Here's another item from our news desk:
Man Detained In France For Questioning Over Paris Attacks
A French judicial official and French police say a 29-year-old man has been arrested and is being held for questioning about the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.
Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor's office, said the man was arrested on the morning of December 15 at his home in Villiers-Sur-Marne, an eastern suburb of Paris.
Authorities refused to identify the man and provided no further information about his suspected link to the attacks by French-born Islamic extremists who had declared loyalty to the Islamic State militant group.
Two French police officials also confirmed the arrest.
The man can be held for questioning for up to six days before being charged or released.
(AP, AFP, and BBC)
That concludes today's live-blogging of the crisis surrounding Islamic State. Check back here tomorrow morning for more of our continuing coverage.
The IS group is looking at potentially vulnerable oil assets in Libya and elsewhere outside its Syria stronghold, where the militant group controls about roughly 80 percent of the oil and gas fields, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday, Reuters reports this morning.
The official, who briefed reporters in Washington on condition of anonymity, said the United States was carefully examining who controlled oil fields, pipelines, trucking routes and other infrastructure in places that could be vulnerable to attack.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has traveled to Iraq this morning for an unannounced war zone visit.
Carter is planning to meet with his commanders and with Iraqi leaders, as he looks for ways to broaden the U.S. assistance to Iraq, including what will likely be discussions about America's willingness to send attack helicopters and more troops into the fight, AP reports.
Weather problems are restricting air travel around Baghdad, however, so it is uncertain which Iraqi leaders Carter will be able to meet.
The flow of Australians seeking to fight alongside groups like IS in Syria and Iraq has plateaued, the head of Australia's national security service has said.
Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) chief Duncan Lewis said that he believed better community awareness was helping.
"There is a current sense of a plateau," Mr Lewis told Australia's Fairfax Media.
"I don't want to be giving any sense that we are through the worst of this. I don't think that's right. But while it had been escalating fast, the sense is that we have plateaued a bit."
Lewis said that a total of 44 Australians have been killed fighting alongside extremist groups, mostly IS.