Globe Trot: Colombia and FARC sign peace accord

COLOMBIA: “There is no room for winners or losers when you achieve peace through negotiations. Colombia wins, death loses,” tweeted chief FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) negotiator Rodrigo Granda after the final signing of a peace accord on Wednesday that ends the Americas’ longest war.

ITALY: Rescue workers today pulled an 8-year-old girl out alive from the rubble in Amatrice, center of a 6.2-magnitude earthquake early Wednesday that has killed at least 267 people.

Italy’s quake and one in Myanmar (or Burma) the same day are not related, according to National Geographic: Earth just shakes a lot.

FRANCE: A top French court has overturned the ruling banning burkinis, the modest swimwear favored by Muslim women. The decision came one day after former French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced he would run for president again next year—staking his campaign, amid rising Islamic terrorist threats, on the French principle of laïcité, or state-enforced public secularism.

IRAQ: Parliament yesterday sacked Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi over suspected corruption, just as Iraqi forces prepare to retake Mosul, the city of 2 million captured by ISIS in 2014. The Sunni Muslim ally of Shiite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was seen as crucial to leading forces into the mostly Sunni Mosul, and al-Obeidi posted on Facebook, “Those who brought Iraq to where it is now have triumphed.”

In a message titled “Fear Allah in Iraq,” al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri warned followers to prepare for a “protracted guerrilla war” against Iranian and “Crusader occupation of their regions as they did before.”

SYRIA: Fellow hostages say American aid worker Kayla Mueller never surrendered hope—putting fellow captives’ welfare ahead of her own and defending her Christian faith to infamous ISIS executioner Jihadi John—during 18 horrifying months of captivity that ended in her death. Tonight, ABC News’ 20/20 will air a report from four fellow hostages, all speaking for the first time about her and their captivity.

PERSECUTION: A movie based on Nik Ripken’s The Insanity of God, his true story of surviving persecution, will be shown in theaters nationwide for one night only next Tuesday.

LIBERIA: On the two-year anniversary of the Ebola outbreak that killed 11,000 Liberians, aid workers airlifted this week thousands of pounds of hospital equipment and other supplies for the ELWA hospital run jointly by Samaritan’s Purse and missions agency SIM—part of an ongoing faith-based effort to improve healthcare and prevent further outbreaks.