Also this week, water service resumed Friday in war-torn Aleppo, Syria's largest city,

that water from the al-Furat river was being pumped from the eastern countryside to al-Neirab and Suleiman al-Halabi stations to reach Aleppo neighborhoods.

The power and water disruptions came in the middle of a two-week truce between government forces and certain militant groups -- a pause in fighting that is meant to allow humanitarian aid to reach people who have been cut off by the war.

The temporary truce also is supposed to ease the way for peace talks scheduled to take place Wednesday in Geneva, Switzerland

Hijab said the regime and its allies violated the truce more than 100 times in five days, killing more than 40 people and injuring 92 others.

both the Syrian regime and Russia have violated the ceasefire terms, hitting targets other than ISIS or al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra Front, which are not a part of the multiparty truce deal.

The centerpiece of Trump's presidential campaign is the plan to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico as a barrier against illegal migration, criminals and narcotics trafficking.

Trump vows to "bomb the hell" out of ISIS in Iraq -- especially the oil wells it's captured there -- to deprive it of income.

Under Trump, the U.S. would also refuse to accept Syrian refugees (and, at least temporarily, all Muslims from anywhere in the world).

Trump would resume the widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding, adding that "it's not really tough enough." He's told voters that "torture works" -- and he would also maintain the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and add more prisoners.

He also wants South Korea to support more of the cost of its American military protection. "We get nothing for this. I'm not saying that we're going to let anything happen to them. But they have to help us," he said. In fact, the US receives more than $800 million annually from South Korea for its troop presence

Trump has both pledged to be "neutral" in trying to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians and also pledged his full support for the Jewish state.

f there is any other theme, it's that Trump speaks his own mind on major international issues -- and sometimes disagrees with his own mind too.

"Under a Trump presidency, foreign policy will be firm and proactive and similar to that of the Reagan's years -- a classic peace-through-economic-and-military strength, rather than the vacillating and dangerous weakness of the current White House," said economist Peter Navarro of the University of California.

Even if he makes it to the White House, Trump would hardly have a free hand. Congress and the courts can stymie the policies of any president. Activists, industry, and myriad interest groups exert their influence. Public opinion generates its own pressures on how America navigates the planet.

Most of the people arriving in Greece cited conflict as a reason for their journey, with more than 56% of January's arrivals coming from war-torn Syria

Fueled by xenophobia and propaganda campaigns based on fear, refugee families, homes and places of worship are being targeted with hate crimes varying from physical attacks, vandalism, arson, and even more sinister incidents such as one where a mosque had blood thrown on its walls and a pig's head left at its door

This debate doesn't have much to do with the merits of torture as an intelligence-gathering mechanism: The evidence that torture doesn't work is overwhelming. Rather, the debate among four leading Republicans over the practice is all about politics, both inside the Republican Party and more broadly.

Cruz, for example, has said that waterboarding does not constitute torture, but also that he would not "bring it back in any sort of widespread use" and has co-sponsored legislation limiting its use.

Well, under the definition of torture, no, it's not. Under the law, torture is excruciating pain that is equivalent to losing organs and systems, so under the definition of torture, it is not. It is enhanced interrogation, it is vigorous interrogation, but it does not meet the generally recognized definition of torture.

international law, under both the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, considers waterboarding a form of torture and thus illegal.

A January 2005 Gallup poll found that 82 percent of Americans believed "strapping prisoners on boards and forcing their heads underwater until they think they are drowning" was an immoral interrogation tactic.

In 2007, 40 percent of Americans favored waterboarding suspected terrorists in a CNN poll, while 58 percent opposed. By 2014, 49 percent told CBS that they believed waterboarding could be at least sometimes justified, while only 36 percent said it never could be.

Today, 73 percent of Republicans support torturing suspected terrorists, according to Pew.

Any Republican who took a strong stance against waterboarding or other torture techniques could be pegged as weak on terrorism — a damning charge in a Republican primary that's been preoccupied with ISIS.

Reminder: Torture is morally abhorrent and also doesn't work

Some proponents will claim that while morally regrettable, torture is nonetheless necessary to keep us safe. But the best evidence suggests that it this is a false choice: Waterboarding, and other forms of torture, does not work.

In most cases, torture is used by authoritarian states to force false confessions

The evidence that torture did not aid the hunt for Osama bin Laden is particularly compelling.

In other words, some GOP candidates' pro-torture sentiment isn't just a relic of Bush-era partisan debates — it's also totally out of whack with everything we know about the practice of torture today.

He's not a joke and he's not a clown. He's a man who could soon be making decisions of war and peace, who would decide which regulations are enforced and which are lifted, who would be responsible for nominating Supreme Court justices and representing America in the community of nations.

He climbed to the top of the polls in this election by calling Mexicans rapists and killers. He defended a poor debate performance by accusing Megyn Kelly of being on her period. He responded to rival Ted Cruz's surge by calling for a travel ban on Muslims. When two of his supporters attacked a homeless man and said they did it because "Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported," he brushed off complaints that he's inspiring violence by saying his supporters are "very passionate."

Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he's a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he's also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante.

"All the other candidates say 'Americans are angry, and I understand.' Trump says, 'I’M angry.'" Trump doesn't offer solutions so much as he offers villains. His message isn't so much that he'll help you as he'll hurt them.

Trump doesn't. He has the reality television star's ability to operate entirely without shame, and that permits him to operate entirely without restraint. It is the single scariest facet of his personality. It is the one that allows him to go where others won't, to say what others can't, to do what others wouldn't.

When MSNBC's Joe Scarborough asked Trump about his affection for Vladimir Putin, who "kills journalists, political opponents and invades countries," Trump replied, "He's running his country, and at least he's a leader, unlike what we have in this country."

It's a lie that if you put a frog into a pot of water and slowly turn up the heat the frog will simply boil, but it's a fact that if you put the American political system in a room with Trump for long enough we slowly lose track of how noxious he is, or we at least run out of ways to keep repeating it.

There is something scary in Donald Trump. We should fear his rise.

The ringleader's purported comments that 90 people had slipped into France without identification papers and fanned out across the region come as authorities estimate that about 1,900 people have returned to Europe after fighting in Iraq and Syria.

Abaaoud, a Belgian-Moroccan ISIS operative, was killed in a raid on an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis six days after the attacks that killed 130 people.

France and Belgium are considered to be at the highest risk of a terror attack, a U.S. intelligence official said, while Germany and Britain also face a heightened terror threat.

"We need to put aside internal disagreements at this tragic time and join efforts to save Christians in the regions where they are subject to the most atrocious persecution,"

Last year, the IOM said 3,811 people had drowned in the attempt.

. And in the first 28 days of this year alone, the agency estimates that more than 55,000 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to enter Europe. So far, 366 of these have been reported dead or missing.

More than 1 million migrants entered Europe last year.

At least 3,695 either drowned or disappeared last year as they attempted to cross the sea on unseaworthy boats, according to International Organization for Migration figures. That's a rate of about 10 deaths or disappearances a day.

Denmark, for example, recently adopted a controversial law to seize asylum-seekers' valuables to help cover their expenses.

How do we in the democratic world prevent terrorists from capitalizing on the Internet without compromising our own freedom?

If such "back doors" are introduced, it's inevitable that criminals and repressive regimes will also be able to exploit them, enabling them to access to people's private communications, identify journalists' sources and gain knowledge of activists' plans.

After all, the most insidious type of censorship occurs when people don't even know it is happening or who is responsible for it. And, that's exactly what's starting to happen.

More and more, governments are asking companies to censor content or disable users' accounts through informal and extralegal processes, where there is no transparency or accountability.

Innocent people are often caught in the crosshairs. Late last year, several women named Isis claimed they were shut out of Facebook. Two of them got their accounts restored only after the news media reported on their cases.

Right now, no major U.S.-based Internet company reports this information

The victims will include many law-abiding peaceful people who have every right to express themselves but whose activities happen to be unpopular, misunderstood or offensive to powerful institutions.

Social media's power as a tool for journalists hoping to expose injustice and for activists trying to build movements will corrode.

The Arab Spring may have failed in most countries. But if the rights of social media users are not protected and respected, the next movement could be deleted before the world ever learns about it.

The situation has been so dire that a doctor told CNN that he has nothing to give his patients except sugar or salt water.

But the United Nations said last week that it had received credible reports of people dying of starvation and that the Syrian government had agreed to allow aid convoys into Madaya, Foua and Kefraya.

On Monday, activists said that 15 people -- including at least 12 children -- had been killed in an aerial bombardment on a school in the town of Enjarah on the western outskirts of Aleppo, the largest Syrian city, which is in the north of the country.

He denied the Syrian government is using starvation as a tool of war, which is generally considered a war crime.

For example, in Damascus, flour costs 79 cents a kilogram. But in Madaya, a kilo of flour costs $120, and a kilo of rice costs $150.

In the capital, milk costs $1.06 a liter. But in Madaya, the price soars to $300 a liter.

"The problem is the terrorists are stealing the humanitarian assistance from the Syrian Red Crescent as well as from the United Nations," al-Ja'afari said.

Female candidates also were barred from speaking to male voters and required to segregate campaign offices, the organization said.

n the end, 979 women candidates and 130,637 women voters registered to participate in the election, according to Saudi election officials. A total of 5,938 men ran for the local offices

The move to allow women to vote has been described as a step forward for equality in the male-dominated kingdom.

informal system of male guardianship over women that requires women be accompanied by a male guardian to travel or go to school.

Two years later, he ordered that at least 20% of seats in the Consultative Council be set aside for women.

The number of women in the Saudi workforce also has been increasing, from 23,000 in 2004 to more than 400,000 in 2015, according to the government.

the Costa Rican government has been feeding them and housing them in shelters.

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solís eased the migrants' worries by reiterating that his country will not send them back to Cuba in a message posted Wednesday on YouTube.

It has certainly been regrettable that that government of Nicaragua, in a move that is still incomprehensible to me, has denied free transit through its territory. This attitude, in my opinion, harms the spirit of integration and fraternity of Central America.

We would like to thank Costa Rica for everything it has done for us, the help for children, the elderly and pregnant women; but we don't want to stay in Costa Rica. We want to go on toward the United States,"

The government of Nicaragua accused Costa Rica of generating "a serious crisis" and of "violating treaties, borders and rights."

its role is simply to protect these migrants as they travel through its territory.

Scientists and policy experts say that would require the world to move off fossil fuels between about 2050 and the end of the century. To reach the more ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, some researchers say the world will need to reach zero net carbon emissions sometime between about 2030 and 2050.

That level of warming is measured as the average temperature increase since the Industrial Revolution.

Failure to set a cap could result in superdroughts, deadlier heat waves, mass extinctions of plants and animals, megafloods and rising seas that could wipe some island countries off the map. The only way to reach the goal, scientists say, is to eliminate fossil fuels.

The entire agreement enters into force once 55 countries (who must account for 55% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions) have ratified it.

The agreement calls for developed countries to raise at least $100 billion annually in order to assist developing countries.

China and the United States, respectively, account for about 24% and 14% of total greenhouse gas emissions

The agreement doesn't mandate exactly how much each country must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Rather, it sets up a bottom-up system in which each country sets its own goal -- which the agreement calls a "nationally determined contribution" -- and then must explain how it plans to reach that objective. Those pledges must be increased over time, and starting in 2018 each country will have to submit new plans every five years.

Many countries actually submitted their new plans before COP21 started last month -- but those pledges aren't enough to keep warming below the 2 degrees target

Another issue, according to observers, was whether there would be reparations paid to countries that will see irreparable damage from climate change but have done almost nothing to cause it.

That means if the world's biggest polluters don't sign off on the agreement, enacting it could prove challenging.

But whether 43 percent or 34 percent of the population owns guns, it still suggests that gun-owning households have, on average, more than one gun.

65 percent of America's guns are in the hands of 20 percent of gun owners.

"the possibility of the presence of an Islamic State [ISIS] terror cell in Geneva."

many other donors have only their self-interest in mind and give to curry favor with the lawmakers who can help or hurt their fortunes. Most members of Congress, who are dependent on this money for their re-election campaigns, have to listen.

Once implemented, every voter in Seattle will receive $100 in vouchers that can be used to support candidates for city office who voluntarily accept spending and contributions limits.

Dabiq is a town in northern Syria currently held by ISIS where, according to Islamic prophecy, the armies of Rome will mass to meet the armies of Islam.

And according to those prophecies, the Islamic armies will ultimately conquer Jerusalem and Rome.

Libya is the only other country where ISIS holds territory -- the coastal town of Sirte and other patches along the Mediterranean

The revival of the caliphate is the launching pad for a global battlefield. No caliph can govern without pursuing offensive jihad, and that jihad will continue, as Dabiq put it, until "the shade of the blessed flag will expand until it covers all eastern and western extents of the Earth."

"There will come a time when three armies of Islam shall simultaneously rise, one in the Levant, one in Yemen and one in Iraq."

It is powerful motivation to ISIS supporters, and it's also a message to Muslims: The end of times is at hand, and if you want to be a true Muslim, on the right side of history, you had better join us.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi said it was an obligation to establish the caliphate and therefore to recognize him as caliph.

A caliphate can only exist if it holds territory: ISIS' raison d'etre is to sustain and expand

ISIS followers -- and Dabiq -- are fond of quoting the words of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the "spiritual" father of the movement and leader of al Qaeda in Iraq until he was killed in 2006.

No matter that the majority of Muslims -- even many jihadists - see ISIS' interpretations of the Quran and the hadith as manipulations or distortions.

Libyan territory can also be (and has been) the platform for launching terror attacks in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.

But ISIS' ambitions run much further -- it has established a presence in Yemen, Afghanistan and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

ISIS does not recognize the borders of nation states that make up the modern world nor the idea of a democratic state or citizenship.

"The Islamic State does not recognize synthetic borders, nor any citizenship besides Islam," he declared in 2012.

"We won't enjoy life until we liberate the Muslims everywhere, and until we retrieve Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and regain Al-Andalus (Andalucia in Spain), and conquer Rome," Adnani said in 2013.

ISIS wants to stir religious hatred in Europe and the United States -- so that Muslims no longer feel they belong in the West, and either carry out attacks in their homelands or leave to join the caliphate.

It has already shown extreme cruelty toward Shiites -- most notably slaughtering more than 1,500 Iraqi air force cadets in Tikrit in June 2014.

And it sees the United States as complicit in supporting a Shia government in Iraq.

Embroiling the U.S. and the West in a land war -- ISIS reasons -- would give Muslims no choice but to come to the defense of the caliphate, setting up a global confrontation.

"Now that it has taken Dabiq, the Islamic State awaits the arrival of an enemy army there, whose defeat will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse,"

"We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it."

I had the most affectionate wife. I took my family out of Syria to escape the killing. My children could have had a future in Europe. Now I have lost my family, my world,” he said.

this week, another group of migrants, including six Afghan children, drowned after a rubber dinghy carrying them to Greece sank in the Aegean.

They are among more than 3,500 people who have died or been reported missing this year while trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe.

Ankara has stepped up a crackdown on people smuggling, arresting thousands of refugees, after it promised to curb the flow of refugees to Greece in exchange for financial aid from the EU.

The EU’s pledge of €3bn (£2.1bn) in aid for the 2.2 million Syrians now in Turkey is intended to raise living standards and persuade migrants to stay in the country rather than attempt the journey to the EU via the Greek islands.

, Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, recently told the Guardian that refugees arriving in Europe should be detained for up to 18 months in holding centres across the EU while they are screened for security and terrorism risks

“Multiplying job opportunities is the only way to achieve prosperity where, today, there is an unacceptable level of poverty,”

Fernández had held her own farewell ceremony the night before, addressing thousands of teary-eyed supporters in Buenos Aires’s central Plaza de Mayo.