China on Tuesday brushed aside calls from Japan to hold a leaders' summit as "grandstanding", while Japan's finance minister said Tokyo should make clear it would use its navy to defend islands at the core of a dispute with Beijing.

• August 28, 2013

Russia's first civil plane since the fall of the Soviet Union bagged a clutch of deals with mainly domestic buyers on the first day of an airshow near Moscow, as the country battles to revive its aircraft industry amid stiff foreign competition.

• August 27, 2013

Russia demanded on Tuesday the release of the head of Russian company Uralkali, whose arrest in Belarus threatens to turn a business dispute that shook the $20-billion global potash market into a major diplomatic row.

• August 27, 2013

Russia warned Western powers on Monday against any military intervention in Syria, saying the use of force without a U.N. mandate would violate international law.

• August 26, 2013

U.N. chemical weapons inspectors in Syria met and took samples from victims of an apparent poison gas attack in a rebel-held suburb of Damascus on Monday after the U.N. team themselves survived a sniper attack that hit a vehicle in their convoy.

• August 26, 2013

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich on Saturday re-affirmed his commitment to signing key agreements with the European Union, including on trade, despite a threat by Russia's Vladimir Putin of possible retaliatory measures.

• August 26, 2013

Senior U.S. and Russian diplomats will meet in The Hague next Wednesday to discuss ending Syria's two-year civil war, the State Department said on Thursday, in what would be the first such meeting since reports of a deadly chemical attack outside the capital, Damascus.

• August 24, 2013

Business surveys on Thursday suggested the world economy was on the mend, with U.S. and Chinese manufacturing activity at multi-month highs and better-than-expected growth in the euro zone.

• August 22, 2013