Here's another item from our news desk:
Kerry: 'Kinks' In Syrian Opposition Framework For Peace Talks
The United States says some "kinks" have to be resolved in a pact between Syrian opposition forces if peace talks are to resume next week.
A meeting of Syrian opposition politicians and rebels in Saudi Arabia produced a statement of principles on December 10 to guide proposed UN-backed peace talks with the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
But U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on December 11 that there were "some questions and kinks" in the document.
Those must be addressed if a planned high-level diplomatic conference is to be held as scheduled at the United Nations on December 18.
The framework document agreed to by opposition groups says Assad would be allowed to stay in power until a transitional government was formed. They had previously demanded that he leave before any negotiations took place.
(AP, AFP)
Russia is supplying weapons to the legitimate authorities in Syria, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
Peskov was responding to questions about comments made earlier today by President Putin, who said that Russia was assisting certain factions of the Free Syrian Army as well as the Syrian Arab Army.
"We're talking about military-technical cooperation. We are also [carrying out] certain supplies of what is called special assets. Deliveries are in strict accordance with international law. We are talking about the army. Russia supplies weapons to the Syrian Arab Republic, the legitimate authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic," Peskov said.
The Netherlands will not decide until next year whether to join US-led air strikes in Syria, Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said.
"We are taking our time (with the decision). Certainly not before Christmas and hopefully in January," Rutte told a press conference after the weekly cabinet meeting.
A 19-year-old student from Blackburn in northern England has been sentenced to four years in prison after trying to travel to fight for the IS group.
Ednane Mahmood, from Blackburn, fled his home after stating his desire to "fight abroad for Allah," the BBC reports.
Mahmood said he was "brainwashed."
Normality has returned to the Libyan city of Sabratha, the center of which IS militants overran yesterday, Libya Alaan reports.
A Russian man from the North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria has been arrested in the capital Nalchik on suspicion of having undergone training at a militant camp in Syria, Interfax reports.
The 26-year-old man was born in Nalchik but converted to Islam in Belgium. The man allegedly underwent mines and explosives training in Syria, an FSB spokesman told Interfax.
Interfax did not say which militant group in Syria the suspect had allegedly belonged to.
Overseeing IS's network in Mosul, Iraq are Saddam-era army and intelligence officers, many of whom helped keep Saddam Hussein and his Baath party in power for years, Reuters reports:
The Baathists have strengthened the group’s spy networks and battlefield tactics and are instrumental in the survival of its self-proclaimed Caliphate, according to interviews with dozens of people, including Baath leaders, former intelligence and military officers, Western diplomats and 35 Iraqis who recently fled Islamic State territory for Kurdistan.
Among the most prominent Baathists to join IS, according to Reuters, are:
Ayman Sabawi, the son of Saddam Hussein’s half brother, and Raad Hassan, Saddam’s cousin, said the senior Salahuddin security official and several tribal leaders. Both were children during Saddam’s time, but the family connection is powerfully symbolic.
More senior officers now in Islamic State include Walid Jasim (aka Abu Ahmed al-Alwani) who was a captain of intelligence in Saddam’s time, and Fadhil al-Hiyala (aka Abu Muslim al-Turkmani) whom some believe was a deputy to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi until he was killed in an airstrike earlier this year.
A Libyan source near the town of Sabratha, whose center IS overran for a time yesterday without any resistance, has this to say about the situation: