From our news desk:
Report: California Shooters Financed Massacre With $28,000 Loan
A married couple who killed 14 people in California last week financed their shooting rampage with a $28,500 loan from an online lender, investigators said on December 8.
About two weeks before attack, the sum was deposited into the bank account of Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, who obtained the loan from San Francisco-based Prosper, an online lending service that arranged the financing through WebBank.com.
The method of financing the crime appears to be unique and unprecedented.
Farook reportedly withdrew $10,000 of the loan proceeds on November 20 and may have used the money to purchase two AR-15 semiautomatic weapons used in the attack from a friend and distant relative, Enrique Marquez.
In addition, in the days before the attack, at least three transfers of $5,000 were put into the account of Farook's mother, Rafia.
The couple left their infant daughter in the custody of the grandmother before going on the shooting spree.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said he would travel to Moscow next week for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a political settlement in Syria, Reuters reports.
Reuters adds that Kerry said during an event on the sidelines of the Paris climate talks that despite its military and political interests in Syria, Moscow "has been constructive" in trying to find a political settlement to end the Syrian conflict.
A Chinese official has denounced a call by the Dalai Lama for dialogue with the IS group, China's state-run Global Times newspaper has said.
"By saying, 'listen, understand and respect' them, it exposes, in his very bones, his sympathy or endorsement for IS," the paper quoted Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the ethnic and religious affairs committee of the top advisory body to China's parliament, as saying.
Russian President Putin has invited British specialists to help decipher data from a flight recorder that Moscow believes is from the downed Su-24 jet.
Putin made the suggestion during a telephone call earlier today with UK Prime Minister David Cameron, TASS reports.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu gave the flight recorder -- which Russia said yesterday had been found in Syria -- to Putin.
Turkey downed the Su-24 on November 24 near the Syrian border. Ankara insists the jet had violated its airspace while Russia has maintained that it never left Syrian air space.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has refused to name the sum spent by the Russian military for its operations in Syria.
"That's a secret," Medvedev said, according to Russian government daily Rossiskaya Gazeta.
Medvedev was answering a question from a reporter about the cost of the use of Russian cruise missiles in Syria.
Medvedev said that the cost of the operation was within the budget and the Defense Ministry has not asked the government for additional funds for Russia's operations in Syria.
The Russian Defense Ministry has shared a video showing the Rostov-on-Don submarine firing a Kalibr cruise missile at targets in Syria.
The Ministry claims that the missile hit an IS target in Raqqa.
The use of cruise missiles prompted a question about their cost this morning by a reporter to Russian Prime Minister Medvedev, who said the budget for the Syria operations was "a secret."
Busloads of Syrians -- families and rebel fighters -- have left Al-Waer, the last rebel-held neighborhood of Homs today as part of a local truce agreement between the Syrian government and rebels.
The rebels and their families are being moved to rebel-held areas near the Turkish border.
Witnesses saw 15 buses leave the area, Reuters reports.
The Homs Media Center, a pro-opposition citizen journalist group, posted this video showing families and rebels boarding a bus in Al-Waer this morning.
A suicide bomber has reportedly killed eight people near a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad, Iraq, AFP have just reported.
"IS is not Islam," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said today in comments criticizing remarks by Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump on Muslims.
Trump says the United States should stop Muslims entering the country.
Speaking from Paris, Kerry said that there are "courageous Muslims around the world" who are standing up to the IS group.
Lavrov: Those Who Call For Assad To Step Down Are Strengthening IS
Those nations calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down are indirectly contributing to the strengthening of the IS group, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said according to pro-Kremlin news site RIA Novosti.
"If the problem of Assad remains an artificial obstacle to the creation of a universal anti-terror coalition, then those who are insisting on that, I have no other way to put this, they will indirectly strengthen the conditions for IS to grow," Lavrov told the Italian media today.
"We need to abandon double standards and preconditions. If one of the members of the American coalition [against IS] has a personal antipathy to President Assad, then these personal reasons must still be subordinate to the fight against terrorism, which already poses a real threat, is killing people, Russians and Europeans and Americans and citizens of regional countries."