China will encourage ships flying its flag to take the Northwest Passage via the Arctic Ocean, a route opened up by global warming, to cut travel times between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, a state-run newspaper said on Wednesday.

• April 20, 2016

Russia on Wednesday accused the Saudi-backed Syrian opposition of employing blackmail by suspending its participation in peace talks in Geneva.

• April 20, 2016

Saudi Arabia and Russia both have the capacity to steeply increase oil production, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday, and he said he was not confident exporters would be able to agree on freezing their output by June.

• April 20, 2016

Russian and NATO envoys are unlikely to ease the worst tensions since the Cold War very much when they meet on Wednesday in their highest-level talks on security in almost two years.

• April 19, 2016

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Tuesday he and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had agreed a framework for a deal to secure the release of Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko from a 22-year jail sentence in Russia.

• April 19, 2016

Oil prices jumped more than 3 percent on Tuesday after a strike by workers in Kuwait nearly halved the OPEC member's crude production, overshadowing bearish sentiment after Sunday's failure by producers to agree to freeze output levels.

• April 19, 2016

China and other major steel-producing countries failed on Monday to agree measures to tackle a global steel crisis as the sides argued over the causes of overcapacity and whether Beijing is keeping loss-making producers afloat.

• April 18, 2016

Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama agreed on Monday to continue building closer coordination on Syria, including through their intelligence services and defense ministries, the Kremlin said.

• April 18, 2016