Syria's army said on October 31 the Nusra Front and what the army called other terrorist groups had killed 84 people, mostly women and children, in Aleppo during the past three days, in a bombardment that included chemical weapons and rocket fire.

Turkey said it had dismissed a further 10,000 civil servants and closed 15 more media outlets over suspected links with terrorist organizations and US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for orchestrating a failed coup in July.

Italy will rebuild all the homes, churches and properties destroyed in a string of earthquakes over the past two months, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on October 30 just hours after another powerful quake hit the center of the country.

The European Union and Canada signed a free trade agreement on October 30 that aims to generate jobs and growth though it must still clear some 40 national and regional parliaments in Europe in the coming years to enter fully into force.

An air raid by an Arab coalition killed 60 people in Yemen, including inmates of a prison near the city of Hodeidah, medical sources said.

Venezuela's fast-escalating political crisis and Colombia's stuttering peace process dominated the Ibero-American Summit on October 29, despite an official agenda about youth, entrepreneurship and education.

Iraqi Shi'ite militias launched an offensive toward the west of Mosul on October 30, an operation that will tighten the noose around Islamic State's Iraq stronghold but has alarmed Turkey and could inflame tensions in the mainly Sunni area.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was aiming to reinforce its troops deployments in its Iraqi border town of Silopi and that it would have a "different response" for Shi'ite militia groups if they cause terror in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar.

With 11 days to go before the US presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump by 15 percentage points among early voters surveyed in the past two weeks, according to the Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project

The FBI is investigating more emails as part of a probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email system, it said on October 28, in a new twist that could damage the Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential race.