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  Beirut / AFP Turkish shelling and air strikes killed at least 40 Syrians on Sunday, a monitor said, in the first significant civilian casualties in Turkey’s intensifying campaign in northern Syria. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the army had killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” in air strikes as part of its unprecedented operation inside Syria. The bombardments came after Ankara ...

  Abuja / AFP Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Sunday that Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau is “wounded”, in his first comments on military claims that the extremist leader was injured in an attack. Nigeria’s armed forces said on Tuesday that Shekau had been wounded in an air strike on Boko Haram’s forest stronghold, but released no further statement ...

  Cairo / AFP Egyptian authorities on Sunday released a renowned human rights lawyer arrested after protests against President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s decision to hand over two islands to Saudi Arabia. Malek Adly had been held in pre-trial detention since being arrested by plainclothes police on May 5. His defence team confirmed his release. “The case has not been referred ...

  Riyadh /AFP Yemen’s exiled government has said it welcomes in principle a US-backed plan to resume peace talks with Iran-backed rebels on the basis of forming a unity government. At a meeting in Riyadh, the cabinet gave an “initial welcoming to the ideas that came out of the meeting in Jeddah,” which included US Secretary of State John Kerry, ...

  Berlin / AFP Germany expects up to 300,000 asylum seekers to arrive this year, less than one-third of the total during 2015’s record influx, the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees (BAMF) said on Sunday. BAMF chief Frank-Juergen Weise told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Germany’s healthy economy and improvements to refugee services meant that the country was ...

  Yangon / AFP Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi faces what could be the toughest test of her leadership yet when she opens a major ethnic peace conference Wednesday aimed at ending wars that have blighted the country since its independence. The five-day talks will bring hundreds of ethnic minority rebel leaders to the capital, along with military top brass ...

  Bloomberg Bahrain Islamic Bank BSC (BISB) is seeking to sell about 82 million dinars ($218 million) of unproductive assets such as land and shares as part of a five-year plan to boost growth. The lender sold 14 million dinars-worth of these assets in the first half and plans the sale of a similar amount in the remainder of the ...

  Bloomberg European Central Bank (ECB) Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said unconventional monetary policy may have to be used differently and more frequently if governments don’t act to boost the growth potential of euro-area economies. “We may see short-term rates being pushed to the effective lower bound more frequently in the event of macroeconomic shocks,” Coeure said Saturday in ...

  Bloomberg Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said he won’t hesitate to boost monetary stimulus if needed, reiterating a pledge during an annual policy retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at which central bankers stressed their need for backup from fiscal policy. “There is no doubt that there is ample space for additional easing in each of the three dimensions,” ...

  Bloomberg Postal Savings Bank of China Co., moving closer to the world’s biggest share sale this year, won Hong Kong stock exchange approval for an initial public offering that could raise about $8 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said. The Beijing-based bank plans to start gauging investor demand for the offering in the first half of September, ...