Egypt took the radical decision to let its currency float freely in November. The move was part of an attempt to ease its deep economic crisis and secure an emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Turkish authorities have arrested the cafeteria manager of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper for insulting the president after he said he would not serve tea to Tayyip Erdogan, one of the manager’s lawyers told Reuters on Monday. Senol Buran, who runs the cafeteria at the Istanbul office of Cumhuriyet , was taken into custody after police raided his home late on Saturday, lawyer Ozgur Urfa said.

A Syrian man gestures in the former rebel-held Salaheddin district in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on December 23, 2016 after Syrian government forces retook control of the whole embattled city. Photo – AFP A Syrian man gestures in the former rebel-held Salaheddin district in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on December 23, 2016 after Syrian government forces retook control of the whole embattled city.

An offshoot of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party has claimed responsibility for a weekend car bomb attack on a bus in central Turkey that killed at least 13 soldiers and wounded more than 50, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Tuesday. The militant group previously claimed responsibility for an attack earlier this month outside a soccer stadium in Istanbul that killed more than 40 people.

Dec 20 Turkey’s central bank kept interest rates on hold on Tuesday, in a move unexpected by analysts as the sliding lira currency took a back seat to President Tayyip Erdogan’s push for cheaper credit. The bank kept its benchmark one-week repo rate unchanged at 8 percent.

Crushed and covered in blood: Scenes of devastation amid the crumpled stalls of the Berlin Christmas market immediately after ‘terror attack’ Trump says terrorists ‘must be eradicated from the face of the earth’ after 12 die and 48 are hurt when lorry ploughs into Berlin market ‘People were tearing off wooden panels to get out’: Witness describes the moment a truck plowed into a Berlin Christmas market How Zsa Zsa seduced the world with sex, one-liners and VERY tall tales to become the world’s first celebrity to be famous just for being famous Obama pardons 78 felons and commutes 153 more as White House boasts of ‘greatest number of individual clemencies in a single day’ Ohio’s next three executions are postponed as the state struggles to get hold of the controversial drug Midazolam to carry out the killings Horror as Russian ambassador to Turkey is shot dead in art exhibition in Ankara … (more)

News selected on topics and regions – oil and gas, business, politics, IT, the South Caucasus, the Caspian Sea region, Central Asia Ranking of the Azerbaijani banking sector A gunman tried to enter the US Embassy in Ankara, police neutralised the attacker and took him into custody, Daily Sabah reported. Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov died after he was badly wounded in an armed assault in Ankara Dec. 19, Turkish newspaper Milliyet reported.