The United States will come to the aid of the Philippines in the event of conflict with China over disputed waters in the South China Sea, the commander of the U.S. Navy said on Thursday.

• February 13, 2014

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday threw his weight behind a presidential bid by Egyptian Army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, voicing hope that ties would strengthen after the election.

• February 13, 2014

Russia denounced on Wednesday a Western-Arab draft U.N. Security Council resolution on humanitarian aid access in Syria as a bid to lay the groundwork for military strikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government.

• February 13, 2014

After Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Ukraine last July, U.S. diplomats got a private recap of the message he delivered behind closed doors to the country's leaders. Ukraine, Putin warned, would not be allowed to stray from Moscow's orbit.

• February 12, 2014

International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi scrambled to keep diplomacy alive on Wednesday, bringing forward to Thursday a meeting with senior U.S. and Russian officials backing opposing sides in Syria's war.

• February 12, 2014

A second round of Syria peace talks got off to a shaky start on Monday, with the two sides complaining about violations of a local ceasefire and an Islamist offensive respectively in separate meetings with the international mediator.

• February 11, 2014

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will begin a trip this week to China, South Korea, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, the State Department said on Sunday, at a time of high tensions in Asia over China's increasingly assertive territorial claims.

• February 10, 2014

The U.N. nuclear agency said on Sunday that Iran had agreed to start addressing suspicions that it may have worked on designing an atomic weapon, a potential breakthrough in a long-stalled investigation into Tehran's atomic activities.

• February 10, 2014