The Israeli media is also reporting today's phone call between Russian President Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, although so far reports are citing the Kremlin press service rather than the Israeli Prime Minister's Office as sources for the news.
The Ynet news site points out that the phone call comes after the killing of Hezbollah party leader Samir Kuntar in Damascus early on December 20. The Lebanese group and Syrian government sources said Kuntar was killed in an Israeli air strike while Israel stopped short of confirming responsibility, though it welcomed Kuntar's death.
Ynet says that Arab media are claiming that Israel coordinated with Russia over the killing of Kuntar.
Tunisia has extended for another two months a state of emergency imposed after a deadly November bus bombing claimed by the IS group, the presidency said.
A federal judge is delaying a trial for a young Mississippi couple accused of attempting to join the IS group, AP reports.
A lawyer for defendant Jaelyn Delshaun Young of Vicksburg sought the delay so that Young can undergo psychiatric evaluations.
Young and co-defendant Muhammad Dakhlalla pleaded not guilty to charges of aiding terrorists.
Russia's Defense Ministry has posted these images of Russian forces at the Hmeymim air base in Syria's Latakia province.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on the Japanese government to do everything possible to secure the release of a Japanese freelance journalist kidnapped by militants in Syria in July and who is still being held hostage.
Jumpei Yasuda was abducted in an area controlled by Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate the Al-Nusra Front. RSF say that according to information it has received, the militants holding him are threatening to kill him or sell him to another militant group if a ransom is not paid.
“We are very concerned about Jumpei Yasuda’s fate and we call on the Japanese government to do what is needed to save this journalist,” said Benjamin Ismaïl of RSF.
RFE/RL's Radio Farda has published these photos from the December 21 funeral in Lebanon of a senior militant, Samir Kantar, who was killed in an apparent air strike near the Syrian capital, Damascus, a day earlier.
Hizballah leaders blamed Israel for carrying out the strike, in which eight other people died. Kantar had served nearly 30 years in an Israeli prison for killing an Israeli man and his 4-year-old daughter in 1979, but was released in 2008 in a prisoner swap. In the wake of Kantar's death, Israel and Lebanon briefly traded fire.
An attack plot was foiled and two men arrested last week in the French region of Orleans, southwest of Paris, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said, AFP reports.
The U.N. Security Council has strongly condemned the fighting and use of heavy weapons by Syrian government troops and armed groups in the Golan Heights, an area that has been designated a demilitarized zone separating Israeli and Syrian forces since 1974, AP is reporting.
A resolution co-sponsored by Russia and the United States and adopted unanimously by the council today calls on parties to the Syrian conflict to halt military activity there.
French police say they have averted an attack, our news desk reports:
French police have prevented two men from carrying out an attack on police and military in the city of Orleans, south of Paris, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on December 22.
Cazeneuve said two French citizens, aged 20 and 24, were being held for questioning.
He said the men were "in contact with a French jihadist in Syria and the investigation ought to establish if he ordered the attacks that one of the two arrested men has admitted they were planning to carry out."
The minister said 10 attacks had been prevented this year in France, which has been in a state of emergency since Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris in November.
More than 3,000 raids have taken place since the attacks, leading to 360 house arrests and 51 people jailed.
Cazeneuve also said 3,414 people had been turned away from France's borders since the state of emergency was introduced.
They were refused entry "due to the risk they present to security and public order," the minister explained. (AFP, dpa, Reuters)