With Russians wondering where to go on vacation now that they cannot visit Turkey or Egypt, a Russian tourist agency is offering an alternative -- "Assad Tours."
The customized tours will take Russian holidaymakers to the front lines of the ongoing civil war in Syria, according to Novaya Gazeta.
The tours would last 4-5 days and cost around $1,500 per person according to the tourist agency, Megapolis.
The IS group is gaining strength in Yemen, rivaling Al Qaeda, the New York Times reports.
IS has emerged as Yemen's "most disruptive and brutal force, carrying out attacks considered too extreme even by the country's branch of Al Qaeda," the Times says.
Like Islamic State affiliates in Egypt and Libya, the Yemeni group has shown signs it is more closely coordinating its activities with the headquarters in Syria, analysts said.
The head of Iran's Basij paramilitary militia, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, has said that the Basij has no intention of deploying forces to Syria, Iranian journalist Abas Aslani tweets.
Tehran denies having any military forces in Syria, but says it has offered "military advice" to Assad's forces in their fight against "terrorist groups".
But several fighters from Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have been reported killed in Syria.
The Tehran Times reports today that an IRGC commander, Brigadier General Hossein Fadayee, also know as Zolfaqar, was killed in Syria "while providing military advice to the Syrian army."
In October, a senior IRGC general, Hossein Hamedani, was killed near Aleppo. Iran said he had been advising the Syrian army on its battle against IS.
BBC defense correspondent Jonathan Beale tweets that the United States is carrying out the bulk of the air strikes in Iraq and almost all of the strikes in Syria against IS.
Beale says that 78 percent of the 8,783 air strikes carried out by the coalition against IS in Iraq and Syria are by U.S. planes.
A new twist in the reports from this morning that a masked assailant had attacked a French teacher while invoking the IS group.
The teacher made up the story,the Paris prosecutor's office said.
The attack sparked a manhunt in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers.
The BBC's Dominic Casciani tweets more information about Nadir Syed, the London man convicted of preparing an IS-style knife attack in London.
He says Syed had tried and failed to get to Syria before planning the attack at home in the UK.
A British man has been convicted of preparing to carry out an IS-inspired knife attack on the streets of London, the BBC reports.
Nadir Syed, 22, from London was arrested in November 2014 hours after buying a chef's knife.
Salem Mohammed, a Ninevah MP, has said that some Turkish troops have withdrawn from Bashiqa in northern Iraq to Dohuk in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Mohammed said that a small number of Turkish troops remained in the camp.
Mujahid a-Sharqi, a Syrian citizen journalist in the IS-controlled city of Deir al-Zor tells Syria Direct why he is prepared to risk his life to expose the realities of the IS group.
I don’t think IS has or will succeed in silencing us. All the journalists in IS territory know that their fate will be death if IS captures them. At the same time, we have a strong conviction that we must expose the group’s crimes.
Exposing what is happening in Deir e-Zor is worth me sacrificing my life because IS is committing its crimes against my friends and family in Deir e-Zor.
Russia is not only defending its national interests in Syria but is also defending the interests of the whole world and of civilization, Russian presidential aide for military-technical cooperation Vladimir Kozhin has said, according to RIA Novosti.
"Today we live in the reality of a large, uncontrolled chaos in the Middle East, the consequence of a series of 'color revolutions' of all shades and hues," Kozhin said.
"There is a real long term war in Syria and Russia is defending, in essence, first and foremost, not just its own national interests but world interests, the interests of civilization."