A Taliban suicide bomber and six gunmen attacked the Afghan parliament on Monday as lawmakers met to consider a new defense minister, and another district in the volatile north fell to the militants as they intensified a summer offensive.
The United States and China held "candid and to-the-point" talks at the start of three days of cabinet-level meetings aimed at managing the highly complex relationship between the world's two biggest economies, a senior U.S. official said.
Hundreds of Syrian refugees who had fled into Turkey crossed back on Monday, witnesses said, as a border gate reopened a few days after Islamic State militants were ousted from the frontier town of Tel Abyad forces by Syrian Kurds.