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Lesbos / AFP Three boats shipped scores of migrants from the Greek islands to Turkey on Monday, the first wave of deportations under a hotly-contested pact to ease Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War II. As the sun rose over the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios, some 200 migrants, mainly from Pakistan and Bangladesh, were ferried back across ...

DUBAI / AFP The US Navy says it has seized a weapons shipment in the Arabian Sea from Iran likely heading to war-torn Yemen. The Navy said in a statement on Monday that the USS Sirocco on March 28 intercepted and seized the shipment of weapons hidden aboard a small dhow, a type of ship commonly used in the Persian ...

Jerusalem / AFP Israeli security forces demolished the West Bank homes of three Palestinians early Monday who killed an Israeli officer and seriously wounded another in Jerusalem in February, the military said. In February’s attack outside Jerusalem’s Old City, according to Israeli authorities, three Palestinian men in their early 20’s drew rifles and knives and attacked two female officers during ...

Gaza City / AFP Gaza fishermen have begun working further off the coast after Israel relaxed restrictions for the first time in a decade but said on Monday that the measure was not nearly enough. Palestinian boats working in the southern part of Gaza Strip started to fish as far as nine nautical miles off the coast on Sunday, the ...

BAGHDAD / AP Militants unleashed on Monday a wave of suicide attacks across Iraq, killing at least 29 people and wounding dozens, officials said. The deadliest attack took place in the southern province of Dhi Qar when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a restaurant that is frequented by Shiite paramilitary militia fighters, killing at least 14 people. Another ...

Beirut / AFP Air strikes have killed several Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front members including its spokesman and regime forces have retaken a strategic town from the IS group in the latest setbacks for extremists in Syria. Abu Firas Al Suri, whose real name was Radwan Nammous, fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he met Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and ...

Rome / AFP Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will travel to Iran next week for a two-day trip that will make him the first major leader to visit since the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran. Renzi’s office said in a statement on Monday that the centre-left premier would be in the Islamic Republic on April 12 and 13, without ...

A paradox of our time concerns productivity. We are awash in transformative technologies — smartphones, tablets, big data — and yet the growth in labour productivity, which should benefit from all the technology, is dismal. This matters. Productivity is economic lingo for efficiency, and it’s the wellspring of higher living standards. If productivity lags, so will wages and incomes. The ...

The leaked documents by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) could smear Panama’s image as an offshore haven for money laundering, even after it had exerted efforts to clear its name. The documents, from around 214,000 offshore entities, came from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm with offices in more than 35 countries. The leaked data, known as the ...

John Power SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS North Korea’s ruling party recently called on citizens to stand up to its patron China’s “hostile schemes” in a blistering attack that invoked nuclear war with Beijing, a report has claimed. In a document distributed to provincial committees, the Workers’ Party of Korea implored party members and workers to “soundly crush China’s pressuring schemes ...