Ayeiroyin

The fight in Syria that's threatening to undermine a U.S.-Russia-brokered cease-fire that has held for over a month. A monitoring group says a leader of an al-Qaida faction in Syria was killed in a U.S. air strike in a northern part of the country along with his son and several other people. The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites, says that Abu Firas al-Souri, a spokesman for the Nursa Front, was killed in the attack in the province of Idlib. The report could not be independently verified. The Nursa Front is considered a hard-line group that has crushed moderate rebel groups in northern Syria for their links with the United States. Syrian state media and an activist group say government forces and their allies have entered a central town that was held by the Islamic State group. Syrian troops and pro-government fighters pushed into Qaryatain on Sunday, after days of intense clashes with IS extremists outside the town. The Britain-based Syrian Observat...

Australian author, journalist and speech writer for the center-left Labor Party Bob Ellis died at his Sydney home of liver cancer on Sunday, his son said. He was 73 years old. "He died, as was his wish, at home. His family were by his bedside," Ellis's son Jack wrote on his father's blog "Table Talk." "The camaraderie of his regular readers has been a source of tremendous joy to him these past few years. Thank you all," he said. Ellis's accomplishments include the screenplay for the acclaimed 1978 Australian movie "Newsfront" and the autobiographical 1992 movie "The Nostradamus Kid." He wrote 19 books including best-selling "Goodbye Jerusalem" that was pulped in 1998 after then conservative government ministers Tony Abbott — who later became prime minister — and Peter Costello sued for defamation. Born a Seventh Day Adventist in the New South Wales state country town of Lismore on May 10, 1942, Ellis becam...