From WaPo: “Aid agencies expressed alarm Thursday about dire conditions in a besieged town west of Damascus where people have been eating cats and grass to stay alive and as many as 23 people are reported to have died of hunger.”

+ Quartz: Horrifying images of starving Syrians are bringing Assad’s atrocities back into focus. Do they also implicate the rest of the world where Syria coverage has been more about the geopolitical chess match and less about the ongoing human carnage?

+ “Her son is then said to have informed the group of her comment. They then ordered that she be killed.” An Islamic State militant reportedly executed his own mother in Raqqa.