Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the fugitive emir of ISIS, the man who transformed a breakaway al-Qaeda group into a transnational terrorist franchise that brutalized and killed civilians in more than a dozen countries and who threatened to rewrite the map of the Middle East by luring foreign recruits to wage jihad in Iraq and Syria, is dead.

So what happens to the terror organization that he painstakingly assembled?

In many ways, the group is already evolving. ISIS leadership ranks have proved resilient despite more than five years of war. The group has been quick to adapt to new circumstances. No longer capable of seizing and holding territory, the surviving foot soldiers have instead gone back to their guerrilla roots, carrying out ambushes, bombings and assassinations. And despite the loss of its territorial caliphate in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has expanded its reach to include 14 separate affiliates in countries across Asia and Africa.

Al-Furqan media/AFP/Getty ImagesA video released by Al-..

For all the attention, invention and investment that the U.S. intelligence community devotes to spy satellites, communications intercepts, and new technologies such as artificial intelligence, the raid that killed ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was launched by the same old-fashioned tool that led to Osama bin Laden: human intelligence.

After years of trying in vain to get a real-time lock on al-Baghdadi’s location, the big break came not from space or from a strategically located eavesdropping post, but from the wife of an al-Baghdadi aide and one of the couriers he employed to avoid using mobile phones and computers that could have made him easier to track. U.S. officials said the two were captured in western Iraq.

Using names and locations that the wife and courier gave up, two U.S. officials said on Sunday, the CIA and Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence officers began recruiting agents along the routes that al-Baghdadi traveled in the desert astride the Syrian-Iraqi border. Officia..

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — It’s not about a 4-cent hike in subway prices.

The decision to add 30 pesos to the cost of a ticket on Latin America’s most modern public transportation system this month drew little attention inside or outside Chile, at first. People quietly fumed. A week later, high-school students launched four days of turnstile-jumping protests. Crowds of angry youths built up inside metro stations.

With no warning, on the afternoon of Oct. 18, they set fire to stations, then trains. Then grocery, department stores and pharmacies went up in flames. Hundreds of thousands of people were left stranded at home or on the streets without public transport. But instead of blaming the young protesters, Chileans from almost all walks of life used social media to call for protests against years of government mismanagement.

Santiago exploded into a week of massive street protests that culminated Friday with more than a million people in the heart of the capital and other major cities ..

(BARCELONA, Spain) — Tens of thousands of people marched in Barcelona on Sunday to protest the separatist movement in the northeastern Catalonia region that has created Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.

Barcelona’s police said 80,000 people rallied, with many carrying Spanish and Catalan flags. One poster read in English: “We are Catalonians too, stop this madness!!”

The rally in favor of Spanish unity comes after several days of protests — some of which spiraled into violent clashes with police — by Catalan separatists. They are angered by a Supreme Court ruling that gave nine separatist leaders lengthy prison sentences for an illegal and unsuccessful 2017 secession attempt.

While separatists have organized huge marches in recent years as their drive gained steam, Catalans in favor of maintaining century-old ties with the rest of Spain have largely remained quiet except for an enormous rally two years ago during the tensest moments of the separatists’ secession bid.

“We f..

(PARIS) — A masterpiece attributed to the 13th-century Italian painter Cimabue that was discovered earlier this year in an elderly French woman’s kitchen sold for 24 million euros ($26.6 million) Sunday.

Dominique Le Coent of Acteon Auction House, who sold the work to an anonymous buyer near Chantilly, north of Paris, said the sale represented a “world record for a primitive, or a pre-1500 work.”

“It’s a painting that was unique, splendid and monumental. Cimabue was the father of the Renaissance. But this sale goes beyond all our dreams,” Le Coent told The Associated Press.

The expected sale price was 4 million to 6 million euros ($4.4 million to $6.6 million).

Le Coent said experts were off the mark because it was the first time a Cimabue had ever gone under the hammer.

“There’s never been a Cimabue painting on sale so there was no reference previously on how much it could make,” he explained.

An auctioneer spotted the painting while inspecting the woman’s house in Compiegne in ..

On Sunday morning, President Donald Trump announced the death of a man he described as the “world’s number-one terrorist leader:” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State.

Here’s what to know about the reportedly deceased leader of the infamous terrorist group:

Early life and radicalization
Al-Baghdadi’s was born in 1971 in the city of Samarra, Iraq, northwest of Baghdad as Ibrahim bin ‘Awad bin Ibrahim al-Badri ar-Radawi al-Husseini as-Samara’i. His family were Sunni Muslim members of tribe that claims to be descended from the Prophet Muhammad. Al-Baghdadi is thought to have shown signs of radicalization years ago, joining an extreme branch of the Sunni dissident group the Muslim Brotherhood as a youth.

His formation into the future leader of ISIS is believed to have taken place after he was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq while visiting a friend in Fallujah. While imprisoned Camp Bucca, a notorious facility known for generating Sunni jihadists, he developed connections ..