Syria talks end

The Russia-hosted Syrian peace conference* ended on January 30 with a plan to draft a new constitution, but key opposition* and rebel groups boycotted* it and it remains unclear if they will join the process.

The conference, held in Sochi, was also overshadowed* by a resurgence in fighting in northern Syria.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov nevertheless hailed the Syrian Congress of National Dialogue as an important step toward peace in Syria and sought to play down* the opposition boycott.

Australia’s agency moves to secure secrets

Australia’s security services delivered safes* on February 1 to a national broadcasting company to secure hundreds of top-secret Cabinet documents that had been found in two filing cabinets* sold at a secondhand store in Canberra.

Just hours after the Australian Broadcasting Corp. revealed that three days of stories damaging to both sides* of the political system came not from leaks but from papers inside the locked cabinets found at the resale shop in the capital, officers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization moved in to secure the documents at the ABC’s Parliament House bureau and Brisbane studios.

The documents would normally have been kept secret for 20 years.

Russian pilot killed

A Russian pilot was killed on Sunday in a fight with Islamists after his warplane was downed over northwest Syria, Russia’s defense ministry said.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a powerful jihadist-dominated alliance, said on an affiliated media channel it had shot down the plane but made no mention of the pilot.

“We were able to bring down the Russian warplane with a shoulder-fired missile* above Saraqib in Idlib this afternoon,” said Mahmoud al-Turkmani who, according to the statement, heads HTS’s “air defense brigade*.”

Gunman shoots 6 Africans

An Italian gunman with extreme right-wing* sympathies shot and wounded six African immigrants on Saturday.

Police photos showed the shooting suspect with a neo-Nazi* tattoo prominently on his forehead as he sat in custody and an Italian flag tied around his neck when he was arrested in the central Italian city of Macerata.

Authorities identified him as Luca Traini, a 28-year-old Italian with no previous record.(SD-Agencies)