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Bloomberg As preparations for this week’s European summit enter their final stretch, France is leading resistance to UK demands for a deal to shield British banks from the rules governing lenders in the euro area. French negotiator Philippe Leglise-Costa pushed back against British Prime Minister David Cameron’s insistence on fencing off financial regulation for the City of London at a ...

Bloomberg The perpetrators of violent clashes in Hong Kong this week shattered its values in one night, the city’s financial secretary said, urging those involved to “turn their horses back from the cliff.” The “small group of people who lost rationality” marred the city’s interests and tarnished its image, and their actions are a departure from Hong Kong people’s respect ...

Brussels / AFP The number of civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan last year was the highest recorded since 2009, the UN said on Sunday, with children paying a particularly heavy price. There were 11,002 civilian casualties in 2015 including 3,545 deaths, the UN said in its annual report on Afghan civilians in armed conflict, a four percent rise over ...

AFP Some 150,000 penguins died after a massive iceberg grounded near their colony in Antarctica, forcing them to make a lengthy trek to find food, scientists say in a newly-published study. The B09B iceberg, measuring some 100 square kilometres, grounded in Commonwealth Bay in East Antarctica in December 2010, the researchers from Australia and New Zealand wrote in the Antarctic ...

TAIPEI / AP Rescuers in Taiwan pulled out the remains of the final victims of last week’s earthquake and with a minute of silence ended the search with the death toll of 116, most of them in a collapsed high-rise apartment building. All but two of the dead came from the 17-story Weiguan Golden Dragon residential complex, which toppled when ...

Nicosia / AFP Inside a vintage-style Cypriot cafe, 18-year-old Ibrahima Yonga recounts to a stranger how he escaped the Boko Haram group in Cameroon and spent months at sea to reach Europe. Seated at tables nearby, a Palestinian, a Congolese and a Sudanese also share their tales with members of the public, against a soothing background of light acoustic music. ...

WASHINGTON / AP The State Department has released more than 1,000 new pages of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Eighty-one messages were classified, mostly at the lowest level of sensitivity. None was declared top secret. The department has now released more than 45,000 pages of emails from the private account Clinton used as secretary of state. It plans to finish making her ...

Munich / AP A senior figure in the Syrian opposition movement on Sunday criticised the truce deal forged by the US and Russia, saying Moscow was continuing its onslaught on civilian areas. “We have gotten used to conferences and hope put into words but what we need is action, and the action I see is that Russia is killing Syrian ...

Athens / AFP An assessment of Greece’s attempts to reform its struggling economy is being held up by disagreements between the European Union and the IMF, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said. “Negotiations on the reform plan have fallen behind, which is in nobody’s interest,” he said on Sunday, cited by the Avghi daily, close to Tspiras’ Syriza party. Greece ...

Bangui / AFP Voters in the Central African Republic were casting their ballots on Sunday in delayed legislative elections and a presidential run-off which they hope will bring peace after the country’s worst sectarian violence since independence in 1960. The nation, dogged by coups, violence and misrule since winning independence from France, could take a step towards rebirth if the ...