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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Russia's ambassador to London has said that Britain and the United States are refusing to provide Moscow with information about IS militant positions in Syria, pro-Kremlin news agency RIA Novosti reports.
Yakovenko said that Moscow asked Washington and London to provide Russia with the coordinates of their targets but were refused.
"Everyone has their plans. By the way, we asked the Americans and the British, if you have any information, share it with us, give us the coordinates of your targets. But they refused. So we have to rely on our own sources of information," Yakovenko said.
Counter-terrorism forces are searching for the leaders of an estimated 1,000 Islamic State sympathizers across Indonesia after a string of raids that led to the arrest of several men suspected of planning bomb attacks, police have said.