IS militants have destroyed a lock on the Euphrates River that served as a bridge in the Iraqi town of Ramadi as government forces close in on the extremists.
Iraqi Maj. Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi, the head of military operations in Anbar province, said the lock was the last remaining bridge from the city center to the northwest and its destruction leaves around 300 IS militants trapped in Ramadi's center.
The Sydney Morning Herald has more on the 15-year-old boy arrested in Sydney this morning on terror charges.
The boy had become heavily radicalized over the past year and allegedly took part in planning an attack on a government building.
The teenager used the word "banana" as a code word for "firearm" in text messages, saying in one message he allegedly sent that he was "going to get to paradise through banana."
Five people, including a 15-year-old boy, have been charged today in Sydney, Australia over a terrorist plot targeting a government building.
The 15-year-old and a 20-year-old man were arrested this morning at their homes and accused of conspiracy to commit an act in preparation for a terror act.
Three other suspects aged 21, 22 and 23 were already in jail and were later charged with the same offense.
The plot linked to the arrest was not new but relating to an operation last December in which material about a planned attack on a government building was seized, police said.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that progress has been made in Saudi-led talks in Riyadh to try to unite Syrian opposition groups ahead of talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government.
"The meeting in Saudi Arabia appears to be very constructive at this point ... but I think everybody is moving in the direction that they want to rapidly get to a political process," Kerry said on the sidelines of climate talks in Paris.
But a possible December 18 meeting in New York to try to advance the peace talks is "not locked in yet," Kerry added.
The IS group has released 25 Assyrian Christian hostages, Kurdish news site Basnews is reporting now.
The Assyrians were abducted by IS in February when IS militants attacked Christian villages near Tel Tamir in Syria's Hasakah province.
The hostages were released yesteday. They are all males, including two boys aged seven and nine, according to an Assyrian source.
Two Iraqis Detained In Finland Over IS Camp Speicher Mass Killing
Two Iraqi men have been detained in Finland on suspicion of terrorism-related murders in Iraq, Finnish media is reporting.
The two men were detained Tuesday, the head of Finland's National Bureau of Investigations, Jari Raty, told reporters at a press conference today. However they were not interviewed until today because of a shortage of interpreters.
The two men are suspected of 11 killings in Iraq in June 2014 as part of a mass killing carried out by IS at Camp Speicher near Tikrit, in which militants killed unarmed Iraqi Air Force cadets.
The suspects, both 23-year-old Iraqi men, arrived in Finland in September.
They allegedly shot Iraqi army cadets who had been tied up and made to lie on the ground.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must either "leave through negotiations" or be forcibly ousted.
Al-Jubeir made his comments to reporters in Riyadh during a two-day meeting of Syrian opposition groups aimed at forming a united front ahead of peace talks with Assad.
IS Recaptures Two Areas In Central Syria, Activists Say
The IS group has recaptured two areas in central Syria from government forces, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) says.
"Syrian army units withdrew from all of the Maheen and Hawareen areas after an [IS] attack," SOHR head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Maheen and Hawareen are in Syria's Homs province.
A local government representative from the nearby Christian town of Sadad said that the Syrian army is trying to secure an exit route for government forces fighting IS.
Hassan Ridha, a pro-Assad activist who says he is based in Tartous in Syria, posted these images whcih claim to show the IS group on the eastern outskirts of Maheen.
From our news desk:
Dutch Court Convicts Six Muslim Men In IS Recruiting Network
A Dutch court has convicted six Muslim men of membership in a terrorist network that recruits youngsters to fight in Syria as Islamic State militants or part of other extremist groups.
The six were among eight men and a woman from The Hague convicted on December 10 of various crimes linked to a network of radical Muslims.
At a heavily guarded courtroom in Amsterdam, judges issued sentences of up to six years against those convicted.
Presiding Judge Rene Elkerbout said the organization "has contributed on a large scale to a climate in which youngsters felt called upon to go to Syria and fight."
The U.S. commando force that President Barack Obama is dispatching to Iraq to conduct clandestine raids against the IS group does not fit neatly into a picture of the U.S. military strategy for defeating the militants, AP writes.
AP notes that usually, this sort of commando force works clandestinely and its existence would normally be classified.
"In this case the Pentagon lifted that veil to bolster its argument that the U.S. military strategy is building momentum at a time when its critics claim the Islamic State is winning," AP suggests.