / Emirates Business Creativity and innovation are the buzzwords around which the future economic plans and strategies of the United Arab of Emirates revolve around these days. UAE leadership announced a detailed plan worth over AED300 billion to become a “knowledge-based economy” and end dependence on oil for sustainable growth. “UAE is witnessing burgeoning corporate ecosystem where ...