“Fourteen years ago, while I was staying at the Taliban madrasa, its administrators were launching a Web site. I remember being amused by this. I shouldn’t have been. There is no need for a middleman now. Journalists have been replaced by YouTube and Twitter. And when there is no need for us, we become targets.” Jeffrey Goldberg remembers a time when Islamist extremists wanted to persuade reporters, not kill them — before the beheadings.

+ Following the brutal killing of Peter Kassig, a 26-year-old American aid worker, ISIS has one remaining American hostage. A woman who “was kidnapped while trying to help people whose lives have been upended by the long Syrian civil war. She was particularly moved to help children who have been orphaned and separated from their families.”