(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — All remaining territory has been wrested from the Islamic State group in Syria, President Donald Trump announced Friday, though officials said sporadic fighting continued on the ground between coalition forces and the group’s holdouts.

The complete fall of the last IS stronghold in Baghouz, Syria, would mark the end of the Islamic State group’s self-declared caliphate, which at its height stretched across large parts of Syria and Iraq. Controlling territory gave the group room to launch attacks around the world.

Trump said Friday “it’s about time” that the group no longer controlled territory in the region, after a campaign by U.S. and coalition forces that spanned five years and two U.S. presidencies unleashed more than 100,000 bombs and killed untold numbers of civilians.

The IS “territorial caliphate has been eliminated in Syria,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters aboard Air Force One.

U.S. officials familiar with the situation in..

(BEIRA, Mozambique) — With the flooding easing in parts of cyclone-stricken Mozambique on Friday, fears are rising that the waters could yield up many more bodies. The confirmed number of people killed in Mozambique and neighboring Zimbabwe and Malawi climbed past 600.

Eight days after Cyclone Idai struck southeast Africa’s Indian Ocean coast, touching off some of the worst flooding in decades, the homeless, hungry and injured slowly made their way from devastated inland areas to the port city of Beira, which was heavily damaged itself but has emerged as the nerve center for rescue efforts.

“Some were wounded. Some were bleeding,” said Julia Castigo, a Beira resident who watched them arrive. “Some had feet white like flour for being in the water for so long.”

Aid workers are seeing many children who have been separated from their parents in the chaos or orphaned.

Elhadj As Sy, secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the relief..

Less than a week after a gunman allegedly murdered 50 worshippers inside two New Zealand mosques, the nation’s prime minister announced a sweeping, nation-wide ban on assault weapons. The measure was met with swift praise in the U.S. among gun reform advocates, who have long been pleading for similar restrictions. On Thursday, they renewed their calls for change and urged U.S. leaders to follow in New Zealand’s footsteps.

But would a ban like New Zealand’s even hold up in American courts? It’s difficult to say since the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation’s highest court, has not directly addressed whether semiautomatic weapons are protected under the Second Amendment. But constitutional scholars, pointing to a few legal precedents, say it’s certainly feasible.

“It’s difficult to discern the chances,” says Stanford University law professor David Studdert. “But it could hold up in court. That is definitely a possibility.”

Before last week’s mosque attacks, New Zealand had not experienced ..