The Islamic State has continued its lightening expansion throughout Syria and Iraq, claiming new territory in Syria along the Turkish border, while the United Nations estimates that the Islamic State controls Iraqi territory where 40 percent of Iraq's wheat is grown.
The embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's bid to retain power, despite the election of a replacement favorable to both Iraqi patrons Iran and the United States, seems to have come to an end.
The United States has announced plans to send another 130 military advisers to Iraq in an effort to bolster the force of 300 already in the country to help advise Iraqi forces on how best to deal with the expanding threat posed by the Islamic State.
A helicopter carrying journalists and a parliamentarian that was delivering aid to Yezidis stranded on the Sinjar Mountains crashed after trying to take off again.
A new report has said that the Kurdish militia known as the pesh merga refused to confront the Islamic State, choosing instead to flee and leave thousands of Yezidis at the mercy of IS.
President Barack Obama has suggested that the airstrikes and humanitarian aid drops he recently authorized in Iraq may go on for months.
The Lebanese Army has surrounded the town of Arsal, on the Syrian border, in an effort to expel radical Islamist fighters that have overrun it.
Frustrated by their inability to make further gains on the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, it appears as if the Islamic State has chosen to engage Kurdish forces in Kurdish-controlled territory for the first time since taking control of large portions of eastern Syria and western Iraq.
Testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee revealed that the United States knew that the Islamic State was advancing on Iraqi territory from Syria and tried to warn the Iraqi government of the growing threat, but the Iraqis refused to listen and take appropriate defensive measures.
The Islamic State has issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, ordering that all women in the city of Mosul undergo female genital mutilation.
