The father of 26-year-old Flight Lt. Moaz al-Kaseasbeh, urged his son's Islamic State captors to treat him well and set him free because "we are all Muslims."
In his annual Christmas Day blessing, the pontiff condemned killing in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan and the "brutal persecution" of religious and ethnic minorities.
Spending exceeds $8 million per day. Operation Inherent Resolve, as the U.S.-led operation against the Islamic State is known, is getting its own inspector general to oversee government costs.
Days after breaking the siege of Mount Sinjar and freeing trapped Yazidis there, peshmerga forces were pressing an offensive to retake the town itself from the Islamist militia.
The Islamic State is not believed to be in the Gaza Strip. But a flier in its name was recently sent around the territory. Both Israel and Hamas are trying to use it to their advantage.
In the Kurdish city of Halabja, young men have been disappearing to join ISIS. It's a trend the authorities don't really want to discuss. But they are clamping down to try to make it stop.
Many of the 5,000 Yazidi hostages in Iraq are women who are being raped. Those who return to their deeply conservative community face new trauma: shame, invasive "virginity tests," possible pregnancy.
The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council is expected to form an unprecedented, NATO-inspired joint military command. The growing strength of ISIS and Iran's influence have made cooperation more urgent.
Authorities say an Emirate woman in her 30s confessed to targeting Ibolya Ryan at an Abu Dhabi mall because she was American. The woman also is suspected in a foiled bomb attack on another American.