Turkey has arrested 69 people with alleged ties to the IS group in the wake of yesterday's suicide bombing in an Istanbul tourist area that killed 10 foreign citizens, Hurriyet is reporting.
Three Russian nationals are among those arrested.
Former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has said that Russia's military operation in Syria is "not as expensive as it might seem."
"All of the measures connected with Crimea, with eastern Ukraine, where there was humanitarian support, were much more expensive than the situation in Syria. I don't think that Syria will go on for many years. In the medium term, Syria will not be a big burden," Kudrin was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.
Germany has sent a team of specialist investigators to Istanbul following Tuesday's blast in which 10 Germans were killed, AP are reporting.
Johannes Dimroth said the specialists from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, which is comparable to the FBI, would support Turkish authorities investigating the attack.
Asked whether Germany believes that [IS] is responsible for the attack, he said it was "too early to engage in wild speculation."
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov is in Geneva ahead of a meeting of high-ranking diplomats from the United States, Russia and UN tomorrow to prepare the groundwork for a UN-brokered conference on Syria on January 25.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has tweeted a number of comments from Gatilov ahead of tomorrow's meeting, including that a list of designated terrorist groups in Syria "needs further development and agreement by the members of the International Syria Support Group."
As many as 70 Dutch children may be growing up among Islamic State jihadists, the Netherlands' AIVD intelligence services fear.
AIVD have released a report, "Life among IS, unravelling the myth," that seeks to explain to families, police and aid workers the truth about life in IS-controlled Iraq and Syria.
Among the grisly realities explained in the report is the fact that children are routinely taken to watch execution-style killings of those sentenced to death by IS militants.
Attackers have thrown grenades and opened fire at a Pakistani television station in Islamabad, dropping pamphlets linked to the IS group's self-declared "Khorasan province" in Afghanistan, the station said.
A majority of Arab Muslim youths see the actions of militant groups such as the IS group and Al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam's teachings, according to a new poll by the Zogby Research Services.
The poll asked 5,374 Muslim men and women aged 15-34 from the Middle East and North Africa for their views, according to AFP.
More than 90 percent of respondents in Morocco and the UAE called both extremist groups a "complete perversion of Islam," as did 83 percent of respondents in Egypt and more than 60 percent in Bahrain and Jordan.
More than 55 percent of respondents in the Palestinian territories and Saudi Arabia also said the radical groups were distorting Islam's teachings.
Reuters has more on comments made by Turkey's Interior Minister Efkan Ala this morning regarding the suicide bomber who killed ten German tourists in an attack in Istanbul on January 12.
The bomber was registered with Turkey's immigration authorities but not on any list of known suspects, Ala said at a joint press conference earlier today with his German counterpart, Thomas de Maiziere.
"Your assessment that his fingerprints were taken and there is a record of him is correct. But he was not on the wanted individuals list. And neither is he on the target individuals list sent to us by other countries," Ala said.
Calls for French Jews to leave their skullcaps at home in the wake of a militant attack on a kippa-wearing teacher has sparked an emotional debate that pitted security concerns against a desire to uphold Jewish identity, AFP reports.
Jewish parents in Marseille, where the attack happened on January 11, have urged their sons to wear a baseball cap instead.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has called for an immediate end to all sieges in Syria "as a matter of urgency and because of overwhelming humanitarian needs."
The most senior ICRC official in Syria, Marianne Gasser, says action needs to be taken now to help more than 400,000 Syrians currently living in besieged areas across the country.
"The scenes we witnessed in Madaya were truly heartbreaking. People are desperate. Food is in extremely short supply. It is the elderly, women and children who are suffering the most, especially from severe malnourishment. The conditions are some of the worst that I have witnessed in my five years in the country. This cannot go on," said Ms Gasser.