Israel intensified its land offensive in Gaza with artillery, tanks and gunboats on Friday and warned it could "significantly widen" an operation Palestinian officials said was killing ever greater numbers of civilians.

• July 18, 2014

President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on some of Russia's biggest firms for the first time, striking at the heart of Vladimir Putin's powerbase by targeting companies closest to him over Moscow's failure to curb violence in Ukraine.

• July 17, 2014

New U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Ukraine will make it more difficult for Russian companies to refinance existing international loans and has dashed hopes that Russia's syndicated loan market is reopening, bankers said on Thursday.

• July 17, 2014

With talks between world powers and Iran over a broad nuclear accord at an impasse, Western governments are considering offering a significant easing of sanctions early on in the process to try to wring concessions from Tehran, diplomats say.

• July 17, 2014

Russia has quietly reached a provisional agreement with Cuba on reopening a big Soviet-era base on the Caribbean island from which it spied in the United States, a Russian security source said on Wednesday.

• July 16, 2014

European Union leaders want to block loans for new projects in Russia by two multilateral lenders and broaden the scope of other sanctions in response to Moscow's actions in Ukraine, according to a draft statement seen by Reuters.

• July 16, 2014

Bashar al-Assad was sworn in for a new term as Syria's president on Wednesday, after an election which his opponents dismiss as a sham but which he said proved he had achieved victory after a "dirty war" to unseat him.

• July 16, 2014

Israel resumed air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, six hours after agreeing to an Egyptian-proposed truce that failed to halt Hamas rocket attacks.

• July 15, 2014