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President Vladimir Putin is set to host his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Friday for talks focusing on Syria, where Russia and Turkey have launched mediation efforts and coordinated military action. The two countries brokered a cease-fire in December that helped reduce the scale of fighting between Syrian President Bashar Assad and the opposition, and they also co-sponsored two rounds of talks this year between Assad’s government and its foes. A third round is set for next week. At the same time, Russia and Turkey coordinated their operations against the Islamic State group in Syria. A Russian air raid last month accidentally killed three Turkish soldiers, but the incident didn’t derail the military coordination. Earlier this week, the chief military officers from Russia, the United States and Turkey met in the Turkish city of Antalya in an apparent attempt to work out additional steps to prevent incidents and help assuage mutual mistrust between Turkish-backed S...

A top Chinese regulator says China assesses all applications for trademarks equally, including those submitted by now-President Donald Trump. The chief of China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce, Zhang Mao, said on Friday the process by which Mr. Trump was granted preliminary approval for 38 trademarks “strictly conforms” to regulations. Critics fear foreign governments might gain leverage from Mr. Trump’s global portfolio of brands. Democrats in Congress were critical of Mr. Trump after The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that the potentially valuable trademarks had been granted, raising questions of conflict of interest. Mr. Zhang, whose administration oversees the country’s trademark office, says all domestic and foreign trademark applications are evaluated uniformly and the system is transparent. The recent provisional approval of Trump’s trademarks came at a pace that some experts view as unusually quick.

“Killing ISIS on the battlefield is not enough. We must kill the idea behind ISIS by exposing the brutality and bringing individual criminals to justice,” she said. Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney urged Iraq and the world’s nations on Thursday not to let the Islamic State extremist group “get away with genocide.” The wife of actor George Clooney, who represents victims of IS rapes and kidnappings, told a U.N. meeting that what’s “shocking” is not just the group’s brutality but the “passive” response by the world’s nations to the campaign to investigate its crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. She urged Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to send a letter to the U.N. Security Council so it can vote to set up an investigation into crimes by the group in Iraq where IS once controlled about 40 percent of the country’s territory but is now being routed by government and coalition forces. “Justice is what the victims want...” Ms. Clooney said, “but justice will be foreve...

The Hindu marriage bill will help Hindu women to get documentary proof of their marriage. Pakistan’s Parliament has finally passed the much-awaited landmark bill to regulate marriages of minority Hindus in the country. Pakistan’s Hindus were set to get an exclusive personal law to regulate marriages after the National Assembly unanimously adopted the Hindu Marriage Bill, 2017, on Thursday. The law was passed after a lengthy process of enactment. It was the second time that the National Assembly passed the bill. It passed the bill in September last year but had to pass it again as its version of bill was changed by the Senate when it adopted the bill in February. As per rules, the same text should be passed by the two Houses of the Parliament before it is sent to the President for his signatures and promulgation for implementation. Dawn News reported that the Senate included an amendment to the draft approved by the National Assembly in September. The final text approved ...

A top advisor of Donald Trump’s transition team, on a visit to China, has revealed that the U.S. President-elect had declined the Dalai Lama’s request for a meeting, signalling the new administration’s openness to a policy review on Tibet. Chinese website mingpao.com is reporting that in an interview with China Central Television (CCTV), Michael Pillsbury said that the Dalai Lama had once expressed his wish to meet Mr. Trump, but this was turned down. However, Mr. Pillsbury, who was in China last week to participate in the Pangoal Think Tank forum, insisted that he was not a representative of the Trump administration in waiting. Any shift in U.S. position on the Dalai Lama is bound to have a downstream impact on India, which hosts the Tibetan leader in exile. Last month the Chinese foreign ministry expressed its “strong opposition” to the Dalai Lama’s meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee at a Rashtrapati Bhavan function. In an article in The National Interest, which was publi...

Republican Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election will deepen Asian allies’ anxiety about Washington’s commitment to post-war security arrangements in the face of a risingChina and volatile North Korea, and could bolster calls from conservatives in Tokyo for a more robust defence policy. Mr. Trump's “America First” rhetoric and calls for allies to pay more of the cost for U.S. troops in the region or face their possible withdrawal have worried officials in some Asian capitals. So has his opposition to a 12-nation pan-Pacific trade pact that was a linchpin of Washington's “pivot” to the region. “We should expect dramatic changes in the security environment,” said South Korea’s ruling Saenuri Party floor leader Chung Jin-suk in parliament on Wednesday. But he added: “In any case, there should not be any wavering in the Korea-U.S. military alliance, which has been the foundation of prosperity of this country.” A Japanese government official, speaking before Mr. ...

  This is an important and necessary step to crack down on illegal actions: Mark Toner. The United States on Wednesday described India’s demonetisation drive as an “important and necessary” step to curb illicit cash and actions. “…this was, we believe, an important and necessary step to crack down on illegal actions,” Mark Toner, State Department spokesperson, said in response to a question. Mr. Toner said the demonetisation exercise “followed on a series of steps that the Modi government took over the past two years to reduce black market money.” “I think it also included a four-month amnesty for tax evaders in India, which resulted in...the disclosure or declaration of billions of dollars in hidden assets. This was an action – I’m talking about the discontinuance of the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes – designed to target illicit cash proceeds from corruption and tax dodging,” he said. ‘Inconvenient but necessary’ Acknowledging that the move inconvenienced people, Mr. Ton...