Army, rebels clash again in Aleppo

Army, rebels clash again in Aleppo

DAMASCUS, Syria

The Syrian army and rebels unleashed deadly new attacks on each other Friday in Aleppo, with insurgents shelling a mosque during weekly prayers and government airstrikes hitting opposition neighborhoods in escalating bloodshed the U.N. decried as a “monstrous disregard for civilian lives by all parties.”

More than 200 people have been killed in eight days of mounting violence in and around the contested northern city, including 15 at the Malla Khan mosque hit by rebel rockets and another 10 from the government warplanes and helicopters, officials said.

The surge in fighting has caused the collapse of a two-month cease-fire brokered by the U.S. and Russia.

North Korea sends US citizen to prison

PYONGYANG, North Korea

North Korea on Friday sentenced a U.S. citizen of Korean heritage to 10 years in prison with hard labor after convicting him of espionage and subversion, the second American it has put behind bars this year.

Kim Dong Chul was sentenced after a brief trial in Pyongyang by North Korea’s Supreme Court, which found him guilty of espionage and subversion under Articles 60 and 64 of the North’s criminal code.

North Korea regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies in an attempt to overthrow its government. Outsiders say North Korea seeks to use its U.S. detainees to wring concessions from Washington.

100-year sentence for cutting baby from stranger’s womb

BOULDER, Colo.

A judge Friday sentenced a Colorado woman who cut a baby from a stranger’s womb to 100 years in prison, including the maximum penalties for attempted murder and unlawful termination of a pregnancy.

Judge Maria Berkenkotter said the harshest sentences for the most-serious charges were justified by the brutality of the 2015 attack, which she described as performing a cesarean with a kitchen knife. Berkenkotter also said the victim, Michelle Wilkins, as well as her family and the community needed Dynel Lane, 36, to express remorse.

Cooking ban amid deadly heat wave

PATNA, India

With sizzling temperatures claiming more than 300 lives this month in India, officials said they were banning daytime cooking in some parts of the drought-stricken country in a bid to prevent accidental fires that have killed nearly 80 more people.

The eastern state of Bihar this week took the unprecedented step of forbidding any cooking between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., after accidental fires exacerbated by dry, hot and windy weather swept through shantytowns and thatched-roof houses in villages and killed 79 people.

Navy commander sentenced in scandal

SAN DIEGO

A Navy commander who fled Cambodia’s killing fields as a boy to grow up to become a decorated U.S. military officer was sentenced Friday to 78 months in prison for providing classified ship schedules in exchange for the services of prostitutes, theater tickets and other gifts from a Malaysian defense contractor.

A federal judge in San Diego gave Captain-select Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz, 48, the longest sentence handed out so far in one of the worst bribery scandals to rock the Navy. The contractor overbilled the Navy by more than $34 million.

Associated Press