AKCAKALE, Turkey — Syrian Kurdish-led forces and Turkey exchanged blame on Saturday for fighting that has rattled a U.S.-brokered cease-fire in northeastern Syria, as the Kurds appealed to Vice President Mike Pence to enforce the deal.

The Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement that Turkey has failed to abide by the deal, refusing to lift the siege of Ras al-Ayn, a key border town. It said 30 hours after the five-day pause went into effect on Thursday, there were still reported clashes inside the town and medical personnel could not enter to help wounded.

Turkish-backed Syrian fighters encircled Ras al-Ayn just before the cease-fire came into place, trying to crush Kurdish resistance inside. Throughout much of the day Friday, fighting was reported there and in neighboring villages that came under attack by the Turkish-backed forces.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday that Turkey-backed Syrian fighters have prevented a medical convoy from reachi..

LONDON — In a major blow to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, U.K. lawmakers voted Saturday to postpone a decision on whether to back his Brexit deal with the European Union, throwing a wrench into government plans to leave the bloc at the end of this month.

At a special session of Parliament intended to ratify the Brexit deal, lawmakers voted 322-306 to withhold their approval on the Brexit deal until legislation to implement it has been passed.

The vote aims to ensure that the U.K. can’t crash out of the EU without a divorce deal on the scheduled Oct. 31 departure date. But it means Johnson he has to ask the EU to delay Britain’s departure, since Parliament previously passed a law compelling him to do that if a Brexit divorce deal had not been passed by Saturday.

The government still hopes it can pass the needed legislation by the end of the month so the U.K. can leave on time.

A defiant Johnson said after the vote that he was not “daunted or dismayed” by the result and would..

BERLIN — Thousands of people in the German city of Cologne demonstrated Saturday against Turkey’s offensive in northern Syria.

City authorities said around 10,000 people took part in the marches organized by left-wing groups. Police were out in force amid concerns about possible violence but authorities said the event was largely peaceful.

Some demonstrators carried flags of the Syrian Kurdish force known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which Turkey is trying to push back. Others carried placards with slogans such as “No deals with the AKP regime” — a reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party.

Germany is home to large Turkish and Kurdish communities, and tensions between them have turned violent in the past.

The first Chick-fil-A location in the U.K. will be closing in six months. The Oracle shopping mall in Reading, England had entered into a six-month pilot period with the American fast food chain, but announced Friday — only eight days after the fast food restaurant’s grand opening — that it would not be renewing the lease, according to the BBC.

“At the Oracle, we offer an inclusive space where everyone is welcome,” said a spokesperson for The Oracle in a statement to TIME. “We always look to introduce new concepts for our customers, however, we have decided on this occasion that the right thing to do is to only allow Chick-fil-A to trade with us for the initial six month pilot period, and not to extend the lease any further.”

A Chick-fil-A spokesperson, however, says the company always intended to only be at in Reading for that six month pilot. “We have been very pleased with what we’ve seen in the U.K. in terms of customer response to our food and our approach to customer service,” ..

In Mexico’s big cities, drug cartel gunmen normally act like phantoms. They hide in safe houses or amid communities, suddenly striking with an assassination or a gunfight, and then disappearing again. Residents know they are there and are scared, but most the time, they can’t see them.

But on Thursday in the Sinaloan city of Culiacan, the cartel gunmen were everywhere. They openly drove in trucks with mounted machine guns, blockaded streets flashing their Kalashnikovs and burned trucks unleashing plumes of smoke like it was a scene in Syria. They took control of the strategic points in the metro area, shut down the airport, roads, and government buildings and exchanged fire with security forces for hours, leaving at least eight people dead. In contrast, everyone else had to act like ghosts, hiding behind locked doors, not daring to step outside.

And in this unusual battle, the Sinaloa Cartel won. Their uprising was in response to soldiers storming a house on Thursday and arresting Ov..

(BARDARASH, Iraq) — For months, every time Turkey threatened to invade northern Syria, Salwa Hanna told her husband they should take their children and flee from the border town of Kobani. And every time, he told her not to worry, because the Americans were there.

Now the Christian family is among an estimated 160,000 Syrians who have fled Turkey’s offensive, which began last week after President Donald Trump announced he would move U.S. forces out of the way, abandoning their Kurdish allies. The invasion transformed one of the safest parts of Syria into a war zone, leaving displaced residents with a deep sense of betrayal.

Hanna and her husband arrived Thursday at a newly reopened camp in Iraq with their children and two small bags of clothes. They said they borrowed $200 to pay a smuggler to lead them across the border and have nothing left. They were shown to an empty tent with a bare concrete floor. “I left my home, and I had just started a new home, and I left it all behind,” Ha..