BEIRUT

Islamic State fighters take major military base in Syria

Islamic State fighters captured a major military air base in northeastern Syria on Sunday, eliminating the last government-held outpost in a province otherwise dominated by the jihadi group, activists and state media said.

Tabqa airfield is the third military base in the area to fall to the extremists since last month. Those victories are part of the Islamic State’s aggressive push to consolidate its hold on northern and eastern provinces, while expanding the boundaries of its self-styled caliphate straddling the Syria-Iraq border.

Government warplanes carried out waves of airstrikes to try to beat back the attack, but those ultimately proved unable to stem the assault.

PHOENIX

Security threat diverted flight to Phoenix, authorities say

Authorities say a security threat forced a flight from Dallas to San Diego to be diverted to Phoenix.

FBI Special Agent Perryn T. Collier says the American Airlines flight landed Sunday afternoon at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Collier declined to discuss the security threat because of the active investigation.

American Airlines spokeswoman Michelle Mohr says Flight 362 landed safely shortly before noon and was met by authorities. Mohr says 179 passengers and six crew members were aboard.

She said she couldn’t discuss security matters and referred questions to the FBI.

RAMALLAH, West Bank

Palestinians to seek return of lands captured in 1967

Aides to the Palestinian president said Sunday that he will appeal to the international community to set a deadline for Israel to end its occupation of lands captured in the 1967 Mideast war and make way for an independent Palestinian state.

President Mahmoud Abbas was expected to unveil his proposal as part of a “day after” plan following the current war in the Gaza Strip, likely at a meeting of the Palestinian leadership Tuesday, the aides said.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland

Iceland lowers aviation alert but quakes shake volcano

Iceland lowered its aviation alert level to orange from red Sunday, saying there was no sign of an imminent eruption at the Bardarbunga volcano. And scientists at the Icelandic Meteorological Office said their announcement Saturday that the volcano had experienced a subglacial eruption was wrong.

But the office cautioned that seismic activity at the volcano, which has been hit by thousands of earthquakes over the past week, was not slowing, and an eruption remained a possibility in coming days.

Two earthquakes measuring over 5 in magnitude shook the volcano beneath Iceland’s vast Vatnajokull glacier early Sunday.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic

One man dies, two missing as tropical storm hits islands

Tropical Storm Cristobal lashed parts of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands with heavy rainfall Sunday. One man died and two other people were missing after they were caught up by swollen rivers on the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

The man who died drowned when he tried to drive his pickup truck across a rushing river in the Dominican Republic. The two missing people were swept away late Saturday by a river that burst its banks in the western Haiti port town of Saint Marc.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Cristobal may strengthen into a hurricane later in the week over the open Atlantic.

– From news service reports