Records and interviews show that Beijing has used pandas as leverage to shape policy on Taiwan and to cultivate relationships with local U.S. politicians.

With Germany and France both in political turmoil, the new administration of Donald J. Trump will begin at a time of instability for the continent.

Ukraine’s forces are steadily losing ground on the battlefield. The assassination of a top general in Moscow won’t improve their war effort, analysts and Western officials say.

A Syrian Air flight from Damascus landed in Aleppo on Wednesday, as the transitional government tries to demonstrate its ability to run the war-shattered country.

If polls are correct, Olaf Scholz’s successor could be Friedrich Merz, 69, leader of the Christian Democratic Union. He is offering to get the German economic engine humming again.

Syria’s new rulers say they will spare conscripts of Bashar al-Assad and pursue those who oversaw his regime’s abuses. Hundreds are lining up to learn which promise applies to them.

The Russian prosecutor’s office said the suspect, a 29-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan, confessed to planting the bomb on the orders of Ukrainian agents.

Funding its war against the United States, the Taliban reaped millions from boom towns trading opium, heroin and meth. Victorious, the group crushed the trade, leaving ghost towns in its wake.

Police leaders waited too long — three days — to trigger a national mobilization to tackle the anti-immigrant violence that broke out in Britain this year, a report found.

Ahmed al-Shara said that fighters would be brought under the defense ministry’s authority. The announcement came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel visited captured Syrian territory.