The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are now in control of an ISIS encampment in Baghouz, after weeks of operations and attacks on the village. But isolated gun battles are continuing in the area, seen as ISIS's last remaining redoubt.

"This is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight against Daesh," said Mustafa Bali, the head of the SDF press office. In a tweet, he added, "Clashes are continuing as a group of ISIS terrorists who are confined into a tiny area still fight back."

As the barren California desert sprang to life, they descended. With their selfie sticks, their smartphones and their gee-whiz-look-at-all-the-flowers smiles, they seemed blissfully unconcerned that they were causing something close to a panic at the highest levels of local government.

Updated at 10:15 a.m. ET

A Facebook vice president said fewer than 200 people saw the Christchurch massacre while it was being streamed live on the site. But the video was viewed about 4,000 times before Facebook removed it, he added. Countless more views occurred in the hours afterward, as copies of the video proliferated more quickly than online platforms like Facebook could remove them.

Bigger isn't necessarily better when it comes to catching, selling and eating fish.

For certain snappers, in fact, a market preference for plate-size whole fillets is driving fishermen to target smaller fish. For some wild fish populations, this is a recipe for collapse.

President Trump last week vetoed a congressional measure aimed at blocking his national emergency declaration. The next battle over that emergency declaration will likely be in the courts.

Meanwhile, planning for extending the border wall is already happening in Texas' Rio Grande Valley.

Like much of the known universe — not to mention all that rests beyond it — Marcelo Gleiser eludes straightforward classification. He is a theoretical physicist, a cosmologist, an Ivy League professor, an ultramarathon runner, an author, a blogger and book reviewer for NPR, a starry-eyed seeker of truth and a gimlet-eyed realist about just how much (or how little) of it he'll find in his lifetime.

High-ranking Democrats on Capitol Hill are calling for a counterintelligence investigation into a woman who has peddled access to President Trump and who founded the massage parlor where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is accused of soliciting sex.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a new law which will allow the punishment of individuals and online media for spreading what Russia calls "fake news" and information which "disrespects" the state.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in her first speech to her nation's Parliament after last week's terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, said the gunman should be denied the publicity he was seeking.

"That's why you will never hear me mention his name," said Ardern. "He is a terrorist, he is a criminal, he is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless."

The alleged shooter had written a 74-page screed promoting his white supremacist views and had livestreamed his attack on the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch.

Scientists are about to restart the two giant facilities in the United States that register gravitational waves, the ripples in the very fabric of the universe that were predicted by Albert Einstein more than a century ago.

Einstein realized that when massive objects such as black holes collide, the impact sends shock waves through space-time that are like the ripples in water created by tossing a pebble in a pond.