The Islamic State (IS) militants on Sunday released 19 Christian Assyrians they had kidnapped last month, a monitoring group reported.
The 19 people are the first batch of 29 Assyrians the sharia court of the IS exonerated on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, Xinhua reported.
On February 23, the IS abducted 220 Christian Assyrians during an assault it had waged on predominantly Assyrian areas, mainly in the area of Tal Tamr and its countryside in Syria's northeastern province of al-Hasakah.
The fate of the other abductees is still unknown amid reports that the rest of the Assyrians are awaiting trials in the IS courts.
There is no clear reason why would the IS even put the Assyrians on trial.
Also on Sunday, the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said the Syrian troops captured as many as 33 towns in the eastern countryside of Hasaka after clashes with the IS.
An Indian-American has gifted $2.5 million to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), for a new state-of-the-art engineering lab dedicated to integrated microsystems, the university said.
The CNN documentary, "WEED: Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports", presented by its chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta has received the duPont-Columbia University Award for 2015, according to a university release.
President Barack Obama has nominated two Indian-Americans to key posts of chairman of the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) and member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
The Twitter and Youtube accounts of the US Central Command was hacked Monday by a group claiming to back the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) jihadi organisation, media reported....
The final report of the investigation into the crash of the AirAsia flight QZ8501 will be published at least one year later, an Indonesian official said here Tuesday....
One more victim of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine has been identified, resulting in a total of 295 identified victims, the Dutch ministry of security...
