U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry broke from his travel schedule for the second time in a week to rush back to the Middle East on Monday to try to salvage Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

• March 31, 2014

North Korea fired more than 100 artillery rounds into South Korean waters as part of a drill on Monday, prompting the South to fire back, officials in Seoul said, but the exercise appeared to be more saber rattling from Pyongyang rather than the start of a military standoff.

• March 31, 2014

Days before Crimea voted in a referendum to join Russia from Ukraine, Adam, a Chechen soldier, was ordered to go to the Black Sea peninsula to defend Russia's interests.

• March 30, 2014

Egyptians will vote on May 26-27 in a presidential election that Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is expected to win easily, meaning the former army chief who deposed Islamist President Mohamed Mursi could be sworn in as head of state by early June.

• March 30, 2014

Any escalation in the Ukraine crisis poses a threat to Cyprus's economy, the outgoing governor of the country's central bank said in an interview, noting that he expects the bailed-out euro zone member to return to growth in 2015.

• March 30, 2014

Russia said on Friday a U.N. resolution declaring invalid Crimea's Moscow-backed referendum on seceding from Ukraine was counterproductive and accused Western states of using blackmail and threats to drum up "yes" votes.

• March 28, 2014

Lenin looks out on Donetsk, unmoved, anthracite grey and steely eyed. But a century after his revolution, this Ukrainian industrial city of Porsches and poverty seethes around

• March 28, 2014

China denounced Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday for drawing an analogy between Russia's behaviour in Crimea and China's actions in the disputed East and South China Seas, accusing Abe of hypocrisy.

• March 28, 2014