Catalonia's president has called on European Union prime ministers for support as the region seeks a vote on independence in November this year, the source of an increasingly bitter fight with Spain's central government.

• January 3, 2014

China's increasingly sophisticated military will establish a joint operational command structure for its forces to improve coordination between different parts of the country's defense system, the official China Daily reported on Friday.

• January 3, 2014

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

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

Six more of the 30 Greenpeace activists arrested in a protest over Arctic oil drilling left Russia on Friday after being granted an amnesty, the environmental group said.

• December 27, 2013

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi summoned the Japanese ambassador on Thursday to lodge "strong opposition" to the visit of Japan's prime minister to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine for war dead.

• December 27, 2013

Ukraine expects a $15 billion bailout package from Russia to be fully disbursed in early 2014, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said on Wednesday after Kiev received the first $3 billion tranche.

• December 26, 2013

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is sending an envoy to help seek a political solution to ethnic bloodletting in South Sudan and to liaise with neighboring countries, the European Commission said on Wednesday.

• December 26, 2013