Iraqi soldiers fighting just north of Mosul, within sight of city neighborhoods, said on Sunday they were ready to tighten the noose around Islamic State militants waging a brutal defense of their Iraqi stronghold.
An elite unit of the Iraqi army paused its week-long advance on Mosul as it approached the city's eastern edge on Tuesday, waiting for other U.S.-backed forces to close in on Islamic State's last major urban stronghold in Iraq.
The offensive to seize back Mosul from Islamic State is going faster than planned, Iraq's prime minister said on Thursday, as Iraqi and Kurdish forces launched a new military operation to clear villages on the city's outskirts.
The United States expects Islamic State to use crude chemical weapons as it tries to repel an Iraqi-led offensive on the city of Mosul, U.S. officials say, although adding that the group's technical ability to develop such weapons is highly limited.
Armed forces closing in on Mosul said on Tuesday they had secured some 20 villages on the outskirts of the city in the first 24 hours of an operation to retake what is Islamic State's last major stronghold in Iraq.
Authorities are closely monitoring about 40 returnees and are concerned they could be linking up with existing networks
Several delegates addressed regional conflicts and refugee issues during the second day of the general debate at the United Nations General Assembly here on Wednesday.
U.S. President Barack Obama floated the idea of joint action with Turkey to capture the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in remarks published on Wednesday.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were unable to strike a deal for a ceasefire in Syria and differences remain, a senior State Department official said after their meeting in China on Monday.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has extended his stay in India, officials said.
Islamic State said on Tuesday one of its most prominent and longest-serving leaders was killed in what appeared to be an American air strike in Syria, depriving the militant group of the man in charge of directing attacks overseas.
U.S.-led coalition warplanes hit Islamic State targets near the Syrian frontier town of Jarablus overnight, the Turkish military said on Tuesday, as forces backed by Ankara pushed deeper into north Syria.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has uncovered nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed documents to or from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton when she served as secretary of state, a federal judge was told at a hearing on Monday.
China launched a State venture capital fund worth 200 billion yuan ($30.2 billion) to push forward innovative technologies and industrial upgrading projects, the country's top State-owned assets regulator said on Thursday.
State Grid Corp of China reached a deal to gain control of Brazil's CPFL Energia SA, after two major shareholders agreed to sell the Chinese company their stakes in the $7.3 billion utility, people with knowledge of the matter said.
A power plant explosion killed at least 21 people and injured five, three of them seriously, in Dangyang, Hubei province, on Thursday, according to China's top work safety watchdog.
The battlefield momentum in Iraq and Syria has shifted against Islamic State, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday, but the international community must now also confront the challenge of stabilizing newly liberated areas.
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