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.
According to the Crimean parliament, the schedules of Crimea's railway, water transport, air and telecommunications services all switched to Moscow time March 30, Xinhua reported.
An Indian-origin actress is suing BBC for up to one million pounds ($1.6 million) for a racist remark made by the host of a popular motor show, media reported Friday.
In a ground-breaking research, archaeologists have unearthed stone tools that suggest that humans reached what is now northeast Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago - upending a belief that people first arrived in the Americas from Asia about 13,000 years ago.
Most Crimeans are expected to receive Russian passports within three months, Russia's Federal Migration Service (FMS) deputy head Anatoly Fomenko said.
An Indian-origin actress is suing BBC for up to one million pounds ($1.6 million) for a racist remark made by the host of a popular motor show, media reported Friday.
As we come to the end of the first quarter of 2014-15, there were soft movements in all the forex majors in Wednesday's trading session with the exception of the Australian dollar. The Aussie took out the 92 cents level against the US dollar and is now trading 7 percent above its mid January low of around 87 cents.
