Syria's ancient city of Palmyra, which government forces recaptured from the Islamic State jihadist group on Sunday, is an archaeological treasure designated as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1980.

It was seized by IS in May last year and the jihadists sent shock waves around the world during the autumn with a systematic campaign of destruction of the city's monuments.

The "crossing season" for migrant boats from Libya to Italy has not yet begun, yet arrivals are already up on last year's count, raising questions about where the new wave of tens of thousands will be housed.

Amid unseasonably fine weather and calm seas, warnings have been sounded in recent days over the number of migrants in Libya ready to attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing -- 500,000 according to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, while French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian puts it closer to 800,000.

Tough talk and flag-waving patriotism have been rare in Belgium in the wake of this week's terror attacks, the worst to strike the divided nation at the symbolic heart of the EU.

While France and the United States rallied their citizens after major attacks evoking national identity and pledging revenge, Belgian leaders have urged tolerance and understanding.

Europe must learn to deal with the likely deaths of many more innocent people in jihadist terror attacks, experts have warned as Belgium struggled to get back to normal after a week of bloodshed and extremist manhunts.

The Brussels attacks, in which 31 people died and more than 300 were injured, came only four months after Paris was hit for a second time in less than a year by major jihadist atrocities.

A complex verdict against Radovan Karadzic, found guilty of genocide at Srebrenica but acquitted of the same charge in other Bosnian towns, has again shown that the "most heinous" of crimes is the hardest to prove.

U.N. judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Thursday found the former Bosnian Serb leader guilty on 10 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1990s Bosnian war.

Prospects of jumpstarting peace talks with the Taliban are becoming increasingly dim amid recent battlefield gains by the insurgents in Afghanistan, an embattled government in Kabul and growing suspicions of Pakistan's good intentions in facilitating such negotiations.

Even if Pakistan wanted to bring the warring sides to the negotiating table, its leverage as a safe haven for the Taliban has weakened as the insurgents' southern Afghan heartland has expanded, providing them with more places to hide at home.

Blunt assessments by Barack Obama of longtime U.S. ally Saudi Arabia have triggered unprecedented Saudi criticism of the president as he prepares to visit for a key summit with Gulf allies next month.

Obama's comments, published in the April edition of U.S. magazine The Atlantic, have met with a chorus of outrage across the kingdom's tightly controlled media and the pan-Arab newspapers it owns.

As Brussels reels from an attack by Islamic State jihadists, analysts warn of a ripple effect that could further whip up populist sentiment on the continent and in the United States.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, Tuesday's bombings in the Belgian capital have provided fodder for Donald Trump's divisive electoral campaign while in Europe they risk hardening responses to the refugee crisis.

A year after it launched air strikes in Yemen, a Saudi-led military coalition has failed to deal a decisive blow to Iran-backed rebels and is facing mounting criticism over civilian casualties.

With warring parties drained by the fighting, the United Nations said Wednesday that a ceasefire had been agreed from April 10, to be followed by peace talks.

Jihadist cells like the one that carried out the Brussels attacks are supported by the Islamic State group's leadership in the Middle East, but are choosing themselves where and when to strike, experts say.

And that degree of autonomy is making them all the more difficult to track, and doubly dangerous.