French police found no DNA traces of Salah Abdeslam, the fugitive terror suspect who helped mastermind the 13 November Paris attacks, on a suicide belt they thought he discarded in Paris. Another unidentified DNA found on two vests could be that of the bomb maker.

Israeli politicians who oppose the creation of an independent Palestinian state have found a new argument to support their position: The fact the Arabic does not have the letter “P.” Linguists and Middle East scholars expressed surprise at this line of argument, noting that in Arabic, the name of the people – and their country – begin with the letter “F,” not “P.” In Arabic, “Palestine” is pronounced “Falastin.”

U.S. law enforcement agencies have been unable to access a telephone used by the two Islamist attackers in the San Bernardino shooting, FBI director James Comey said Tuesday. Comey stressed that the post-Snowden end-to-end encryption some technology companies are now offering their customers make it impossible for law enforcement to learn more about terrorists and criminal networks, even after terrorist or criminal acts have been committed and even if a court has approved access to the information.

In a report issued earlier today (Monday), the UN Human Rights Council has accused the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of actions which amount to “extermination.” “The government has committed the crimes against humanity of extermination, murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, and other inhuman acts,” the UN report says. “Based on the same conduct, war crimes have also been committed.”

A U.S. intelligence report, cited yesterday by a White House spokesman, says that the number of ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq has fallen from about 31,000 to 25,000. Senior U.S. officials point to battlefield casualties and desertions as the main reasons for the roughly 20 percent decline, adding that the intelligence report offers evidence that the U.S.-led campaign, which relies mostly on air attacks on ISIS targets, was working.

Saudi Arabia said it was ready to send ground troops to Syria to fight ISIS. Saudi sources added that thousands of Saudi Special Forces could be deployed, probably in coordination with Turkey. Saudi gains in the war against pro-Iranian rebels in Yemen have freed Saudi resources to be directed to Syria, and the fact that Russia and the Assad regime focus their military effort on fighting the moderate rebels means that these rebels need more outside help to withstand the pressure both from ISIS and the Syrian regime and its allies.

OFCOM, the U.K. communication regulator, said it was considering more than thirty complaints about a political broadcast by UKIP, the Euro-skeptic, anti-immigration populist party. OFCOM said that UKIP’s Wednesday night broadcast on ITV and the BBC may have crossed the line in giving racial offense, promoting Islamophobia, and engendering bias toward Turkey.

David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of the U.K.. terrorism laws, said that the government’s flagship anti-radicalization program, Prevent, should be reviewed because it is sowing mistrust and fear in the Muslim community. Anderson said that the program, particularly its requirement that schools spot and report signs of radicalization in students, has become a “significant source of grievance” among British Muslims, encouraging “mistrust to spread and to fester.”

Duke sociologist Christopher Bail, who studies how anti-Muslim organizations use social media, says that calls to ban immigration of Muslims to the United States are missing two important points. First, there is no conceivable mechanism whereby the United States could identify Muslims — short of visual cues such as headdress or religious garb, which are not worn by most Muslims. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it is surprising that people think that groups such as ISIS could not disguise terrorists they want to send to the United States as non-Muslims.