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Asked whether Assad would have any role to play in an international coalition being assembled to fight Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the U.N. chief said Assad could contribute by working politically towards an end to the war in his country.

slamic State, a militarily-powerful al Qaeda offshoot that wants to create a jihadist hub in the heart of the Arab world, has made rapid territorial gains in both Iraq and Syria in recent months that have alarmed regional and Western powers.

when Assad was sworn in for a new term as president, he vowed to recover all Syria from Islamist insurgents and dismissed the Syrian opposition abroad as traitors. But he also said he would be willing to work with the country's internal opposition, without giving details.

The United States has carried out weeks of air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq, but the outlook for U.S. air raids in Syria is much less clear.

While Iraq's government welcomed the role of U.S. warplanes to attack the militants, Assad has warned that any strikes conducted without his country's permission would be considered an act of aggression, potentially plunging any U.S.-led coalition into a broader conflict with Syria.

OPPOSING SIDES

Assad's military has stepped up air strikes

which controls about a third of Syria's territory

International and regional powers have backed opposing sides in the civil war, with Russia and Iran supporting Assad and Western powers and Gulf Arab states largely backing the rebels.

Ban also said a U.N. Security Council decision to support military action against Islamic State would be "an excellent and an appropriate way" to deal with the group but that its brutal killings were why, "some countries took some military action," in a reference to U.S. air strikes in Iraq.

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected on Wednesday to outline a plan to deal with Islamic State. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Baghdad as he began a tour of the Middle East to build military, political and financial support to defeat the militants.

“Providing arms could be contributing to the military campaign,” said a second State Department official. “Any sort of training activity would be contributing to the military campaign.”

its airstrikes on the defense of Erbil, securing the Mosul Dam and protecting the Haditha Dam.

“The Iraqis have asked for assistance in the border regions, and that’s something we’re looking at,” the first State Department official said.

“They have a very new air force,” a third State Department official said, referring to the Iraqi military. “Their targeting is not nearly as precise as ours and they have made some real mistakes.”

Saudi Arabia has agreed to provide bases for training moderate Syrian rebels

“I disagree completely with ISIS in thought and means, but I do not accept that America fights them,” said the scholar, Sheikh Yusef Qaradawi, leader of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, in a Twitter message reported around the region. The United States, he said, “is not moved by Islamic values but by its own interests, even if it spills blood.”

his scholars’ union declared ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate “null and void,” arguing that its extremism stigmatized more mainstream Islamists and undermined broader Sunni opposition movements in Syria and Iraq.

Now his criticism of the American role may increase the fears of a backlash against Arab governments that publicly join the campaign.

groups of Iraqi forces, Kurds and Syrian rebels stepped up to provide the fighting forces on the ground.

choke off ISIS’s ability to reap $1 million or more a day from oil sales,

Qatar hosting an American military headquarters.

trainers from other Western countries.

That's a direct translation of the group's full name in Arabic, but "Syria" in this case means "Greater Syria" — not the modern nation by that name.

"It refers to Syria, Lebanon, parts of Turkey, parts of what are now Jordan," Blank explains. "The 'S' in the Arabic is "al-Sham."

It's a bit confusing: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-but-not-just-"Syria."

The word "Levant" isn't very common today.

We will do everything in our power to hunt down these murderers and ensure they face justice, however long it takes.

the start of a campaign of airstrikes against ISIS positions in Iraq.

The group is currently holding Mr. Henning and another British citizen, as well as two other American aid workers.

ISIS warned that the hostages would die if relatives made their identities public.

“We don’t pay ransoms to terrorists when they kidnap our citizens.”

two dozen foreigner

The BBC reported that imams across Scotland, where Mr. Haines’s parents live, called for the release of Mr. Haines and other hostages during Friday Prayer last week.

In the United States, Sovaldi costs $1,000 a pill or $84,000 for a typical 12-week course of treatment. It is likely to be sold for less than $1,800 for a 24-week course of treatment in India, where people are generally infected with a different form of the virus and treatment regimens can take twice as long.

Gilead plans to introduce the drug in India for about $10 a pill

more than half of the world’s infected population.

“Really what we’re trying to do here through the partnerships we’ve established is expand availability of chronic Hepatitis C therapy, particularly in the developing world,”

The Indian companies were selected for the partnerships because much of the world’s finished drugs are made in India, particularly for developing countries.

Hepatitis C infections are caused by a virus that is generally transmitted through medical procedures, intravenous drug use or sex. Infections can go undetected and unnoticed for years but can eventually cause liver scarring and failure

Gilead’s deals were instantly criticized by some patient advocacy groups as inadequate, because under terms of the deals the companies would not be allowed to sell their drugs in some middle-income countries where patients and governments would struggle to afford the drug.

But he said the company would provide many such countries discounted prices on its own version of the pill.

told China’s three big state-owned mobile service providers

did not explain the delay

phones had not received approval from Chinese regulators to go on sale

iPhone could represent a threat to China’s national security. The accusations were promptly rejected by Apple.

caught off-guard by the last-minute change of plans

there are some details which are not ready,”

China Mobile and China Unicom

website carried a statement saying only that the date of the iPhone 6’s availability would “be updated soon.”

began selling iPhones through China Mobile

Apple’s fastest-growing major market

$5.9 billion in greater China from April to June, a 28 percent increase from the same period a year earlier

16 percent

Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a back door in any of our products or services,

We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will. It’s something we feel very strongly about.