By Mariam Karouny

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's official Syrian wing, the Nusra Front, announced on Thursday the death of its top military commander, who insurgent sources said fell victim to a blast targeting a high-level militant meeting.

General Military Commander Abu Humam al-Shami, a veteran of Islamist militant fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, was the senior-most member of the group to die in the Syria war, an insurgent source said.

Insurgent sources said a U.S.-led coalition air strike hit the meeting in the northwestern province of Idlib, but a coalition spokesman said it had not conducted air strikes in the province during the past 24 hours.

The sources said at least three other Nusra Front commanders were also killed in the blast, which they said hit the town of Salqin, near the border with Turkey.

Syrian insurgents have in the past killed member of rival militant groups by planting bombs at meetings. The blast comes at a time of flux for the Nusra Front, which is waging war on other insurgents and also looking for support from Gulf states, sources in Nusra have said.

"The Islamic Nation is bleeding because of the news of the martyrdom of Commander Abu Humam," Nusra Front said on Twitter.

"It's a major blow to Nusra. A very painful, very powerful hit," one insurgent source said, declining to be named as he was not allowed to speak to the media.

The United States has carried out strikes against one of Nusra's jihadi rivals, Islamic State, in Iraq since July and in Syria since September. It has also targeted Nusra fighters in Syria.

The Nusra Front has also battled western-backed Syrian rebels this year, seizing their territory and forcing them to disarm so as to consolidate its power in northern Syria.

Hazzm, one of the last remnants of non-jihadist opposition to President Bashar al-Assad in northern Syria, dissolved itself last week after weeks of fighting with the Nusra Front.

After Thursday's attack, the Nusra Front told its members not to provide information to the media, the insurgent sources said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict, also said that al-Shami was killed, as well as other Nusra Front members.

The weakness of the mainstream Syrian opposition and the growing power of the Nusra Front and Islamic State has complicated diplomatic efforts to end the Syrian conflict that has killed around 200,000 people.

The war started in 2011 after security forces cracked down on a peaceful pro-democracy movement.

(Reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Ahmed Tolba in Cairo and Phil Stewart in Washington; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Wochit
Forensic Tests Show Argentine Prosecutor Was Murdered

By Maximiliano Rizzi and Eliana Raszewski

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Forensic tests on the body of an Argentine state prosecutor who died days after accusing President Cristina Fernandez of plotting to cover up Iran's alleged role in a 1994 bombing indicate that he was murdered, his ex-wife said on Thursday.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding Alberto Nisman's death in January unleashed a storm of conspiracy theories. His former wife, Sandra Arroyo Salgado, hired a private team to analyze the autopsy results and run additional tests.

Argentine authorities have not released full results of Nisman's autopsy, more than six weeks after he was found sprawled in a pool of blood in his flat. The few details made public so far have suggested suicide, although the lead investigator into Nisman's death said she could not categorically say if he shot himself in the head or was killed.

"Nisman didn't have an accident. He didn't commit suicide. They murdered him," Arroyo Salgado told a news conference. Nisman, 52, was the father of their two children.

Earlier on Thursday, Arroyo Salgado, who is a judge, deposited the forensic evidence behind her allegations at the state prosecutors' office in Buenos Aires. She did not give details of the findings to journalists.

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Argentine federal judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado, ex-wife of late prosecutor Alberto Nisman, gives a pr …

Fernandez has branded as "absurd" Nisman's accusation that she sought to whitewash his investigation into the truck-bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center 21 years ago, and has said rogue state spies were behind his death.

Iran has consistently denied it was involved in the bomb attack, which killed 85 people.

A judge last week threw out the accusations against Fernandez. On Wednesday, however, the prosecutor who picked up Nisman's case appealed that ruling, prolonging a scandal that has plunged Fernandez's last year in office into turmoil.

Polls show two in three Argentines believe they will never know the truth about what happened to Nisman, who was found dead the day before he was to appear in Congress to discuss his criminal complaint.

Viviana Fein, the state prosecutor investigating Nisman's death, said she would study the evidence put forward by Arroyo Salgado's team.

"Up until now ... there has been nothing which allows me to say categorically whether this was a suicide or homicide. Nothing," Fein told the state-run National Radio.

(Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Sarah Marsh, David Gregorio and Frances Kerry)

Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Boko Haram militants have been amassing in the northeast Nigeria town of Gwoza, believed to be the group's headquarters, killing residents who were unable to flee, a senator and witnesses said Thursday.

A female resident who fled Gwoza on Tuesday and requested anonymity said the insurgents rounded up elderly men who were studying the Koran outside the home of a local cleric.

The men were later executed in front of their wives, the witness told AFP from Yola, capital of neighbouring Adamawa state.

"The Boko Haram men brought out brand new guns from cartons, tested them and shot dead all the men who they forced to lie face down," she said.

Some of these details were supported by area Senator Ali Ndume, who also confirmed the large build-up of insurgents in Gwoza.

"Boko Haram insurgents have in recent days been converging in Gwoza where they killed many male residents and chased women and children out of the town," said Ndume.

The group's leader Abubakar Shekau proclaimed Gwoza part of a caliphate and reclaiming the town that was captured last June would be a huge prize for Nigeria's military.

Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger have since last month been waging an unprecedented joint offensive against the insurgents, claiming the recapture of several key towns and villages previously under Islamist control.

Ndume speculated that the Islamists were preparing to defend the symbolically important town before an expected military advance, possibly by Chadian troops who are operating in the area with Nigeria's permission.

The motive for the rebel build-up in Gwoza could not be independently confirmed but witnesses said a large number of residents had also been killed in recent days.

The current population of Gwoza is hard to estimate.

Many people in the town on the Cameroon border fled amid the rebel takeover in June but many others -- including those too old or sick to run -- stayed behind.

There were also indications that Boko Haram tried to reassure people that it was safe to stay in the town and live under the so-called caliphate.

Experts say Chad's well-trained army has offered a huge boost to Nigeria in recent weeks as both nations have boasted of major successes against the insurgents.

Chadian President Idriss Deby on Wednesday claimed he knew where Shekau was and called on him to surrender while vowing to "wipe out" the Islamists.

Nigeria is under intense pressure to show progress against Boko Haram ahead of March 28 elections, which had been slated for February but were postponed by six weeks to allow the military more time to pacify the northeast.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The New England Patriots are for same-sex marriage. So are the San Francisco Giants.

The reigning baseball and football champions, along with baseball's small-market Tampa Bay Rays, are among the thousands of businesses, religious groups, advocacy organizations and politicians who are filing legal briefs at the Supreme Court in support of gay marriage.

The cases from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee will be argued April 28, and a decision is expected by early summer.

Roughly six dozen briefs backing pro-gay rights plaintiffs in the four states are expected by the Friday deadline. Included is a "people's brief" filed by the Human Rights Campaign with the signatures of 207,551 people.

The Super Bowl champion Patriots, the World Series-winning Giants and the Rays are part of a brief from hundreds of U.S. businesses.

The Patriots play in Massachusetts, the first state to allow same-sex couples to marry, and the Giants represent a city that is notable for its gay and lesbian community.

Rays president Brian Auld said it was important that his team stand up, as well.

"We're a small but visible business and I actually think it's important that we send this signal of inclusion to the entire region," Auld said in a telephone interview Thursday as he watched the Rays' first spring training game in Port Charlotte, Florida.

The team also has participated in the "It Gets Better" project to encourage gay and lesbian teenagers who've been bullied.

"Our players have traditionally been supportive of these kinds of things," Auld said.

Mayors of 226 U.S. cities also are expressing their support for same-sex marriage. Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley says he is not sure how his constituents feel about the issue, but said it wouldn't affect his view either way. "I don't think constitutional rights are subject to public opinion," Cranley said.

Four couples from California and Virginia who had wanted the court to use their cases to settle the issue of same-sex marriage nationwide also are calling on the justices to strike down state gay-marriage bans everywhere.

___

Supreme Court justices get out a lot, crisscrossing the country on speaking tours and spending a few weeks each year teaching law school classes in idyllic settings abroad. But sometimes their questions to lawyers during courtroom arguments seem out of sync with current traveling reality.

Justice Antonin Scalia appeared to be a couple of decades behind the times during argument Tuesday over a Los Angeles ordinance that allows police to demand registration information about hotel and motel guests.

The city says the law is needed to deter prostitution, sex trafficking and the drug trade at establishments that transact a lot of business in cash, rent their rooms by the hour and attract customers who don't want to reveal anything about themselves. But the businesses say it's overly intrusive on privacy and allows police to harass them.

Defending the law, Scalia said police can detect when people are not providing the required information by comparing the registries to what they can see from the street or a hotel lobby.

"I suppose in motels they can see what rooms have cars in front of them. And I suppose as to room 1204 they can see, usually behind the desk, what keys are missing, what rooms appear not to be occupied," he said.

It has been a while since hotels placed guests' room keys behind the clerk, where anyone can see them. And these days, the keys are programmable cards kept in a stack and not linked to a particular room until a guest checks in.

Later in the argument, Justice Elena Kagan sought to shift the focus from low-budget motels to private hunting lodges, a more likely destination for her hunting buddy Scalia. Kagan sounded much more skeptical of the law than did Scalia, and she seemed to be trying to see whether she could persuade him.

Suppose the lodges have to keep records about their guests' hunting and state or federal agencies "just want to make spot inspections, surprise inspections, all the time. Would that be all right?" Kagan asked Justice Department lawyer Michael Dreeben.

But Scalia did not like the comparison because private lodges are not the same as public motels.

Dreeben knew better than to get between them. "I will have to defer to members of the court on hunting lodges," he said.