An investigation into the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris widened on Tuesday when French prosecutors said a man who provided lodging to the suspected ringleader must have known of a militant plot, and Belgium issued a warrant for a new suspect.
Since last month, U.S. warplanes have struck Islamic State's oil infrastructure in Syria in a stepped-up campaign of economic warfare that the United States estimates has cut the group's black-market earnings from oil by about a third.
Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border on Tuesday after repeated warnings over air space violations, but Moscow said it could prove the jet had not left Syrian air space.
Khalid Ben Larbi lived a hedonistic lifestyle similar to other European youths and rarely went to the mosque in Molenbeek, the mainly Muslim Moroccan immigrant area where he and three of the suspected Paris attackers grew up in Brussels.
Gunfire and explosions shook the Paris suburb of St. Denis early on Wednesday when French police raided an apartment where a Belgian Islamist militant suspected of masterminding last week's attacks in the French capital was possibly holed up.
Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for attacks that killed 127 people in Paris, saying it sent militants strapped with suicide bombing belts and carrying machine guns to various locations in the heart of the capital.
Kurdish peshmerga forces backed by U.S. air strikes seized the Iraqi town of Sinjar from Islamic State on Friday, a Reuters witness said, in one of the most significant counter-attacks since the militants swept through the north last year.
Islamic State militants committed genocide against Iraq's Yazidis in the north of the country and carried out crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes against other minorities, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said on Thursday.
At least 43 people were killed and more than 240 wounded on Thursday in two suicide bomb blasts claimed by Islamic State in a crowded residential district in Beirut's southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah.
Russia wants the Syrian government and opposition to agree on launching a constitutional reform process of up to 18 months, followed by early presidential elections, a draft document obtained by Reuters showed on Tuesday.
Three serving or former Russian soldiers have been geolocated by photographs in Syria, including locations near Hama, Aleppo and Homs, Russian bloggers said on Sunday, suggesting the Kremlin's operation stretches well beyond its air campaign.
Chemical weapons experts have determined that mustard gas was used in a Syrian town where Islamic State insurgents were battling another rebel group, according to a report by an international watchdog seen by Reuters.
Moscow's military force in Syria has grown to about 4,000 personnel, but this and more than a month of Russian air strikes have not led to pro-government forces making significant territorial gains, U.S. security officials and independent experts said.
Evidence now suggests that a bomb planted by the Islamic State militant group is the likely cause of last weekend's crash of a Russian airliner over Egypt's Sinai peninsula, U.S. and European security sources said on Wednesday.
President Barack Obama said on Monday the planned deployment of dozens of U.S. special forces to Syria to advise opposition forces fighting Islamic State did not break his promise not to put "boots on the ground" in the Syrian conflict.
The Russian plane that crashed in Egypt was not struck from the outside and the pilot did not make a distress call before it disappeared from radar, a source in the committee analyzing the flight recorders said on Monday.
Turkey's Islamist-rooted AK Party swept to an unexpected victory in elections on Sunday, returning the country to single-party rule in an outcome that will boost the power of President Tayyip Erdogan but may sharpen deep social divisions.
Delegations from Free Syrian Army rebel groups did not visit Moscow, representatives of four factions fighting under the FSA banner told Reuters on Tuesday, denying Russian news agency reports that such visits had taken place.
Iran will be invited to participate in talks in Vienna on Friday to discuss ending the conflict in Syria, a dialogue aimed at finding a framework for political transition in Damascus, the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday.
Germany should deregulate its labor market and create more lower-paid jobs to help refugees find work and integrate better into society, the head of Europe's largest aerospace group Airbus said on Sunday.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged the 2003 invasion of Iraq played a part in the rise of the Islamic State militant group, and apologized for some mistakes in planning the war, in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
