American and Afghan Taliban officials have temporally paused ongoing peace talks in Qatar to consult with their respective leaderships before returning to the table on Saturday.

The United States has reaffirmed that it will maintain sanctions on Russia until it returns control of Crimea to Ukraine, nearly five years after Moscow annexed the peninsula. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Russia’s occupation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 has fueled “an escalation of Russian aggression.”

In front of a backdrop of American and North Korean flags as he shook hands with Kim Jong Un at the start of their second summit, U.S. President Donald Trump denied that he has walked back his pledge to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.

Pakistan says it has shot down two Indian military jets, which violated its airspace, and captured two pilots amid escalating tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors over the recent developments in disputed Kashmir.

The Iraqi army said on Wednesday that eight Islamic State terrorists were apprehended during a military operation in the western province of Anbar.

Despite its initial pleasure upon hearing of the US withdrawal from Syria, Turkey seems to be facing difficulties in achieving its goals in its southern neighbor. Recent back-and-forth statements between the United States and Ankara have pointed to a couple of disagreements over the Syria dossier.

Hundreds of people boarded trucks leaving the last scrap of the Islamic State group’s “caliphate” in eastern Syria on Wednesday as U.S.-backed forces prepared to deliver the final blow to holdout jihadists.

The Kurdish Peshmerga forces have opened a small museum at one of its bases in the Kurdistan Region to exhibit some of the explosive devices it confiscated from the Islamic State which were used against them during battles.

The United Nations says in the last three days some 9,000 people have evacuated the final piece of land still held by the Islamic State terror group in Syria.

The Islamic State group may have lost all its territory in Syria but a rival jihadist group has been making gains in the last remaining opposition stronghold in the north of the country – and it has got residents nervous. In a dramatic takeover last month, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) …