A bomb ripped apart a bus in Volgograd on Monday, killing 14 people in the second deadly attack blamed on suicide bombers in the southern Russian city in 24 hours and raising fears of Islamist attacks on the Winter Olympics.

• December 30, 2013

As U.S. and European banks drop out of commodity trading, Russian, Chinese and Gulf state firms are filling the gap in an attempt to exert greater control over the pricing of the raw materials on which their economies so heavily depend.

• December 30, 2013

China said on Monday that its leaders will not meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after his visit to a shrine seen by critics as a symbol of Tokyo's wartime aggression, underscoring the deteriorating ties between Asia's two biggest economies.

• December 30, 2013

Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have gathered again in Kiev in a fresh show of force by the month-old anti-government protest movement.

• December 29, 2013

More than a million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits after an emergency federal programme expired on Saturday.

• December 29, 2013

Uzbek President Islam Karimov has signed a law on Uzbekistan joining the free trade zone of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

• December 29, 2013

Uzbek President Islam Karimov has signed a law on Uzbekistan joining the free trade zone of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

• December 29, 2013

One spring day in 2011 five people gathered around a small table at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin and hatched the beginnings of a plan to get former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky out of prison.

• December 27, 2013