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  Bloomberg Intesa Sanpaolo SpA climbed in Milan trading after abandoning the idea of a joint business model with an insurance company as Chief Executive Officer Carlo Messina doesn’t see sufficient value in merging with Assicurazioni Generali SpA, Italy’s biggest insurer. The country’s second-largest bank said that after studying a possible combination under the bancassurance model, it now plans to ...

  Bloomberg One of the smallest parts of Standard Chartered Plc, the UK bank with operations sprawling across Asia and Africa, has become one of its biggest losers. Losses at the unit that houses the Standard Chartered Private Equity business, or SCPE, more than doubled to $650 million in 2016 as its investments lost value, the London-based bank said. The ...

  WASHINGTON / AP A new military strategy to meet President Donald Trump’s demand to “obliterate” the IS group is likely to deepen US military involvement in Syria, possibly with more ground troops, even as the current US approach in Iraq appears to be working and will require fewer changes. Details are sketchy. But recommendations due at the White House ...

  BAGHDAD / AP Iraqi federal police units pushed deeper into western Mosul on Monday, gaining control of a neighborhood along the Tigris River and the foot of one of the city’s five bridges amid intense clashes with IS militants, a senior Iraqi police commander said. According to Maj. Gen Thamir al-Hussaini, who commands the federal rapid response force, the ...

  DUBAI / AP Authorities in Bahrain say five police officers have been wounded in a bomb attack that targeted a bus in the island nation. An Interior Ministry statement says two of those wounded have since been discharged from the hospital while the three others are in stable condition. The attack on Sunday came ahead of a court hearing ...

  MOSCOW/ AP Moscow municipal workers have demolished the impromptu memorial to Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on the day he was killed two years ago. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, was shot dead late on Feb. 27, 2015, just outside the Kremlin wall in an apparent contract killing. Thousands of mourners marched across Moscow on Sunday and brought ...

  BRUSSELS / AP The European Union is boosting its sanctions against North Korea in line with a U.N. Security Council Resolution following another nuclear test in September last year. The EU member states said in a statement on Monday they will restrict trade in coal and iron and ban imports of several other metals. The EU also imposed a ...

  PARIS / AP The two main left-leaning candidates in France’s presidential election won’t join forces after all. Socialist Benoit Hamon and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, a former member of the Socialist Party who is supported by the Communists, both announced over the weekend that they are staying in the race, putting the Left at risk of disappearing after the ...

  BANDUNG / AP Indonesian police said they shot and killed a suspected militant in the West Java capital of Bandung on Monday after his bomb exploded in a vacant lot and he fled into a municipal building and set it alight. National police chief Tito Karnavian said the man was a member of Jemaah Ansharut Daulah, which was designated ...

  SEOUL / AP South Korea’s main opposition parties threatened on Monday to impeach the country’s acting leader after he refused to extend a special investigation into the huge corruption scandal that toppled conservative President Park Geun-hye. If successful, the impeachment of Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn would rile an already tumultuous political landscape, putting another interim leader in power while ...