Today even administration officials admit that the group is dominating the digital battlefield, but there are private citizens, including former jihadis and parents of Western recruits, who are quietly taking up the fight against the ISIS message machine. [...] “ISIL has used social media better than any terrorist group before or currently. They have mastered the use of it … as a propaganda tool, as a recruitment tool and as a targeting tool.”

The nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers is "an opening for further diplomatic endeavors" to resolve the conflicts in the Middle East, the German foreign minister said in Tehran Saturday.

With migration tearing at the EU’s cohesion, politicians are linking foreign policy to strategic interests rather than democracy and human rights. Will 2015 be seen as the year that the European diplomacy got realpolitik? With migration tearing at the cohesion of the European Union, more politicians have started to see the bloc’s foreign policy as a way to secure Europe’s strategic interests, shifting away from the EU’s traditional focus on democracy and human rights.

Ahmad  Al Rayyan, a Syrian refugee who moved to Jordan’s capital city 2.5 years ago, is one of the many skaters who frequent 7Hills [...] The park opened last December, but the idea for it, Mohammed Zakaria, co-founder of 7Hills Skatepark says, was always there [...] Working with Make Life Skate Life, a nonprofit that builds skateparks in developing countries, they used an online campaign to fundraise for the park.

Kickstarter, in what The New York Times calls its “first social service campaign” has partnered with the United Nations Refugee Agency for a week long campaign to raise funds to support Syrian refugees as they build new lives for themselves in Europe.

Russia’s growing presence in Syria involves a parallel war of information, with the Kremlin dead-set on controlling an increasingly unwieldy narrative. Here are seven strategies that show up time and time again in releases by Russian officials and state-sponsored news organizations. 

The world famous street artist Banksy announced Monday that the materials used to construct his dystopian “Dismaland” theme park will be donated to a refugee camp in Calais, France. The park’s timber and fixtures will be repurposed for shelters, the artist wrote on Dismaland’s official website.