A masked swordsman who killed a teaching assistant and a boy and wounded two others, all with immigrant backgrounds, was driven by racist motives, Swedish police said on Friday, fuelling concerns that refugee numbers were polarizing public opinion in the country.
Russia's actions in Syria are fuelling the country's war, which can only be ended with an unconditional exit of President Bashar al-Assad, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said ahead of a meeting with his U.S., Russian and Turkish counterparts.
Vladimir Putin used a rare visit to Moscow by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to talk up the Kremlin's potential to help broker a political settlement to the crisis as he tried to show the West Russia has become a major player in the Middle East.
Canada's Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau, who came from behind to trounce his Conservative rivals and snatch a majority mandate, now has to deliver on pledges from tackling climate change to legalizing marijuana.
Rebels battling the Syrian army and its allies near Aleppo said on Monday they had received new supplies of U.S.-made anti-tank missiles from states opposed to President Bashar al-Assad since the start of a major government offensive last week.
China's foreign minister has repeated his country's opposition to the use of force to resolve the crisis in Syria, saying that a political solution is still the only way out, China's foreign ministry said on Friday.
In a small teahouse in the conservative southeastern Turkish town of Adiyaman, two brothers would hold court with young followers, praying, reading the Koran and painting a picture of a better life across the border in Syria, in the ranks of Islamic State.
Syrian troops and their allies, backed by Russian jets, attacked rebel-held towns north of the city of Homs on Thursday, targeting a long-held and strategic enclave of opposition to President Bashar al-Assad.
Iraq has begun bombing Islamic State insurgents with help from a new intelligence center with staff from Russia, Iran and Syria, a senior parliamentary figure said on Tuesday about cooperation seen as a threat to U.S. interests in the region.
China's top newspaper on Tuesday accused both the United States and Russia of replaying their Cold War rivalry by engaging in military action in Syria, saying they needed to realize that era is over and should instead push for peace talks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Saudi Arabia's defense minister on Sunday, in Moscow's biggest attempt so far to reach out to enemies of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad since Russia joined the conflict with air strikes.
Islamic State fighters have seized Syrian villages on the outskirts of Aleppo from rival insurgent fighters, a monitoring group said on Friday, despite Russian air strikes that Moscow says have targeted the militant group.
The United States and NATO denounced Russia on Monday for violating Turkish airspace and Ankara threatened to respond, reporting two incursions in two days and raising the prospect of direct confrontation between the former Cold War adversaries.
Russia launched air strikes in Syria on Wednesday in its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, plunging the four-year-old civil war into a volatile new phase as President Vladimir Putin moved forcefully to stake out influence in the unstable region.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will try to launch a new initiative for a political solution in Syria during meetings in New York in the next week, starting with talks with his Iranian counterpart on Saturday, U.S. and other Western officials said.
Rebels who have inflicted big losses on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad say Russia's intervention in support of its ally will only lead to an escalation of the war and may encourage the rebels' Gulf Arab backers to pour in more military aid.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Moscow on Monday to seek reassurance from President Vladimir Putin about Russia's military deployment in Syria and to lay out Israel's concerns about the risk of weapons reaching militants on its borders.
The United States will increase the number of refugees it takes in by 15,000 over each of the next two years, bringing the total to 100,000 by 2017, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said after talks with his German counterpart on Sunday.
U.S. President Barack Obama believes that holding military talks with Russia on Syria is an important next step and hopes they will take place very shortly, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday.
France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Tuesday a deal with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to reach a political transition was impossible, but said Paris would back regional ground troops if they were to intervene against Islamic State militants.
