London / AFP Britain will ban junk food ads aimed at children from both print and social media from next year, the advertising rules watchdog said on Thursday, a move welcomed by campaigners against child obesity. The new rules, which come into effect in July 2017, extend an existing ban on television ads for “high fat, salt or sugar …

  Aleppo / AFP President Bashar al-Assad said victory for his forces in Aleppo would be a “huge step” in ending Syria’s war, as government troops battled on Thursday to retake more rebel ground. Despite pleas from increasingly cornered opposition fighters, Western countries and the United Nations, Assad also rejected talk of a ceasefire in Aleppo. Repeated diplomatic efforts this week …

  Hamburg / AFP US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov failed to make progress on a Syria truce in talks in Germany early Thursday, an American official said. Kerry and Lavrov met twice Thursday on the margins of a foreign ministers’ meeting of the 57-member Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said a US …