Mark Piggott, IB Times UK

A 17-year-old Austrian girl who went to Syria to join the Islamic State (Isis) is reported to have been beaten to death after attempting to flee from the militant group’s base in Raqqa.

Samra Kesinovic and Sabina Selimovic, both of Bosnian heritage, disappeared from their homes in 2014, leaving a note for their families which read: "Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah and we will die for him."

Samra and Sabina travelled to Syria via Turkey after allegedly being brainwashed by Bosnian Islamist preacher Ebu Tejma in Vienna.

by Nabila Rahhal

Lara O’Reilly

Clif Dickens, a graphic designer from Nashville, started the Honest Slogans website, which re-imagines corporate logos to "honestly" portray their goods and services, off the back of a running joke with his friends about how waitresses always asked if Pepsi was okay every time he asked for a Coca-Cola.

His redesigned Pepsi logo kicked off the Honest Slogans blog in 2011. Dickens stresses they are for "entertainment purposes only" and told us in 2013 that while some may come across as "harsh," he hopes even employees of the brands he satirizes will see the blog as "tongue-in-cheek."

Reuters

Efforts to secure the release of Lebanese soldiers and policemen held captive by the Nusra Front have been obstructed by last minute demands from the Syrian al Qaeda-linked group, the head of a Lebanese security agency was quoted as saying on Monday.

Major General Abbas Ibrahim, head of General Security, told al Joumhouria newspaper the government had fulfilled all its commitments to secure their release. The men were expected to be released over the weekend in a deal that would include the release of a number of Islamist prisoners jailed in Lebanon.

The security personnel were taken captive in August 2014 during an incursion from by fighters from the Nusra Front and Islamic State into the border town of Arsal. The authorities have been trying to negotiate the release with Qatari mediation.

Press TV.

The Lebanese Military has reportedly freed a number of militants with the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front in exchange for the Syria-based group to release over a dozen of the Lebanese soldiers it held captive in 2014.

According to media reports on Sunday, the Lebanese military swapped 16 al-Nusra militants with 16 of its soldiers, who had been in the militant group’s captivity since August 2014. The exchange took place in a district between the town of Baalbek and the village of Labweh, both located in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Province.

Lebanese forces had tightened security in the area before the exchange took place, the reports added.

Pamela Engel

Billboards, newsletters, radio stations, murals, big-screens, and pamphlets.

ISIS inundates the residents of its territory with propaganda that has become nearly impossible to escape.

It’s well-known that ISIS has been very successful in disseminating its propaganda online to recruit westerners to its self-proclaimed Islamic "caliphate," the swath of territory it controls in Iraq and Syria.

But ISIS also runs a very sophisticated operation within the caliphate itself to brainwash the population it rules. The group has set up "media points" in the cities it controls to maximize the exposure of its propaganda to the public.

The media points are surprisingly high-tech. People can can submit their own material or download media from machines that have built-in slots for SIM cards and flash drives. Large flat-screen TVs set up in public places show gruesome beheading videos alongside scenes of utopia. One activist from Raqqa, Syria compared the screens ISIS has placed in central areas of the city to Times Square in New York — highly visible and well-known to those who live there.

catholicherald.co.uk

The Church in Syria faces a “suicidal choice” of either exile or “living under the shadow of Islam”, one of Syria’s leading clerics has said.

In his pre-Christmas letter Maronite Archbishop Samir Nassar of Damascus spoke of the exodus of Christians from the country, much of which is under the control of Islamist groups like ISIS and the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front. He also spoke about the sense of hopelessness that pervades the country as it approaches its fifth Christmas at war.

In a letter the archbishop wrote that: “Since 2003 (the Iraq war) and especially since 2011 (Arab spring) the exodus of Christians from the east increases. Some reports give only ten years for the page to turn concerning Christianity in the Middle East. This seems to be a pessimistic view, but observed experience shows an alarming and growing emigration.

There is a consensus that Lebanon is a great location to pilot an idea, test it and then transition to an international market for growth.

fairobserver.com –

For a country that has defined and redefined itself through politics, religion, immigrations, emigrations and decades of war, you may wonder what it’s like starting a company in Lebanon.

“Surprisingly peaceful, given all that you hear in the media,” says David El Achkar, co-founder of Beirut-based Yellow, a tech startup aiming to make bitcoin payments more accessible across the Middle East.

If you set aside the sociopolitical factors beyond your control, you’re left with daily inconveniences of fragmented infrastructure like electricity cuts of up to six hours, regular water shortages in the summer and fall, and an average Internet speed of 3.11 Mbps; to put things slightly in perspective, estimates abound that doubling Lebanon’s Internet bandwidth could improve GDP by 0.6%.

The Lebanese army commander says camps that are home to refugees from neighboring Syria represent a growing security risk as potential hideouts for militants who have been prevented from using other areas to launch attacks and rig car bombs.