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...

Kenyans on Saturday marked the first anniversary of the Garissa University attack, when four extremist gunmen massacred 148 people, with renewed criticism of the government's handling of the crisis. Hundreds gathered at the site of the attack in eastern Kenya to remember the incident, one of the country's worst-ever terrorist attacks carried out by gunmen from the al-Qaida-allied Somali al-Shabab group. The gunmen were finally killed by a police commando unit after 12 hours. The government has been heavily criticized for its slow response to the attack, despite there being a military base nearby. Kenya has suffered a wave of extremist attacks since it deployed troops in October 2011 to Somalia to support the weak government there in its battle against the al-Shabab militants. The university reopened in January after extensive refurbishment of the bullet-scarred buildings but only 150 of its 700 students have returned to class. Others were transferred to Moi University in ...

The threat from terrorists trying to launch a nuclear attack that would "change our world" is real, President Barack Obama has said. The world has taken "concrete" steps to prevent nuclear terrorism, But the so-called Islamic State (IS) obtaining a nuclear weapon is "one of the greatest threats to global security," he added. More than 50 nations were represented at the summit. World leaders convening in Washington for the summit expressed concern about North Korea's nuclear weapons programme and Russia's lack of attendance. Obama expressed concern that Russia has been building up its military at the expense of nuclear arms reductions. Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to attend the summit, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan cancelled his trip after the deadly bombing in Lahore. Both countries are nuclear-armed. As the summit closed, the leaders reaffirmed their commitment to fight proliferation. Mr Obama cited progress i...

New video clip was released on Friday by the jihadist group, denying that it might negotiate with the Federal Government of Nigeria. This is coming just about a week after the leader of the rebel Shekau, said in March that his time as the head of the group might be coming to an end. The previous video showed Shekau, who appeared thin and spiritless, delivering his message without his usual fiery manner. This had prompted speculation from the Army that the Islamist group was on the verge of collapse in the face of a sustained military counter-insurgency. However, in a Friday video posted on YouTube, which showed men holding AK-47s and posing in front of Toyota Hilux pick-up trucks and a lorry mounted with a military cannon, Boko Haram maintained that it was still a potent fighting force and would not surrender. The video, markedly better quality than Shekau’s and including Arabic subtitles, featured nine masked Boko Haram fighters standing on sandy ground in an undisclosed de...

car bomb has killed seven police officers and wounded more than 24 people in Turkey's Diyarbakir, a day before the prime minister was due to visit the biggest city in the largely Kurdish southeast. A parked car laden with explosives was detonated by remote control on Thursday as a minibus carrying the police officers turned a corner on a busy street, security sources said, adding that civilians were among the wounded. President Erdogan, who is on a visit to Washington for a nuclear security summit, denounced the attack, saying it showed the "ugly face" of militants "as they are cornered". "This shows terrorism's ugly face again. The determination of our security forces will, God willing, put an end" to it, Erdogan said. 27 people had also been wounded in the attack. The southeast has been scorched by violence since a ceasefire between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the government collapsed last July. Government believe that bo...

An overpass collapsed Thursday in the Indian city of Kolkata, crushing vehicles below it, killing at least 22 people and leaving dozens more missing, authorities said. Maj. Gen. Anurag Gupta, from India's National Disaster Management Authority, said early Thursday evening that authorities didn't then know how many people were driving across the bridge when it fell or how many more remained trapped. "We cannot predict how many people are still under wreckage," Gupta said. "We can't tell, since it's a bridge and not a building." Gupta said that in addition to those killed, at least 75 others suffered injuries in the midday collapse in a busy commercial area north of Kolkata's center. Relatives of the dead will get $7,500; critically injured will get $3,000, official says The Kolkata overpass that fell had been under construction for the past five years Prime Minister Narendra Modi says he's "shocked and saddened" Sgt. Saurav B...