China will shake up its military by establishing a joint operational command structure by 2020 and rejig existing military regions as part of overall reforms, President Xi Jinping said in a comments reported on Thursday.

• November 26, 2015

Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border on Tuesday, saying the jet had violated its air space, in one of the most serious publicly acknowledged clashes between a NATO member country and Russia for half a century.

• November 24, 2015

U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande pressed Russia on Tuesday to focus its attacks in Syria on Islamic State militants after Turkey heightened tensions in the region by downing a Russian plane.

• November 24, 2015

Iraq closed its northern airspace to all flights on Monday for at least two days due to military traffic from Russia's air campaign in neighboring Syria.

• November 23, 2015

Russia's parliament backed a sweeping overhaul of national security, including possibly expanding the powers of the country's intelligence services, after the Kremlin concluded a bomb downed a Russian passenger plane over Egypt last month.

• November 20, 2015

Hundreds of innocent people have been killed in spectacular attacks claimed by Islamic State militants from Syria, but diplomats say major powers are no closer to a peace deal to end nearly five years of bloodshed and chaos there.

• November 20, 2015

China is to buy a batch of 24 Sukhoi-35 fighter jets from Russia in a deal worth more than $2 billion, an industry source told Reuters on Thursday, in a move that may help the Kremlin's strained finances.

• November 19, 2015

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday the West had to drop its demands about the political exit of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if it wanted a genuinely international coalition against Islamic State militants.

• November 18, 2015