Heavy fighting broke out on Monday between Islamist jihadists and Kurdish fighters close to the Turkish border just north of the besieged Syrian town of Kobane, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.
The clashes threatened to cut all access from Kobane to the Turkish border and block the passage which which has so far allowed some 200,000 refugees from the Kobane area to find refuge in Turkey.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry vehemently stressed on Saturday that his country stands by Lebanon in its war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Media reports said that Kerry lauded in a letter sent to Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil the endeavors undertaken by the Lebanese state in its war against terrorism.

The United States reported "progress" Friday in pressing Turkey to participate in the fight against the Islamic State group, noting a pledge from Ankara to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels.
The head of the U.S.-led coalition, retired general John Allen, and U.S. pointman on Iraq, Brett McGurk, completed a two-day visit in Turkey to press the NATO ally to engage militarily against the jihadist group that has taken over a wide swath of Syria and Iraq.

Gulf monarchies taking part in U.S.-led air strikes against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria could deploy special forces on the ground but only if certain conditions are met, analysts say.
Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have joined air strikes on the IS, which has seized swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

North Korea's state media said Saturday high-level talks with Seoul were now all but scrapped over the launch of anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets from the South, which triggered an exchange of fire across the tense border.
The two Koreas had agreed a week earlier to work on resuming a formal high-level dialogue that has effectively been suspended for seven months, raising hopes of a thaw in strained relations.

A Harvard student has been charged in a bomb hoax that forced the elite U.S. university to evacuate four buildings, call in police and disrupt final exams, prosecutors said Friday.
Eldo Kim, 21, is accused of emailing university police as well as the student-run newspaper last year, with a subject line that read "bombs placed around campus," according to a statement from United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will call for a revival of the collapsed Israeli-Palestinian peace process on Sunday when he attends an international conference in Cairo on rebuilding Gaza, American officials said.
The top U.S. diplomat and 30 of his counterparts convene in the Egyptian capital alongside U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is seeking a record $1.6 billion in aid to rebuild the battered Gaza Strip.

Iraqi government forces are in a "tenuous" position in the west of the country but are holding out for the moment against Islamic State jihadists, U.S. defense officials said Friday.
Iraq's army is under mounting pressure in Anbar province, even as the world's attention has been fixed on the northern Syrian town of Kobane, where Kurdish defenders are battling an IS offensive, officials said.

A Russian national arrested this year by U.S. officials was indicted on additional hacking charges, alleging he led a scheme to steal some two million credit card numbers, officials said.
Roman Valerevich Seleznev, the 30-year-old son of a Russian lawmaker, now faces 40 criminal counts including wire fraud and identity theft, the Justice Department said in a statement Thursday.

Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel departed Thursday on a six-day tour of South America but the U.S.-led war against the Islamic State group in the Middle East will be looming over his trip.
Hagel set off for Colombia, Chile and Peru with the world's attention focused on a dramatic battle in northern Syria, where Kurdish fighters have been holding out against IS jihadists with the help of air strikes from U.S. and coalition aircraft.
