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Bloomberg Chile’s economy grew less that expected in the fourth quarter, expanding at the second-slowest pace in six years, as two years of weak growth was exacerbated by a renewed decline in manufacturing. Gross domestic product grew 1.3 percent from a year earlier, the central bank said on its website. From the previous quarter, GDP expanded 0.1 percent. Increased fiscal ...

Bloomberg Argentina’s peso is the world’s most volatile currency, and that’s fine with the central bank. Big swings are usually not something policy makers want. Officials around the world have procedures in place to ward off the rapid ups and downs that make it difficult for businesses to plan and leave savers nervous about staying in the national currency. But ...

BAGHDAD / AP It was a tense confrontation between two forces supposed to be on the same side in Iraq. First, heavily armed police, led by the interior minister, waded into a Shiite militia base south of Baghdad and arrested its deputy commander, accused of organizing attacks on Sunni mosques. They loaded the man, Ali Reda, into an armored SUV. ...

Cairo / AFP The Arab League on Monday rejected Kurdish-led moves for a federal system of government in Syria, charging that they would lead to the break-up of the war-torn country. League deputy secretary general Ahmed Ben Helli said the pan-Arab bloc would not recognise last week’s unilateral proclamation by the Kurds and their Arab and Assyrian Christian allies. “The ...

ATHENS / AP Monitors from Turkey have arrived on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios to help supervise an agreement aimed limiting the number of refugees flowing into the European Union via smugglers’ boats. The officers arrived on Monday and were to stay for at least one week, as Greek authorities scrambled to implement the landmark deal reached last ...

Athens / WAM A total of 1,662 migrants have landed on Greek islands near Turkey since a landmark EU-Turkish deal on curbing the influx took effect on Sunday, a Greek coordination panel said Monday. Half of the migrants—830—arrived on Chios and 698 others on Lesbos, two islands in the northeast Aegean which lie close to Turkey, according to the SOMP ...

Geneva / AFP The UN expert on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories voiced scathing criticism of Israel on Monday, as he stepped down over what he said was a lack of access to areas he was meant to monitor. Makarim Wibisono, who took on the role of Special Rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories in ...

Seoul / AFP North Korea on Monday fired five short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast—the latest in a series of launches ordered by leader Kim Jong-un amid rising military tensions. They came just days after the North test-fired two medium-range missiles in what the UN Security Council described as an “unacceptable” violation of UN resolutions. Tensions have ...

Jakarta / AFP A Chinese envoy called on Indonesia on Monday to release eight crew members of a Chinese fishing boat detained during a maritime confrontation, after he was summoned by furious Indonesian ministers. Jakarta says Indonesian vessels were on Saturday trying to detain a Chinese fishing boat operating illegally near Indonesia’s Natuna Islands in the South China Sea, when ...

The Gambia, formerly one of a handful of countries that recognized Taiwan, has officially resumed diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese and Gambian foreign ministers, Wang Yi and Neneh MacDouall-Gaye, signed a joint communique officially resuming diplomatic ties on March 17 in Beijing. Part of the communique, as is standard procedure for Beijing, had Gambia officially ...