The U.S. House of Representatives began debating legislation on Tuesday to authorize President Barack Obama's plan to arm and train Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State militants, and lawmakers said the measure would likely pass Congress by the end of this week despite some members' reservations.
The most senior U.S. military officer raised the possibility on Tuesday that American troops might need to take on a larger role in Iraq's ground war against Islamic State militants, but the White House stressed they would not deploy on a combat mission.
The Philippines is investigating the involvement of Filipino Islamists in the three-year civil war in Syria after two locals were reported killed fighting for Islamic State militant group, an intelligence official said on Saturday.
President Barack Obama told Americans on Wednesday he had authorized U.S. air strikes for the first time in Syria and more attacks in Iraq in a broad escalation of a campaign against the Islamic State militant group.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged President Bashar al-Assad to seek a political solution to Syria's war, saying this would help international efforts against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, al-Hayat newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Iraq has refiled in U.S. court to gain control of $100 million of Kurdish crude oil on a tanker near Texas, days after the court ruled it lacked jurisdiction to seize the cargo but said it could hear arguments over who is the oil's rightful owner.
No one disputes the horrific outcome: Iraqi military recruits were led off their base unarmed and murdered in their hundreds, machine gunned in mass graves by the Islamic State, whose fighters boasted proudly of the killings on the Internet.
Bosnian police detained 16 people on Wednesday on charges of financing terrorist activities, recruiting and fighting on the side of radical groups in Syria and Iraq, authorities said.
The Islamic State militant group released a video on Tuesday purporting to show the beheading of a second American hostage, journalist Steven Sotloff, raising the stakes in its confrontation with Washington over U.S. air strikes in Iraq.
President Barack Obama faced criticism over his foreign policy from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Sunday as he wrestled with crises in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Ukraine.
The leader of Nigeria's Islamist group Boko Haram said his fighters were now ruling the captured northeastern town of Gwoza "by Islamic law", in the first video to state a territorial claim in more than five years of violent insurrection.
The United Nations condemned on Monday "appalling, widespread" crimes by Islamic State forces in Iraq, including mass executions of prisoners that could amount to war crimes.
The CIA is stepping in and "ramping up" its role with the unit in Iraq, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. Citing unnamed sources the increased CIA role is in an effort to prevent spillover from the war in Syria by helping counterterrorism units fight al-Qaeda in Iraq.
