The UK's Royal Navy has tweeted that the HMS Defender is joining the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle on anti-IS operations.
According to the Royal Navy website, HMS Defender is the fifth of the British Navy's six Type-45 destroyers. She returned from her maiden deployment to the Middle East a year ago and has now been deployed again.
AFP has more on the reports that two people have been arrested in Austria with suspected links to the November 13 Paris attacks.
Robert Holzleitner,a spokesman for prosecutors in Salzburg, told AFP that two people "coming from the Middle East" were arrested at the weekend at a center for refugees in Salzburg.
"Indications of a possible link to the Paris attacks are currently being investigated," Holzleitner said.
An Austrian newspaper, the Kronen-Zeitung, reported that the two were French citizens who entered Austria in October with members of the group who carried out the Paris attacks.The two had reportedly been posing as refugees and had fake Syrian passports.
Austria has arrested two people with suspected links to the November 13 attacks in Paris.
Eight people believed to be linked to the IS group, including seven foreign nationals, have been detained in Turkey's southeastern province ofGaziantep, the Doğan news agency has reported, according to Today's Zaman.
Up to 7,000 Syrians who died in state detention centers were tortured, mistreated or executed, according to a report published today by Human Rights Watch.
The Guardian reports that Human Rights Watch has identified 19 victims from a collection of photographs known as the Caesar Files, which were released by a military defector who chronicled deaths in Syrian government custody.
The report, If the Dead Could Speak, Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria's Detention Facilities, was released this morning in Moscow, two days before the International Support Group on Syria is due to meet in New York to reconvene talks on Syria.
Iran's Fars News agency, which is close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), reports that powerful Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani traveled to Moscow last week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Soleimani discussed "the latest developments in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon," Fars reported.
Reuters has more on U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter's visit to Iraq today.
Carter is hoping to discuss with Iraqi officials Washington's offer of attack helicopters and advisors to help retake the Iraqi city of Ramadi from IS.
Carter said he would also be speaking to U.S. commanders during his visit to Baghdad to get a reading on the battlefield and "their thinking about ways that we can continue to accelerate the campaign to defeat [IS]," Reuters reports.
Thomas Pierret, an Islam expert from the University of Edinburgh, tweets what would be big news if true: the powerful Army of Islam (Jaysh al-Islam) is considering withdrawing from the Riyadh agreement signed by members of Syria's opposition.
Reuters has more on the confusion surrounding Saudi Arabia's new Islamic coalition against terrorism.
Although Western nations have welcomed the announcement of the coalition, "comments from several of the countries that signed up to the initiative appeared to reveal a lack of preparation by Riyadh," Reuters notes.
Some countries, including Indonesia, said that Riyadh had approached them to ask them to join a center to "coordinate against extremism and terrorism" but Saudi Arabia had then announced a military alliance.
Chechen Twitter user Magomed Edilsultanov, who writes for the North Caucasian news website Kavpolit, tweets this in response to Russian Defense Minister Shoigu's announcement that Russia won't be sending ground troops to Syria.
"Shoigu ruled out Russian soldiers participating in a ground operation in Syria. But what about 'volunteers'?"
It's a good question: Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, the head of the Russian parliament's defense committee and the person who announced Shoigu's comments this morning, said in October that Russian volunteers who had honed combat skills in Ukraine will likely "appear in the ranks of the Syrian army as combat participants."