NATO member Turkey on Tuesday shot down a Russian warplane on the Syrian border, an act President Vladimir Putin said would have "serious consequences" for ties between two key protagonists in the Syria war.

The Turkish army said the plane was shot down by two F-16s after violating Turkish airspace 10 times within a five-minute period, an account challenged by Moscow which said it was over Syria.

Hizbullah condemned Monday a bill approved by the U.S. Senate to block its financing, describing it as "a new crime by American institutions against our people and nation."

The party said in a statement that the "American aggression" the group is facing is the price for "resisting all evil projects against our holy places, rights, nations and people."

Hundreds of people were gathered at a New Orleans playground for a music video shoot when two groups in the crowd opened fire on each other, wounding 16 people in the shocking Sunday evening violence, police said.

Police were on their way to break up a big crowd at Bunny Friend Playground when gunfire erupted at the park in the city's 9th Ward, the police said in a statement Sunday.

President Barack Obama says Russia needs to make a strategic decision to go after the Islamic State group, not the moderate opposition forces trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

He says initial military operations by Russia did not add to efforts to deter IS, and in some ways, strengthened it.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police says it is investigating a bomb threat that caused a Turkish Airlines flight from New York City to Istanbul to divert and land in Canada.

Halifax Stanfield International Airport said on its Twitter feed early Sunday that Flight 2 had landed safely and that police were at the scene.

The family homes of the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks and one of the suicide bombers stand only a few blocks apart in the Belgian capital's Molenbeek neighborhood. After a string of attacks in recent years linked to its grimy streets in central Brussels, a key question arises: Why Belgium?

The tiny nation renowned for beer, chocolates and the comic book hero Tintin is now suddenly infamous for Islamic extremism — and the easy availability of illegal weapons.

Brushing off refugee worries at home, President Barack Obama crouched alongside migrant children on Saturday and declared they are the opposite of terrorists wreaking havoc from Paris to Mali. Working to put a human face on the refugee crisis, he said, "They're just like our kids."

The refugees Obama encountered at a school for poor children in Malaysia were not from Syria, and unlike the flood of Syrians meeting steep resistance in the U.S., these migrants had already been cleared to resettle in America. Still, Obama said their faces could have been those of kids from Syria, Iraq and other war-torn regions whose pursuit of a life free from violence led them far from their native homes.

With its political infighting, tip-of-the-arrow diplomacy and climactic decapitation scene, the National Geographic Channel's film "Saints & Strangers" is the "Game of Thrones" version of the first Thanksgiving.

The four-hour movie will premiere Sunday and Monday on National Geographic (9 p.m. EST on both nights), following a rush to finish in time for the holiday. It tells the story of the religious pilgrims and thrill-seeking opportunists thrown together on the Mayflower and their efforts to build a settlement peacefully among the Native Americans they encounter.

A pair of stolen N.C. Wyeth paintings worth up to $500,000 apiece have been recovered and will be displayed in Maine along with four other stolen paintings recouped nearly a year ago in California, officials said Thursday.

The two paintings were recovered last month when a third party surrendered them to a retired FBI agent in the Boston area, Harold Shaw, special agent in charge of the bureau's Boston field office, told reporters at the Portland Museum of Art, where the paintings were on display. No additional arrests have been made, and the investigation is continuing, he said.

Much about Abdelhamid Abaaoud's path to armed Islamic radicalism remains mysterious.

In the words of Koen Geens, the Belgian justice minister, he mutated from a student at an upscale Brussels school into "an extremely professional commando," one seemingly able to slip across borders at will. Someone who openly mocked the inability of Western law enforcement agencies to catch him.