The yearlong story of attacks by Islamic State militants and the intensifying global effort to defeat the IS group has been voted the top news story of 2015, according to AP's annual poll of U.S. editors and news directors.
The United Nations is mulling "light touch" options for monitoring a possible ceasefire in Syria that would keep its risks to a minimum by relying largely on Syrians already on the ground, diplomatic sources have told Reuters.
The UN Security Council called last week on the UN Secretary General to draw up options for monitoring a cease fire in Syria.
Egypt has hired global consultancy Control Risks to review security at some of its airports, tourism minister Hisham Zaazou has said, after a plane carrying Russian tourists crashed over the Sinai Peninsula in October killing all aboard.
Russia said in November that the plane was brought down by a bomb. The IS group claimed responsibility, saying that its local Sinai affiliate had smuggled a bomb on board hidden in a soft drink can.
But Egypt has said that it has so far found no evidence of terrorism linked to the disaster.
Brett McGurk, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for the global anti-IS coalition, tweets that U.S.-led coalition air forces are supporting Iraqi troops as they push to retake IS's remaining strongholds in Ramadi.
Iranian casualties are on the rise in Syria, as Iran's Revolutionary Guards ramps up its role in supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Reuters reports.
Since early October, nearly 100 Revolutionary Guard fighters or military advisers, including at least four senior commanders, have been killed there, according to a tally from Iranian websites.
That is only slightly less than half of all the casualties suffered by the Guard in Syria since the beginning of 2012, when death notices began to appear.
The reason for Iran's increased role in Syria is "mostly in order to make up for the heavy attrition among Syrian army units," according to Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut.
Reuters notes that the "Syrian army has recently had to take a back seat as Iran and its allied militias lead in the fight against the opposition."
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said that Turkey's military training and equipment support for Iraq will continue until Mosul is liberated from the IS group, the Daily Sabah reports.
Earlier today, Turkey's Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz said that Iraqi training personnel at the Bashiqa Camp near Mosul would remain in place.
Mali has reimposed a state of emergency for the final ten days of 2015 to head off any terrorist threats following last month's deadly attack in the capital, Bamako, AFP reports.
Mali previously imposed a state of emergency following that attack on November 20, in which two militants killed 20 people including 14 foreigners in the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako.
Saudi Arabia's bolder approach to Syria has been prompted by its rival Iran's growing influence, AFP reports.
AFP notes Saudi Arabia's recent efforts to bring Syria's armed and political opposition groups together by hosting talks in Riyadh and its announcement of a 34-national coalition against IS.
The Combined Joint Task Force has published the latest details of the U.S.-led coalition's strikes against IS in Syria and Iraq on December 21.
The Combined Joint Task Force also explained its definition of a "strike":
A strike, as defined in the CJTF releases, means one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative effect for that location. So having a single aircraft deliver a single weapon against a lone [IS] vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of buildings and vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making that facility (or facilities) harder or impossible to use. Accordingly, CJTF-OIR does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.
Russia's State Duma has adopted in its first reading amendments to the law on the Federal Security Service (FSB), according to which intelligence services will be granted powers to take the fingerprints of any citizen deemed to be a potential terrorist when that individual crosses the border, BBC Russian reports.
Ernest Valeyev, deputy chairman of the State Duma security and anti-corruption committee, said that these measures were linked to the emergence of threats associated with the IS group.
"The intelligence services have certain information about individuals who are cooperating with terror groups, mostly IS. When these individuals cross the border, biometric data will be taken from them," Valeyev said.