MOSCOW / AP The Russian military on Sunday rejected the Pentagon’s accusations that it had deliberately targeted US-backed Syrian opposition forces, arguing the US had failed to warn about their locations. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said the area targeted in the strike was more than 300 kilometers away from locations earlier designated by the US ...

  London / AFP WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange starts his fifth year camped out in the Ecuadoran embassy in London on Sunday, an occasion his supporters intend to mark with events celebrating whistleblowers. Supporters said they were planning to stage songs, speeches and readings in several European cities. Assange, 44, is wanted for questioning over a 2010 rape allegation in ...

  BEIJING / AP Residents in a village in southern China where police have been deployed took to the streets on Sunday to protest the detention of the village’s democratically elected leader and historic seizures of land. The protests in Wukan come nearly five years after an uprising there made the fishing village in Guangdong province, next to Hong Kong, an ...

  Beirut / AFP Eight displaced Syrians, including four children, were killed by Turkish border guards while trying to flee their war-torn country on Sunday morning, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The National Coalition umbrella opposition group—based in Istanbul and backed by Turkey—gave a higher toll of 11 killed and condemned the “terrible tragedy.” Turkey has repeatedly denied ...

WASHINGTON We Americans have a confused and contradictory relationship with vacation. In theory; we love it; in practice, we often dread it. So much expectation is heaped on a few weeks of free time that disappointment, if not inevitable, is common. Worse, our escape from the job and daily routine fills us with anxiety that, somehow, this interlude will inflict ...

Serious prospect of Britain leaving the European Union could trigger a domino effect within the UK itself, as Scotland could opt for another referendum, with intention to secede from the UK to join the EU. At worst, Brexit is widely believed to lead to a breakup of the UK if Brexiteers get their way on June 23. Northern Ireland and ...

  Franz-Stefan Gady SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS On June 15, China and the United States held their second round of bilateral talks on cybercrime and other cyber-related topics in Beijing. Originally intended to be a ministerial meeting, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson had to withdraw their participation to focus on the ongoing Orlando ...

  Leonid Bershidsky The shocking murder of British parliament member Jo Cox and the Orlando shootings were both hate crimes that defy political labels, whatever the professed motives of the killers. Nobody can predict what will set off a deranged killer and it would be deplorable to tar legitimate political campaigns because a killer identified with one cause or another. ...

  BLOOMBERG Abu Dhabi stocks climbed the most in 18 months as two of the emirate’s biggest banks said they’re in talks to merge in a deal that would form one of the Middle East’s largest lenders by assets. The ADX General Index advanced 4.7 percent to close at 4,524.41, the strongest level in almost two months. National Bank of ...

  Bloomberg Kenya, the world’s biggest exporter of black tea, is considering introducing the world’s first futures contracts for the leaves to help stabilize prices and enable growers to guarantee income from their production. INTL FCStone Inc., based in New York, has held talks with industry representatives in the East African nation about introducing the derivatives, Stuart Ponder, senior vice ...