Military cooperation between Russia and China poses no threat to other states, but is aimed instead at countering global threats and challenges, including international terrorism, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

"Bilateral military cooperation [between Moscow and Beijing] is not directed against other states, does not pose a threat to them, but contributes to peace and stability on the Eurasian continent and beyond," Shoigu said at a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Chang Wanquan in Beijing on Wednesday. He is there for the 21st meeting of an intergovernmental commission on military and technical cooperation between the two states that will look into the fragile situations in Syria, Libya, and Iraq.

"The conflicts in Central and Eastern Asia don't end, the wounds won't heal, especially in Northern Africa and the Middle East. I certainly keep in mind the ongoing events in Syria, Iraq and Libya," Sergei Shoigu said ahead of the meeting.

He also noted that cooperation between the two countries "is at an all-time high" and "continues to steadily expand each year." It is especially apparent in the economic sphere. Last year, trade between China and Russia was about $68 billion while the projects for the next 4 years is $200 billion.

Republicans in Congress will likely enact President-elect Donald Trump's tax plan within the first 100 days after his inauguration. Trump's proposal will cut taxes primarily for businesses and the wealthy, but would include across-the-board cuts as well.

Trump's proposal, which was ever-changing over the course of his presidential campaign, would cut taxes by $6.2 trillion over the next decade, according to a Tax Policy Center (TPC) analysis of the most recent version of his plan. If interest costs are included, then the federal debt would rise by $7.2 trillion over the first ten years and by $20.9 trillion by 2036.

"His tax plan is very traditional Republican fare in that it is geared toward business tax reduction under the premise that higher business taxes are a burden that holds back capital formation and job creation," said Edward Harrison, producer of RT America's award-winning financial show, 'Boom Bust'. "Liberals would dispute this claim and see his plan as favoring business owners at the expense of wage earners, thus increasing income inequality."

Taxes would be cut for all income levels, but would mostly benefit the highest-income households, despite Trump saying during an NBC town hall meeting that he believes in raising taxes on the wealthy. The plan would also reduce tax rates, simplify many provisions and reform taxes on business.

"If you look at the most wealthy, the top 1 percent would get about half of the benefits of his tax cuts, and a millionaire, for example, would get an average tax cut of $317,000," Lily Batchelder, a law professor at New York University and visiting fellow at the TPC, told NPR.

Pakistani officials say at least nine civilians have been killed by an artillery shell fired from Indian-administered Kashmir that hit a passenger bus in the Pakistan-administered part of the disputed region.

The bus was traveling in the town of Lawat in the Nellam Valley to the northeast of Muzaffarabad when it was struck by the shell on November 23.

Two other civilians also were killed by a shell in the barrage that struck their home in a village near Kashmir's de facto border.

Pakistani officials say at least 11 people were also wounded by the artillery attack.

Details of a possible Muslim registry under Trump have come to light after Kris Kobach, who is being considered for head of the Department of Homeland Security, was pictured holding a strategy document at a meeting with the president-elect.

Kobach was photographed arriving to meet Trump in Bedminster, New Jersey on Sunday holding a strategy document titled "Kobach Strategic Plan for First 365 Days."

The Kansas secretary of state and member of the Trump transition team was there to discuss "border security, international terrorism and reforming federal bureaucracy," Trump's team said.

On Monday, some of the biggest names in TV news trooped into Trump Tower for an off-the-record meeting with the president-elect.

It was an all-star cast. Not just on-air stars like Lester Holt, Wolf Blitzer and George Stephanopoulos, but their bosses were also summoned before the Potentate of Fifth Avenue.

The meeting was a huge success — for Donald Trump.

Soon after it broke up, a leak to the New York Post brought on a story about how thoroughly the president-elect had taken the attendees to task.

With attribution to anonymous tipsters, the Post wrote: "The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing-down. . . . Trump kept saying, 'We're in a room of liars, the deceitful, dishonest media who got it all wrong.' "

The Donald J. Trump Foundation admitted in a newly-revealed tax filing for 2015 that it broke IRS rules in recent years regarding the use of charity money to enrich its leaders, their businesses, or family members, according to news reports.

The law firm for President-elect Donald Trump's charitable foundation posted late Monday Internal Revenue Service tax filings for 2015 on Guidestar, a non-profit information service, according to reports.

In one instance, the Trump Foundation said it had engaged in "self-dealing" in recent years. For a separate question on the form, the foundation said it had moved "income or assets to a disqualified person," likely meaning Trump, one of his businesses, or one of his family members.

Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed the EU parliament resolution against Russian media. He said that Europe is trying to "teach" Russia democracy.

Earlier in the day, the European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution on countering Russian media outlets, such as the Sputnik news agency and the RT broadcaster. Authors of the document equate counteracting Russia with the resistance to Daesh terrorist group and call on EU member states to boost financing counter-propaganda projects.

"More recently — and these attempts are still ongoing — they [European officials] tried to 'teach us' democracy, and we have always heard from these 'teachers' that the most vicious way to do business with opponents is to ban something and that it is not consistent with the principles and norms of democracy. Open discussion is always the best way," Putin said.

I have mentioned in a previous article about the need to achieve a decisive victory in Syria in order to get rid of the terrorism that threatens the global body as well as the Syrian body. The focus was on the threat of terrorism in the world. I would like to point out that the analysis of the Syrian situation from the standpoint of terrorism is only the analysis that takes into consideration the symptoms of the disease without examining the real causes of it. Terrorism was and will remain the product of a real disease, from which the world suffered today. Let me remind you of the statements and analyses of the famous Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, that most problems of the world today are related to the nature of new liberalism, which increasingly becomes more brutal and greedy. The forces of capital are looking more and more for power and control of the whole world to be like a game controlled by them, and all what we hear about freedom, democracy, and human rights are, from their point of view, only tools for more power and more control.

Neo-liberalism has come to the conclusion that there is no life, no future without it taking over the world, including Russia, and that uni-polarity is an essential condition of its existence. It does not accept a partnership with anyone and cannot continue with a multi-polar world. Therefore, the Russian vision of a multi-polar world, which started from a correct understanding of the nature of the world today, is an existence war for the United States. The nature of neo-liberal forces in the United States does not accept multi-polarity or even regional countries with weight and ability to maintain their national interests. Perhaps this is one of the causes of the hostility from the US to Iran and Syria.

I've been saying this for a long time, and I'll say it again here — in life there are only two kinds of people: those who know and those who don't. Some might claim there is a third option: those who don't want to know. In any case, if you want to be able to foresee geopolitical and social trends, you have to be one of the people who know.

Above all else, in order to know you must be willing to step outside of the confusion and theater of the circus and look at developments from above. If you are biased and retain too many sacred cows you will never understand how the world works. You will be too busy trying to reinforce your own fantasies to see anything else.

Beyond this, you must also understand that political and social developments are not random; they are either reactions to deliberate policies of special interests or they are driven by policies of special interests. Therefore, these developments are predictable and can be calculated (to a point).

I usually refer to these "special interests" as global elites, or globalists, because that is how they often refer to themselves. The point is, most of the events you see in the political world are engineered events designed to elicit a specific psychological response from you and the people around you. You are not a human being to these people; you are either an asset to be molded or an obstacle to be disposed of. This is how our world works. Period. And until we fully understand this and accept it, things will never change.

Kurds may be among local forces remaining in the Syrian city of Manbij to secure it against potential attack by Daesh terror group, but the People's Protection Units (YPG) have moved east of the Euphrates, US Department of Defense spokesman Peter Cook said on Tuesday.

Cook explained that a number of the fighters now in Manbij may be Kurds who lived in the city before it was occupied by Daesh. "There are local forces in Manbij now that are securing Manbij against the threat of [Daesh] returning, and we'll continue to address Turkish concerns about the makeup of those forces, but we heard very publicly from the YPG that they were moving east of the Euphrates," Cook told reporters.