Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov is in Geneva ahead of a meeting of high-ranking diplomats from the United States, Russia and UN tomorrow to prepare the groundwork for a UN-brokered conference on Syria on January 25.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has tweeted a number of comments from Gatilov ahead of tomorrow's meeting, including that a list of designated terrorist groups in Syria "needs further development and agreement by the members of the International Syria Support Group."
Germany has sent a team of specialist investigators to Istanbul following Tuesday's blast in which 10 Germans were killed, AP are reporting.
Johannes Dimroth said the specialists from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, which is comparable to the FBI, would support Turkish authorities investigating the attack.
Asked whether Germany believes that [IS] is responsible for the attack, he said it was "too early to engage in wild speculation."
Former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has said that Russia's military operation in Syria is "not as expensive as it might seem."
"All of the measures connected with Crimea, with eastern Ukraine, where there was humanitarian support, were much more expensive than the situation in Syria. I don't think that Syria will go on for many years. In the medium term, Syria will not be a big burden," Kudrin was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.
Turkey has arrested 69 people with alleged ties to the IS group in the wake of yesterday's suicide bombing in an Istanbul tourist area that killed 10 foreign citizens, Hurriyet is reporting.
Three Russian nationals are among those arrested.
Three British men have gone on trial at London's Old Bailey charged with helping a British teenager travel to Syria to fight with the IS group, the BBC reports.
Aseel Muthana, 19, joined IS in Syria in February 2014. Muthana's brother, Nasser Muthana, was already in Syria and appeared in an IS propaganda video, "There Is No Life Without Jihad."
Kristen Brekke, 20, Forhad Rahman, and Adeel Ulhaq, deny allegations that they helped Muthana.
The United States and its allies staged two dozen strikes against the IS group in Iraq and Syria on January 12, the military coalition leading the operations said in a statement.
Today's Zaman reports on the aftermath of yesterday's suicide bombing in Istanbul's Sultanahmet district: local hotels, hoping for a better year, have experienced a wave of booking cancelations.
Two men have been indicted on charges of complicity in terrorism for the attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital Bamako in November that killed 20 people.
Prosecutor Boubacar Sidiki Samake said that the men were arrested on November 26 and indicted on December 16. The men had been identified on surveillance video.
Two gunmen stormed the hotel on November and shot at guests. The gunmen were killed at the scene.
Libya's Al-Wasat news is reporting that a sniper has killed a senior IS militant in IS's Libyan stronghold of Sirte.
France has banned three "radical" Islamic associations which ran a mosque in a Paris area that has been closed down following November's attacks, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said.
AFP reports that the mosque at Lagny-sur-Marne was closed early last month amid a security crackdown in the wake of the November 13 attacks by the IS group that killed 130 people.
"There is no place in the French Republic for groups which incite, and which call for terrorism or call for hate," Cazeneuve said.