Islamist rebels and Syrian army troops on Thursday were engaged in heavy fighting in Syria's northwestern Latakia province in areas close to President Bashar al Assad's ancestral home, the army and rebels said.
While U.S. policy bans federal officials from doing business with kidnappers, the FBI for years has used a secret exemption to government rules to communicate with hostage-takers and sometimes send money to them, U.S. government sources said.
France will open a center late this year to help reintegrate young French citizens who return from conflict zones such as Syria but are not subject to prosecution, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday.
Britain has informed a United Nations sanctions panel of an active Iranian nuclear procurement network linked to two blacklisted firms, according to a confidential report by the panel seen by Reuters.
A Bosnian who fought in Syria was arrested on Tuesday in connection with an assault on a police station by a man shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) that left one officer dead and the gunman dead and two policeman wounded.
The United Nations envoy to Syria said on Friday he will begin meeting in May with the country's government, opposition groups, and regional powers including Iran to assess by the end of June whether there is any hope brokering an end to the war.
Defne Bayrak's husband was a suicide bomber who killed CIA operatives in a 2009 attack in Afghanistan. Now, she is among the hundreds of Turks using social media to show support for Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.
A South Carolina teen, who a prosecutor said was "seduced" by the Islamic State group and planned to shoot U.S. soldiers, was sentenced on Tuesday to five years in juvenile prison on a gun possession charge, the local Herald newspaper reported.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told French television the intelligence services of his country are in contact with their counterparts in France, which has severed diplomatic ties with Assad and insists he must leave power.
A video purportedly made by Islamic State and posted on social media sites on Sunday appeared to show militants shooting and beheading about 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya.
Four Britons who were detained in Turkey on suspicion of trying to cross illegally into Syria were arrested on their return to England on Wednesday, police said.
Iran's leader on Thursday condemned the military intervention by its main regional rival Saudi Arabia in Yemen as genocide, sharply escalating Tehran's rhetoric against the two-week-old campaign of air strikes.
U.S. authorities arrested a Philadelphia woman on Friday and charged her with attempting to provide support to the Islamic State militant group by planning to travel overseas to join the organization, the U.S. Justice Department said.
More than 25,000 foreign fighters from some 100 countries are linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State, with Syria and Iraq comprising a "veritable international finishing school for extremists," United Nations experts reported to the U.N. Security Council.
Saudi Arabia accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of hypocrisy on Sunday, telling an Arab summit that he should not express support for the Middle East while fuelling instability by supporting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Tasneem Hussein was a soft-spoken university student in Khartoum when the transformation slowly began. After returning to Sudan from Britain to study pharmacology, she swapped her jeans for the head-to-toe niqab covering. But no one expected to hear reports of her abandoning her studies and a privileged life to help Islamic State wage jihad in Syria.
France said on Friday it would push the United Nations Security Council to refer the Islamic State militant group to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria dismissed as "malicious propaganda" allegations that his troops used chlorine gas in the fight against insurgent rebels, according to an interview broadcast on Friday on CBS "This Morning."
Police arrested three men on Wednesday for allegedly setting up a network in Italy to recruit Islamist fighters to be sent to Syria and Iraq, the Italian authorities said.
Saudi Arabia is moving heavy military equipment including artillery to areas near its border with Yemen, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, raising the risk that the Middle East’s top oil power will be drawn into the worsening Yemeni conflict.
