China's capital and other northern cities have banned half of all vehicles from city streets and ordered factories, schools and construction sites closed in response to a five-day smog red alert.

The emergency steps significantly reduced traffic in Beijing on Saturday, although it wasn't clear what effect it was having on air pollution. By midday, the capital was enveloped in a smothering layer of smog, with concentrations of microscopic PM2.5 — small, inhalable particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs and are considered a reliable gauge of air quality — rising to more than 10 times the level considered safe by the World Health Organization.

An Afghan official says that at least six people, including five female government workers, have been shot and killed in southern Kandahar province.

Samim Khpolwak, spokesman for the provincial governor in Kandahar, said Saturday that five female employees of the Kandahar airport were on their way to work when they were attacked by unknown gunmen. All five were killed along with their driver.

Three times a day, at breakfast, lunch and dinner time, Antho Bolamba reports to his local police station in a Paris suburb. He can't leave his house at night or France at all.

Placed under house arrest four days after the November 2015 Paris bombing and shooting attacks as part of a nationwide state of emergency, the 38-year-old Muslim has no choice.

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The Syrian government's recapture of Aleppo after a prolonged and punishing air assault is a defining moment in the country's devastating civil war: it leaves President Bashar Assad in control of almost all major urban areas — and poised to petition for a role in the world community's broader war against Islamic State militants clinging to parts of Syria's northeast.

The prospect of such cooperation would once have been considered highly improbable. Assad became anathema in the West and much of the region after the brutal means he employed during six years of carnage that killed hundreds of thousands, displaced half his population and sent millions of refugees to neighboring countries and Europe.

Prominent Syrian philosopher and intellectual Sadiq Jalal al-Azm has passed away in Germany after a long battle with brain cancer, his son said.

Al-Azm was 82.

Moody's on Tuesday dragged its credit rating on Sony back from junk status, saying the Japanese firm's balance sheet has "dramatically improved".

The ratings agency lifted its rating on Sony by one notch to Baa3 -- bringing it back to investment grade -- nearly three years after it cut its view to junk status as Sony wallowed in massive losses.

Turkish media say counterterrorism police have continued to detain members of a pro-Kurdish political party in the wake of deadly suicide bombings.

State-run Anadolu Agency is reporting that two lawmakers of the Peoples' Democratic Party have been taken into custody in Ankara, the capital.

An Afghan official says that at least two Afghan police officers have been killed when a roadside bomb detonated near their patrol in eastern Kunar province.

Abdul Ghani Musamim, spokesman for the provincial governor in Kunar, said on Tuesday that the explosion killed Abdul Wali Khan, a unit commander for the border police, and his bodyguard.

An Iowa man has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to the shipping of guns to Lebanon.

The U.S. Attorney's Office says Bassem Afif Herz was given the punishment Monday in federal court in Cedar Rapids. The 31-year-old Cedar Rapids man pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to deal in firearms without a license and illegally shipping firearms. He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating a federal law that limits the exporting of weapons.