“Ali would work ahead, clearing a six-foot-wide corridor through a minefield, while other militiamen followed tentatively behind. In 1989, however, he stepped on a land mine and lost his first leg. Five years later the second was also blown off.” You’d think that would be the end of Ali’s mine-clearing career. But you’d be wrong. The Daily Beast on one man’s rogue mission to de-mine North Iraq

+ “The videos, filmed over several months last year, reveal the reality of life under IS. The first series shows how women are forced to cover up, with one woman challenged for not having her hands fully covered.” BBC goes inside Mosul to get a glimpse of what life is like under the Islamic State.