Turkish forces launched a bombing campaign across northeastern Syria on Wednesday, targeting civilian areas and killing Syriac Christians. 

The bombing campaign, launched less than 48 hours after a phone call between President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, appeared to target Christian and Kurdish enclaves in the cities of Qameshli, Kobani, and others. Shelling also hit the border town of Nusaybin, in Turkey, where the oldest church in a region once dominated by the earliest Christians is located. 

Just two days after President Donald Trump pulled U.S. troops from the region, loud explosions reverberated in the northeast Syrian town of Ras al-Ain as smoke rose above the buildings. The Turkish military on Wednesday hit Kurdish areas in northeastern Syria with airstrikes and artillery shelling. Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, confirmed that warplanes have started to strike civilian areas, causing “a huge panic among people of the region.”

The United States confirmed that a drone attack in the eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan on Thursday likely struck some civilians. Local officials said at least 30 pine nut farmers died and 40 others sustained injuries in the attack. The strike targeted an Islamic State hideout, but the United States will work with local officials “to determine whether there was collateral damage,” said Col. Sonny Leggett, spokesman for the American-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Officials from Afghanistan and the United States on Monday lauded major progress in the latest negotiations to end the 18-year war with the Taliban. Talks in Qatar the last two days focused on the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the Taliban’s commitment to cut ties with other extremist groups, a Taliban official said.

At least 51 people died Thursday in separate attacks in the southern Yemeni port city of Aden. In the first attack, a car, a bus, and three motorcycles exploded during a morning lineup at a police station. According to a senior police official, at least 11 people died and 29 others sustained injuries. In another area of town, Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for a ballistic missile strike targeting a military parade at the al-Galaa camp, which left at least 40 people dead.

This story begins inside the atom. 

Specifically, the uranium atom. In deposits of uranium ore beneath the earth’s surface, the most abundant form of the element is uranium-238. Mostly inert, it contains three more neutrons than its unstable, more radioactive cousin, uranium-235, found in only small amounts.

Separating the two involves a tedious physical process. But by isolating the slightly lighter U-235 then concentrating it into a critical mass, a self-sustaining fission chain reaction is created. With this discovery, atomic energy was born.

For the first time in two years, U.S. warplanes have killed al-Qaeda fighters in northwestern Syria. U.S. Central Command said Monday that it hit an al-Qaeda training facility near Aleppo. The airstrike killed eight fighters associated with al-Qaeda, including six commanders, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war monitoring group.