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U.S. Border Patrol agents patrol the area on June 4, 2013, in Niagara Falls, New York.

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Sardar Ahmad was born in Afghanistan but got a ticket out of the war-torn country when he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship through the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Ahmad, now a 43-year-old doctor, moved to the U.S. for his Fulbright before relocating to Canada a decade ago where he finished his residency last year. Recently, Ahmad, who now works in Sarnia, a small Ontario town along the border between Canada and Michigan, got an email that, without warning, announced that his Nexus card had been revoked.

Ahmad was presumably not considered a security risk when he was granted a Nexus card, a Homeland Security program that allows low-risk, pre-screened travelers expedited processing when entering the United States and Canada. Ahmad decided to visit the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office during his lunch break from seeing patients to see what the problem was. So Sardar drove to the nearby border crossing at the Blue Water Bridge on Friday where U.S. officials promptly detained the doctor and Canadian citizen for five hours.

Heres more on what happened from the Observer:

It was frustrating for me because I was worried, I was scared, I didn't know what was going to happen next, Ahmad said Monday. You never know. They could put you in jail. You could lose your careereverythingall overnight.

Excerpt from:
Canadian doctor from Afghanistan detained for hours at U.S. border. - Slate Magazine (blog)

Stories have emerged once again of China's military presence in Afghanistan. These reports come after China thwarted India's attempt to get Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Masood Azhar added to the U.N. list of proscribed terrorist individuals, and China appeared to christen a new regional grouping after a meeting in Moscow with Pakistan and Russian officials to discuss the future of Afghanistan.

Seen from New Delhi, the picture could be interpreted as one of growing Chinese alignment towards Pakistan. In reality, these shifts mark the growth of China as a regional security actor whose views are not entirely dissimilar to India's.

The main characterization of Beijing's efforts in Afghanistan remains hedging. China continues to engage through multiple regional and international formats. Either through international multilateral vehicles like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the 'Heart of Asia' or 'Istanbul Process', the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA); or through sub-regional groupings like hosting Pakistan-Afghanistan-China trilateral, bilateral engagements with India, Russia, the UK, Germany, the U.S. or Pakistan focused on Afghanistan (some including specific projects - like the American joint training programmes); or finally through Chinese instigated mechanisms focused on Afghanistan like the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG made up of Afghanistan, Pakistan, U.S. and China) or the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism (QCCM, made up of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and China).

Of this wide range of engagements, the final one is the most significant to note recently as it can be interpreted as a rejection of the SCO, a regional organization which was constructed to deal with regional security concerns around Afghanistan, but appears to have not delivered enough.

As a result in the wake of Military Chief of Staff Fang Fenghui's visit to Kabul in March 2016, Beijing established a new regional sub-grouping to focus attention on Afghanistan's security problems. It has met once at a senior level, and at least once at a more junior level since its establishment -- reflecting a fairly high intensity engagement that until now has been held publicly in China.

This new regional sub-grouping is a reflection of a number of things. On the one hand, it is about China's military becoming more engaged in a country that until now they have largely played a secondary role to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs lead. It is also a reflection of a growing concern in Beijing about the shift of Uighur militants to Badakhshan in northern Afghanistan from their previous Pakistani hideaways. This in turn helps explain China's presence on the ground in Afghanistan as well as their desire to bolster Tajikistan's capacity to defend its own border with Afghanistan.

The other side to China's regional engagement is its economic investment -- something that comes under the auspices of the Silk Road Economic Belt (through Central Asia and across Eurasia ultimately to Europe) and down the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Afghanistan has always sat awkwardly in between, but recently there has been a particular effort by Beijing to tie Afghanistan into the vision.

In Nov. 2016, Assistant Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou visited Kabul warmly welcoming Afghanistan into the vision and specifically suggested that Afghanistan consider train lines between Quetta and Kabul, and Peshawar and Kabul. It is not clear how these will happen, though soon afterwards the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) won a $205m contract, issued by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to build a 178 km road connecting northern Mazar-i-Sharif city to Yakawlang.

For Beijing, a stable and secure Afghanistan is both key to domestic security as well as its growing investments in Pakistan. And it is not always clear that Beijing finds operating in Pakistan easy. There have been stories of lawsuits, a local population who feel they are not being included in the process as well as human casualties as CPEC tries to bring development to Pakistan's more isolated regions. China is discovering building CPEC is not a smooth ride.

But Beijing still prizes its relationship with Pakistan, aware that an unstable and paranoid Islamabad is worse than what they have at the moment. Consequently, Beijing will continue to support Pakistan vociferously and publicly - including in defending it from being publicly named and shamed as a 'state sponsor' of terrorism in the U.N.

Among the most persuasive reasons for China's refusal to support the listing of Masood Azhar was the view that Beijing saw him as merely another in a long list of individuals that India sought listing. Given the lack of much impact around the listing of Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Saeed, listing Azhar seemed a pointless enterprise for Beijing that would do little except make Islamabad feel cornered.

The lesson here is an important one for India to note. Beijing is not doing this as part of an anti-Indian alignment. It is rather out of national interest which seen from Beijing is about managing Pakistan and stabilizing it. This is a reflection of what China is already trying at home where the maxim that prosperity equals stability is a central driving concept, and is the ideological cornerstone of CPEC.

China is acting as a growing regional power with security interests it wants to deal with itself rather than abrogating such responsibility to others. It has tried repeated multilateral formats, peace talks, and now it is recognizing the need for greater security engagement.

New Delhi should seize this moment to enhance its engagement with Beijing on Afghanistan, using its long history of experience and contacts to find a way to help Afghanistan stabilize alongside China. Both countries are already major economic players in Afghanistan, and India has already contributed substantially in military terms.

Raffaello Pantucci is Director, International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. He is currently working on a number of projects looking at Chinese influence and interests in South and Central Asia.

The Nov. 8 declaration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to demonetise the economy was a bolt from the blue widely hailed by many Indian citizens. The BJP was quick to jump on the bandwagon and call it a masterstroke that would redeem the partys election promise in 2014 to end black money in the country.

The Nifty rode on positive global cues to gain over 2 percent during the week to close at 8,262 despite the RBI disappointing investors by holding rates steady and a rather mixed message from the ECB.

Markets turned indecisive during the week with the Nifty witnessing sharp gains in the first three sessions to cross 8,200 but then falling to close at 8,087 on Friday. The rise in crude oil prices after OPECs decision to cut production also dampened sentiments.

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Commentary: China's expanding security role in Afghanistan - Reuters

It was night-time and it was raining. Thats when the shooting started.

Nine-year-old Wali Khan Norzai remembers holding his fathers hand in the mountainous, borderland darkness. Ahead lay Turkey, behind them Iran, further back their abandoned home in Afghanistan. Now suddenly, all around them, bullets.

The group of 100 people scattered. When the dust settled and Wali Khan and his father, Said Ghullam Norzai, emerged from hiding, there was no sign of Wali Khans mother or his six siblings.

In the year since, father and son have heard nothing from them. Norzai says if he had known that the journey would have meant losing seven members of his family, he would have stayed in Afghanistan and risked life under the Taliban.

From Turkey, Norzai and Wali Khans journey to Britain was the sort of tragic odyssey that has become familiar over the past few years: a hazardous crossing of the Mediterranean, a long walk through European countries they had never heard of, and months in Calais risking their lives to get on the back of a lorry.

But if the mass movement of people to Europe was the tale of 2015-16, the story of 2017 is what happens to those people now. What does the future hold for the tens of thousands of families like the Norzais?

It is these questions that the Guardian will explore as we embark on an ambitious project to learn about Europes new arrivals and the communities in which they are making their homes. Teaming up with Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pas, we will follow refugees and asylum seekers in four European countries a large Syrian family in Germany, a Sudanese family en route to France and a group of Africans who have joined a football team in Spain. In Britain we will be telling the story of Said and Wali Khan, and others like them, who are desperately hoping to make the country their permanent home. We will assess whether Europe is keeping its promises to refugees, how they are changing European society and how it is changing them.

For Norzai, a melon farmer driven from Kunduz province by a resurgent Taliban, his new life is a lonely one. As an asylum seeker , he is not allowed to work and has few connections in Derby where he and his son have been sent to live by the Home Office. The 40-year-old speaks almost no English and progress at the free English classes he attends is slow. He is tormented by thoughts of his missing wife and children.

After he drops Wali Khan at school, he sits alone in his flat in the quiet for as long as he can bear. There is little else to do. He has no radio, computer or smartphone; the television in the bedroom that father and son share is broken. When he can take the silence of the flat no longer, he goes out and strolls the streets of Derby by himself, counting the minutes until the school day is over and he can pick up his son.

In contrast, Wali Khans English after just a few months in a British school, is already good and the nine-year-old functions as interpreter for his father, calling doctors, officials, even G4S, who manage the property they live in, to report maintenance issues. He loves school, he says, and has eight friends there. They play tag and sometimes football and cricket. He would like to be a doctor.

Whether he will have a chance to study here is uncertain; the Norzais life in Britain is extremely precarious. A few days before publication, Norzai learned that his asylum case had been rejected on the grounds that Afghanistan is considered safe.

As he is illiterate, he did not open the letter sent to him, and has now missed his 14-day window to appeal. He is discussing his case with an immigration solicitor and hopes to file a late appeal. About half of all appeals from Afghan asylum seekers are granted.

At the end of 2016, 38,517 people such as Said and Wali Khan Norzai applied for asylum in Britain. To tell the story of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, the Guardian has travelled across the country, from Coventry to Cardiff, Liverpool to Leicester. From church halls in Sheffield and community halls in St Helens, to the flats of asylum seekers in Nottingham and Peterborough, we have been meeting those who are seeking sanctuary and the communities, charities, lawyers, case workers and faith groups trying to help them.

In some ways, Said and Wali Khan Norzais story is fairly typical. In 2016, Afghanistan was the fourth most common country of origin for asylum seekers to the UK, accounting for 8% of asylum claims. Roughly 70% of asylum seekers in the country are male often because families can only afford to send one person and for a variety of reasons choose a young man and, as was the case with Norzai and his son, it is rare for asylum-seeking families to arrive in the UK intact.

At a drop-in centre in Liverpool visited by the Guardian, Ahmed*, an Iraqi Kurd in his early 40s, recounted how he was forced to leave his home after Shia-Sunni tensions escalated in his region. One night, less than two months before he was sitting sharing his story in a cold church hall in Merseyside over a plate of vegetable curry, the familys home was set alight while they slept. Ahmed got his two sons a six-month-old baby and three-year-old out of the house. His sister was killed inside and his wife died in his arms in the street.

He fled Iraq, taking with him his three-year-old son. He had to leave his younger boy in the care of his mother because he felt he could not make the journey with a baby. He hopes his younger son will be able to join him once he has refugee status, but for now he is stuck in limbo, with his older boy and his grief for company.

Ahmed was just one of many who visited the drop-in centre that day. Others included two young Sudanese men who have been in the UK for three weeks, having come from Calais on lorries. There were two Palestinian men one of whom was a prominent figure on Arab television who met in Britain after fleeing the Palestinian territories and became friends, one slightly starstruck by his famous companion.

You talk to people with the most incredible stories, said Peter Carpenter, who was at the Liverpool drop-in centre as a representative of the charity Refugee Action. And you ask: what would it take for me to do this? To put everything I own on my back?

Later an older Sikh couple from Afghanistan came in. They left the country after attacks on Sikhs escalated and the mans beard was cut and his throat slit. They did not want to stay at the centre for lunch but did want a pair of socks. The woman pulled up the hem of her dress to show she was wearing slip-on shoes with no socks and she was very cold. The clothing bank, stocked with donations, was out of socks and the woman was told to come back next week. She left, but returned a few minutes later to make sure they understood how serious the situation was. If anyone came with socks, she said, could they please save them for her.

For many, there is enormous gratitude to be in Britain and to be safe; for others there is frustration that their claims are taking so long to be heard and boredom while they wait. Many do not understand why they cannot work while they wait for their claim to be processed, and some complain of difficult, sometimes intolerable conditions in the accommodation provided for them by the Home Office.

There are serious issues faced by asylum seekers in the UK and over the course of this series the Guardian will explore these, comparing the issues in Britain, Germany, France and Spain, asking how the different governments and communities have responded to the new arrivals.

We will follow the story of some of Britains asylum seekers, beginning with Said and Wali Khan Norzai. We do not know how their case will progress.

I want to carry on with my life here so my child can continue with his education, to become something, said Norzai.

When my son is coming home at night he is asking me: Dad, where are my mum, brother and sisters? Now I am here I thought they would give me a passport. Im now waiting for a document to go to Turkey and look for them. If I cant find them Ill go to Iran. Apart from this, what can I do?

Im asking the British government to give me a document to go and search for my family. It is one year now that my children are lost. I dont know whether they are in Iran or Turkey, whether they are alive or dead.

*Name has been changed

This project is funded by the European Journalism Centre via a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Share your experiences

If you arrived in the the UK as a refugee or work with refugees, wed like to hear from you. Wed like to find out about initiatives that are working well and also the the challenges of integrating into local communities.

Share your stories and experiences, anonymously if you prefer, in the encrypted form below. We will do our best to ensure your responses are kept secure and confidential. A selection of contributions will be featured in our reporting.

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They left Afghanistan a family of nine. They arrived in the UK a family of two - The Guardian

I sat in the gallery above the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday night surrounded by a broad cross-section of American society that had gathered to witness the national institution known as the State of the Union, or the Address to a Joint Session of Congress as it is known during a new presidents first year in office.

From my seat among the guests, I couldglimpse at least eight women wearing the Islamic hijab, including Aneelah Afzali, a lawyer and the director of the American Muslim Empowerment Network, who wore a scarf with the American flag on it. I could see Mona Hanna-Attisha, an Iraqi American who uncovered the lead in water crisis in Flint, Mich., and Jos Andrs, the Spanish-born chef who is being sued by President Trump after pulling out of plans to open a restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Around me, too, were plenty of Republican supporters of the new administration; Layton Ricks, the president of Livingston Parish in Louisiana, was seated next to me.

All had been invited for a particular reason by a politician in the room. And as the main chamber of Congress began to fill, marking the start of the nights pageantry, I felt very aware of the strange circumstances that had brought me to this moment.

At the last State of the Union, President Barack Obamas eighth and final one, some people in this chamber had worn pins with #freejason written on them. My fate had become a public issue in the contentious political struggle over the Obama administrations nuclear deal with Iran and its controversial policy of engaging longtime adversaries. I had also become a symbol of the dangers faced by journalists around the world and the ongoing international struggle for press freedoms. My brother, Ali, an invited guest of my hometown congressman, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), was somewhere in that crowd, still lobbying tirelessly for my freedom.

And I was thousands of miles away, watching the address unfold in radically different surroundings:inside a high-walled compound deep within Tehrans Evin prison.

Watching Obama in Tehran

As The Washington Posts correspondent in Tehran, I had been locked up for nearly 540 days at that point, detained on fabricated charges of espionage and collaborating with hostile governments. Since the moment my journalist wife and I were arrested in July 2014, there had been persistent calls for our release from a broad spectrum of leaders and influential figures in the United States and abroad.

Throughout the ordeal I was denied all my most basic rights: due process, access to legal representation, the opportunity to prepare a defense, bail. But although I was kept isolated from the general population of inmates and the rest of the world throughout my time in Evin, by January 2016 I had access to a television and someone to watch it with me.

The small, flat-screen panel was encased in a white wooden frame high on one of the walls. It received only the range of state-controlled channels and their heavily censored programming, and often I saw myself being slandered by Iranian officials and their propagandists. Yet the TV also gave me a window into what was happening in my home country.

It may seem odd that Iran, a declared enemy of the United States, would permit an American prisoner to watch the State of the Union. The annual address allows our president a unique opportunity to cast the United States in the best possible light, shaping viewers ideas around the world about what America can and should be, according to that administrations agenda.

But the Islamic Republics state television covers American politics more closely one might say religiously than almost any other subject, and will often air live speeches by our presidents. American news, in fact, is an essential ingredient of the propaganda the regime creates to fortify its anti-Americanism.

So there I sat before dawn on the morning of Jan. 13 with my cellmate from a former Soviet republic, who spoke almost no English, but, like so many people around the world, had a fondness for the 44th president of the United States. Whenever Obama appeared on the small screen, he would put his hand to his chest and say my friend in Farsi.

I had found in years past that Obama could be counted on during the State of the Union to fulfill his role of inspiring hope that the country was on the right track. But that day in my Iranian prison cell, I watched as he foreshadowed our growing domestic identity crisis.

When politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or fellow citizens, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid is called names, that doesnt make us safer, he said. Thats not telling it like it is; its just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals.

I knew that he was almost certainly referring to an incident several days earlier when a Muslim American named Rose Hamid was emphatically removed from a Trump campaign rally in South Carolina. All she had done was wear a T-shirt that read, Salam, I come in peace.

I knew this, even imprisoned, because Irans state television like American cable news networks had been giving incredible amounts of airtime to the American politician most likely to bash Islam, thus reinforcing Tehrans narrative of America as being the Great Satan.

I listened closely to see whether Obama would mention me and the other Americans imprisoned in Iran. But he instead struck an optimistic chord.

We built a global coalition, with sanctions and principled diplomacy, to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. And as we speak, Iran has rolled back its nuclear program, shipped out its uranium stockpile and the world has avoided another war, Obama said in his only reference to the Islamic Republic.

Although not mentioned in the speech, we had not been forgotten. Four days later, the other American prisoners and I were free. We were released on the same day that the landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers was implemented, but as we learned later, negotiations to release us in exchange for freeing Iranians imprisoned in America had been going on for over a year.

Huffman joined me, my wife, Yeganeh, Ali and my mother in Landstuhl, Germany, where two other Americans and I underwent post-release medical tests before flying backto the States. Huffman then invitedYeganeh and me to be his guests at the next State of the Union and we accepted with enthusiasm.

We could not have imagined at the time that Donald Trump would be the one giving the address, and that his message would be so vastly different from Obamas.

Reasons for hope

I was pondering the epic turn of events for me, and for this country, when I entered the House chamber on Tuesday night. But those thoughtsdissipated when Trump began his speech.

At times, hespoke in tones that often did not reflect the actions of his first weeks in office, adding to what was already a jarring experience for me.

Each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty and justice, in an unbroken chain all the way down to the present. That torch is now in our hands. And we will use it to light up the world, Trump said.

But then I would hear again the strains thatreminded me of so many speeches delivered by authoritarian leaders.

The chorus became an earthquake, and the people turned out by the tens of millions, and they were all united by one very simple, but crucial demand, that America must put its own citizens first, because only then can we truly make America great again, Trump said.

Like much of the American public, I had come to view Trump as a reactionary, and reactionary rhetoric provokes responsesfrom other reactionaries. This is not a new dance, but the tempo is reaching new speeds, as leaders with no personal filters are taking tosocial media along with everyone else.

But Trump isnt the only leader with a Twitter account, and right now in Tehran, and other capitals, anti-American leaders are licking their lips.

Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has one, too, and he has been using it to share his assessment of the White Houses newest occupant.

We appreciate Trump! Because he largely did the job for us in revealing true face of America, Khamenei tweeted on Feb. 7 on the heels of the executive order temporarily banning arrivals from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Iran.

Since Yeganeh and I moved back to the United States, we have been welcomed by almost everyone we have encountered. But for us, along with millions of others in America, that feeling of security and belonging was rattled with Trumps travel ban.

Then, earlier this month, Trump called another group that both my wife and I belong to the enemy of the American people. It was not some fringe opposition party he was referring to, but journalists, a community that she and I are proud to count ourselves among.

So in a plot twist worthy of fiction, we are now living in a situation in the United States with discomfiting parallels to our imprisonment in Iran, where we were condemned for practicing journalism and our ties to America. Yeganeh is a native of Iran who has recently come to a country that is showing increasing hostility to immigrants especially those from Iran. And I am an American foreign correspondent whose profession is being slandered by some in my own country as un-American.

Like many Americans, I am apprehensive about Trumps proposals, especially for residentsof minority backgrounds and for journalists and our ability to do this job unimpeded by the state. Given his harsh words, my concerns feel justified.

Yet I remain fundamentally optimistic. I have lived and worked in an authoritarian country and have experienced firsthand what it means to be stripped of my liberties. The moment we are living through, alarming as it is, does not compare.

Trump and his administration may not properly value the ideals enshrined in our Constitution. But I believe the people of this country will not give them away easily. I am heartened as I observe so many other Americans, in Congress on Tuesday night for Trumps address and around the country, refusing to accept this twisted vision of our future.

And I have so much more hope today than I did in early 2016. That is becauseI am here now, a free man in a free country, able to again use the tools of my trade to join in protecting and upholding the liberty and justice for all that we as Americans so rightly cherish.

Post reporter Jason Rezaian, recently freed from an Iranian prison, thanks his family, colleagues and government officials at The Washington Post's grand-opening event. (McKenna Ewen/The Washington Post)

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I watched the 2016 State of the Union address from prison in Iran. This year, I attended it as a free man. - Washington Post

DUBAI Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan agreed on Wednesday to improve ties, including in the fight against terrorism, Iran's state news agency IRNA said, following some angry exchanges between the regional rivals.

Tehran and Ankara support opposite sides in the conflict in Syria. Largely Shiite Muslim Iran backs the government of President Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey, which is majority Sunni, has backed elements of the Syrian opposition.

Last month Erdogan and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu both accused Iran of trying to destabilize Syria and Iraq and of sectarianism, prompting Tehran to summon Ankara's ambassador.

In an apparent response to Ankara's accusations, Rouhani was quoted by IRNA as saying on Wednesday: "Iran supports the territorial integrity of regional countries ... especially Iraq and Syria."

"Resolving political differences (between Iran and Turkey) can lead to regional stability," Rouhani was quoted as saying at his meeting with Erdogan, on the sidelines of an economic cooperation summit in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

Regional rivalry between Iran and Turkey is nothing new, but political analysts have linked Ankara's tougher rhetoric to U.S. President Donald Trump's approach to the Middle East.

Trump has been sharply critical of Iran, including a nuclear deal it clinched in 2015 with major powers, while Turkey, a NATO ally, is hoping for improved ties with Washington after a chill caused partly by U.S. criticism of Ankara's human rights record.

In another conciliatory move by Turkey on Wednesday, Cavusoglu told IRNA in an interview that Ankara had appreciated Tehran's expressions of support for his government during a failed military coup against Erdogan on July 15, 2016.

"Iran was with us to support our government in every minute at that night while some other countries only called us days or even weeks after the attempted coup," IRNA quoted him as saying.

Last week Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had called Turkey an ungrateful neighbor.

"They (Turkey) accuse us of sectarianism but don't remember we didn't sleep on the night of the coup," he said.

Despite their differences, Turkey and Iran, along with Assad ally Russia, have been sponsoring Syrian peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana in an attempt to end the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Gareth Jones)

KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia on Wednesday charged two women, an Indonesian and a Vietnamese, with murdering the estranged half brother of North Korea's leader in a bizarre airport assassination using a super-toxic nerve agent that killed in minutes.

MOSUL, Iraq U.S.-backed Iraqi army units on Wednesday took control of the last major road out of western Mosul that had been in Islamic State's hands, trapping the militants in a shrinking area within the city, a general and residents said.

GENEVASyrian government aircraft deliberately bombed and strafed a humanitarian convoy, killing 14 aid workers and halting relief operations, U.N. investigators said on Wednesday in a report identifying war crimes committed by both sides in Syria's war.

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Iran, Turkey presidents meet to defuse tensions - Reuters