Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-led air strikes have regained control of at least 163 villages around the Syrian town of Kobani after driving back Islamic State militants in the past three weeks, a group monitoring the conflict said on Saturday.
Germany condemned on Friday a cartoon published in a Greek leftist newspaper close to the new ruling party in Athens that depicts Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in a Nazi uniform making comments that invoke the Holocaust.
France's finance minister said on Friday Paris had not restricted the use of HSBC (HSBA.L) client data it passed on to UK authorities to help pursue tax evaders, contradicting comments by a senior British official.
Kiev, Moscow, Munich, Washington, Ottawa, Minsk and Brussels -- all in a week's work for Angela Merkel, whose tireless efforts to broker peace in Ukraine and keep Greece in the euro zone won praise even from the chancellor's fiercest critics in Germany.
