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  Baghdad / AP Iraqi forces thrust into the city of Fallujah from three directions on Monday marking a new and perilous urban phase in the week-old operation to retake the extremist bastion. Led by the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS), Iraq’s best trained and most seasoned fighting unit, the forces pushed in before dawn, commanders said. “Iraqi forces entered Fallujah ...

  BAGHDAD / AP A wave of bombings claimed by the IS group targeted commercial areas in and around Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 24 people. The bombings by IS, which has been behind several recent deadly attacks in Baghdad and beyond, are seen as an attempt by the militants to distract the security forces’ attention away from the ...

  Antalya / AFP Ankara will abandon a deal with the European Union to reduce migrant flows if its citizens are not granted visa-free travel to most of the bloc, Turkey’s foreign minister has warned. With the two sides locked in an increasingly-bitter standoff, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said it was “impossible” for Ankara to change anti-terror laws that ...

  Paris / AFP Seven suspected extremists, including the brother of one of the suicide bombers in last November’s Paris attacks, went on trial in Paris on Monday. The men, now aged between 24 and 27, travelled to Syria at the end of 2013 and returned to France a few months later. Arrested in May 2014, they all deny having ...

Bloomberg Splits in the UK Conservative Party pose a growing threat to David Cameron’s chances of remaining prime minister after the Brexit referendum as “blue-on-blue” attacks become increasingly acrimonious. Bookmakers cut the odds on Cameron’s ouster this year as former London Mayor Boris Johnson and Justice Secretary Michael Gove, prominent Conservative campaigners to leave the European Union, said the premier’s ...

  TIRANA / AP NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly urged alliance members on Monday to stand up to Russia’s military assertiveness and to do a better job sharing the burden of collective defense. A unanimously approved declaration called on alliance members “to provide reassurance to those allies who feel their security is under threat, focusing on the eastern and southern flanks of ...

  Jakarta / AFP Beijing insisted on Monday a Chinese boat detained close to Indonesian islands had been fishing legally, in a fresh flare-up of tensions between the countries in the South China Sea. The Indonesian navy seized the Chinese boat in waters near the Natuna Islands on Friday for allegedly fishing illegally, the military said. The boat was towed ...

  Manila /AFP Rodrigo Duterte snubbed his proclamation as the next Philippine president on Monday, reinforcing his image as a maverick outsider intent on challenging the nation’s political establishment. A joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate in Manila endorsed the official count of this month’s election, which saw the trash-talking politician who revels in threats to ...

WASHINGTON Maybe the middle class isn’t quite so stressed any more. We in the media are rightly criticized for a pessimistic bias. We cover the unfortunate, the grim and the tragic. News is what people don’t know and, as often as not, is sad or shocking. Our prism on the world distorts reality, because reality is often predictable and reassuring ...

  Rising oil prices may give the European Central Bank (ECB) a rare opportunity to revise upwards its price growth forecasts when it meets on Thursday. Brent and WTI crude oil topped $50 per barrel on Thursday and remained above $49 on Friday. However, overall inflation remains very low and the euro area slipped back into deflation in April, with ...