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  Berlin / AFP Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that German authorities believe a deadly rampage by a lorry driver at a Berlin Christmas market was a “terrorist” attack likely committed by an asylum seeker. Police were questioning a suspect, described by media as a 23-year-old man from Pakistan or Afghanistan who had arrived via the so-called Balkan route ...

  Berlin / AFP The bloody carnage at a Berlin Christmas market, with a Pakistani or Afghan asylum-seeker as the chief suspect, immediately emboldened right-wing populist critics of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal refugee policy. Merkel has been under fire over her decision in September last year to let in tens of thousands fleeing war and poverty from mostly war-torn countries ...

  Washington / AFP China has returned a US underwater probe it seized in the South China Sea, the Pentagon confirmed after Beijing’s capture of the craft sparked a dispute between the two powers. The Chinese navy handed over the drone near where it was seized, the Pentagon said, repeating US condemnation of Beijing’s actions in what it says are ...

  Tokyo / AFP Japan’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday in favour of the central government in its bid to relocate a US airbase on Okinawa, dealing a significant blow to the plan’s opponents led by the island’s governor. The Japanese and US governments want the base in the middle of a crowded city moved to a sparsely populated area ...

  Bloomberg For unionized auto workers, even amid a booming US market, the only safe jobs of late have been building pickups and sport utility vehicles. Within the next month, General Motors Co. plans to permanently cut about 3,300 employees at three car plants, as the largest US automaker slashes production of models including the Chevrolet Cruze compact. The Detroit-based ...

  Los Angeles / AFP A huge debut for “Rogue One” has seen Walt Disney Studios become the first distributor in history to hit $7 billion in annual global box office receipts, it said. The $290 million worldwide opening for the “Star Wars” spinoff puts Disney’s haul for 2016 at $2.7 billion in North America, also an industry record, and ...

  Bloomberg A federal judge said Volkswagen AG continues to make progress in settlement talks with car owners and regulators to fix or get about 80,000 Audi, VW and Porsche vehicles with emissions-cheating 3.0-liter diesel engines off US roads. US District Judge Charles Breyer, saying he was optimistic a resolution would be reached, ordered a “final continuance” and told lawyers ...

  Bloomberg Ericsson AB is considering cutting about 1,000 jobs in Italy, about a quarter of its local workforce, after losing out on a contract to manage the country’s largest wireless network, according to people familiar with the matter. The Swedish company wasn’t selected to merge and run the network of CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd. and VimpelCom Ltd., said the ...

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc. risks a multimillion-euro fine for allegedly misleading European Union merger watchdogs when it won approval to buy the WhatsApp messaging service in 2014. The EU’s antitrust authority said in a statement on Tuesday it suspects Facebook supplied “incorrect or misleading information” on linking data with WhatsApp when regulators cleared the tie-up two years ago. Officials said ...

  Reuters Egypt’s blue chip stock index surged to a record high on Tuesday while Qatar’s market was supported by a potential $44 billion bank merger but other major Gulf bourses were dampened by profit- taking. Cairo’s index jumped 3.4 percent to 12,148 points, exceeding its previous all-time high of 12,039 points reached in April 2008. The index is up ...