Tehran / AFP Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have killed five Kurdish rebels near the country’s northwestern border with Iraq, an official statement said on Monday. “A team of five from the PJAK terrorist splinter group… has been identified and destroyed in the Sardasht region” on the Iraqi border, a Guards statement said on its official website. It said the ...

  Pretoria / AFP Oscar Pistorius is suffering from depression, a South African court heard on Monday, as the Paralympic athlete faced a return to jail for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp three years ago. The double-amputee killed Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 2013, saying he mistook her for an intruder ...

  Jerusalem / AFP Israel has reopened Palestinian crossing points from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip following a three-day closure put in place after last week’s deadly Tel Aviv shooting, the army said on Monday. Crossings were reopened overnight as planned, an army spokeswoman said, though “security checks are ongoing” in Yatta, the West Bank village where the ...

  Manila / AFP Filipino protesters said on Monday that Chinese coastguard ships blocked and sprayed them with water as they sailed to a disputed South China Sea shoal to plant a Philippine flag for independence day. China claims most of the strategic and resources-rich sea and has controlled Scarborough Shoal, just 230 kilometres (145 miles) off the main Philippine ...

  BLOOMBERG Growing anxiety over the prospect of the U.K. exiting the European Union dominated financial markets, sending global stocks down for a third day and the British pound to an eight-week low while boosting demand for havens such as the yen and gold. In Europe, equities headed for the lowest close since February and the pound weakened against most ...

  Bloomberg The oil market just hit a yellow light. Crude’s advance of more than 90 percent from a 12-year low earlier this year has U.S. shale producers starting to return to their drilling rigs, threatening to slow further gains. “The $50-to-$60 a barrel area is the sweet spot,” said Mark Watkins, the Park City, Utah-based regional investment manager for ...

  Bloomberg Five years ago, when Eric Ries was working on the book that would become his best-selling entrepreneurship manifesto “The Lean Startup,” he floated a provocative idea in the epilogue: Someone should build a new, “long-term” stock exchange. Its reforms, he wrote, would amend the frantic quarterly cycle to encourage investors and companies to make better decisions for the ...

  New Delhi / Bloomberg India is seeking a commitment from Apple Inc. to bring manufacturing facilities to the country before the government will approve the iPhone maker’s request to open its own retail stores, according to a senior government official with direct knowledge of the matter. The government may loosen existing policies that require local sourcing for companies that ...

  Kuala Lumpur / AFP Rayani Air, Malaysia’s first Islamic-compliant airline, has been shut down, regulators said on Monday, months after it was suspended from flying for breaching aviation regulations. The carrier launched only in December with Muslim flight crew wearing the hijab while non-Muslim members were forbidden from wearing revealing clothing. In-flight meals were completely halal and alcohol consumption banned. ...

  Seoul / AFP South Korea’s Lotte Group said on Monday it was scrapping an initial public offering worth almost four billion dollars amid a widening investigation into alleged embezzlement by its founding family. Hotel Lotte — the group’s key unit — had planned to list shares worth at least 4.6 trillion won ($3.9 billion) on Seoul’s main stock market ...