Secretary of State John Kerry will meet today (Monday) in Havana with the leaders of the Colombian Marxist guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). FARC has been fighting successive Colombian governments since the early 1960s, and is in control of an area the size of Switzerland in the mountainous jungles of central Colombia. In 1997 FARC has been designated a terrorist group by the State Department. Since last fall, the Colombian government and FARC, with the support of the UN, have been negotiating a peace pact.

A Turkish official has been sacked over a tweet in which she expressed her wish that a dozen Israeli tourists wounded in a bomb attack in Istanbul “were dead.” The suicide attack by what the Turkish government described as a follower of ISIS, killed five people, including the bomber, three Israelis, and an Iranian, and injured thirty-six, of which eleven were Israeli nationals.

The Belgian police an hour ago captured Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year old French national who was the mastermind behind the 13 November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris which killed 130 people. “We got him,” the Belgian justice minister declared after confirming that Abdeslam had been captured during the operation in the Brussels’ neighborhod of Molenbeek.

Faisal Mohammad, 18, a college student from Santa Clara who attacked four people at a University of California campus in 2015, had been self-radicalized by terrorist propaganda from ISIS, the FBI said yesterday (Thursday). On 4 November Mohammad stabbed a fellow student in a UC, Merced classroom, then attacked three others as he fled on campus. Police gave chase and shot and killed him.

After being denied access to the White House for a St. Patrick’s Day reception, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin leader, described the incident as an “unacceptable development.” Adams turned up on Tuesday evening for the annual Irish event hosted by the President, Barack Obama, but was denied access to the White House over a “security” issue. Sinn Féin “will not sit at the back of the bus for anyone,” Adams said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has approached thirty-four Muslim-majority countries with a proposal to create a NATO-like military alliance of Islamic countries to combat terrorism. The proposed alliance would not be formed to confront any country in particular, but rather would be put together for the purpose of combatting terrorism. It is unclear whether Iran will be invited to join the new alliance.

A senior ISIS leaders, Omar the Chechen, has died after being seriously injured in a U.S.-led coalition strike in northeastern Syria, the Pentagon confirmed Monday. The Pentagon’s announcement clears up the fate of Omar al-Shishani a week after a U.S. official said the most-wanted militant had been targeted in a 4 March attack on the jihadist’s convoy. Shishani was one of the most-wanted ISIS leaders, and the United Stateshas put a $5 million reward on his head.

The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) earlier today (Monday) released a report detailing 161 chemical attacks in Syria since the conflict emerged in 2011. These attacks have killed nearly 1,500 people in Syria, according to the report. A UN war crimes expert says the documentation of the attacks will allow for international prosecution in the future.

Secretary of State John Kerry, in Paris for talks on the future of Syria, said that ISIS has lost 600 fighters and thousands of square kilometers of territory over the past three weeks. “In Syria, over the last three weeks alone, Daesh [ISIS] has lost 3,000 sq km (1,160 sq miles) and 600 fighters,” Kerry said.