A surprise decision by President Mahmoud Abbas to sign more than a dozen international conventions that could give Palestinians greater leverage against Israel left the United States struggling on Wednesday to put peace talks back on track.

• April 2, 2014

NATO suspended all practical cooperation with Russia on Tuesday in protest at its annexation of Crimea, and ordered military planners to draft measures to strengthen its defenses and reassure nervous Eastern European countries.

• April 2, 2014

A quarter-century after the fall of the Soviet Union, authoritarian rulers such as Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad are showing they can and will defy international norms, suppress dissent and use military force. American policymakers are struggling with how to respond.

• April 1, 2014

Russian natural gas producer Gazprom announced a more than 40 percent increase in the price of gas for Ukraine on Tuesday, stepping up economic pressure on Kiev in its crisis in relations with Moscow.

• April 1, 2014

At the height of the euro zone crisis, a Chinese official quipped that Europe was being reduced to a "wonderful theme park" for tourists. That view no longer has much currency as Beijing recalibrates links with the world's biggest trade bloc.

• April 1, 2014

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks on Sunday about ways to defuse the crisis over Ukraine, with Kerry telling Moscow that progress depended on a Russian troop pullback from Ukraine's borders.

• March 31, 2014

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry broke from his travel schedule for the second time in a week to rush back to the Middle East on Monday to try to salvage Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

• March 31, 2014

North Korea fired more than 100 artillery rounds into South Korean waters as part of a drill on Monday, prompting the South to fire back, officials in Seoul said, but the exercise appeared to be more saber rattling from Pyongyang rather than the start of a military standoff.

• March 31, 2014