Airstrikes Pound Aleppo Hours After Kerry Calls for End to Strikes and other top stories.

• Airstrikes Pound Aleppo Hours After Kerry Calls for End to Strikes

  

  UNITED NATIONS —  Air raids hit several rebel-held areas of Aleppo overnight Wednesday, marking the heaviest strikes the city has seen in months, just hours after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for an end to warplanes flying over “key areas” of Syria. Opposition activists immediately pointed the finger at Syrian government, though officials have yet to comment on the reports. Heavy fighting flared up along the outskirts of Aleppo Thursday morning following the air strikes. Air raids ..

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• Iraqi army says it reached center of key town south of Mosul

  

  TIKRIT, Iraq Iraq's military backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition on Thursday seized the center of Shirqat, a northern town seen as a stepping stone in the campaign to recapture Mosul from Islamic State.The army, backed by local police and Sunni Muslim tribal fighters, were still clashing with the ultra-hardline jihadists after taking control of the mayor's office, the municipal building and the hospital, said a source from the Salahuddin Operations Command, which oversees military ..

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• Violent past revisited as Afghanistan signs accord with notorious warlord

  

  KABUL Afghan officials signed a peace deal on Thursday with a party led by one of the country's most notorious Islamist warlords, a move that inspired both hope and fear as it dredged up tension dating back decades.The militant faction of Hezb-i-Islami, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has been waging a decades-long battle to establish a unified Islamic state in Afghanistan.Government officials praised the accord as a step towards peace, while critics said it opened the door to one of the most infa..

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• Oxford Tops List of World's Best Universities

  

  The U.S. has many of the best universities in the world, but according to a new global list, it doesn’t have the best. The University of Oxford, the oldest in the English-speaking world, took the top spot in the latest World University Rankings, released annually by Times Higher Education. The English university dating to 1096 dethroned the California Institute of Technology, a small, private school in Pasadena that had ranked No. 1...

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• For Colombia rebels, a coming-out (of the jungle) party

  

  EL DIAMANTE, Colombia — Of all the strange sights at the “conference” held this week to mark the end of the FARC guerrillas’ half-century war, none was more surreal than the concert stage they fired up in the evenings. Set in the middle of a vast meadow, with a fog machine and a video screen the size of a tank, it was the brightest thing for miles around. Big-name bands had been trucked in from the faraway capital, Bogota, and some of the rebels came out of the forest to dance in their fatigue..

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