Turkey's president said on Wednesday that Western countries mocking Islam wanted to "relaunch the Crusades", heightening a confrontation with France over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that have stirred anger in Muslim-majority countries.
The Trump administration has slashed the number of refugees it will allow to resettle in the United States in the coming year, capping the number at 15,000, a record low in the history of the country's modern refugee program.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) are riding high in opinion polls but their popularity masks serious unease among senior party officials about damaging internal divisions triggered by a delay in voting for a new leader.
The U.S. Justice Department unsealed a complaint on Wednesday charging eight people with conspiring to work on behalf of China to engage in an "international campaign to threaten, harass, surveil, and intimidate" Chinese citizens to return to their home country.
Germany and France were preparing to announce restrictions approaching the level of last spring's blanket lockdowns on Wednesday as COVID deaths across Europe rose almost 40% in a week, while financial markets tumbled on fears of the likely economic costs.
Dozens of Belarusian students said on Wednesday they had been expelled from university after joining a nationwide strike aimed at forcing veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko to step down.
Lebanon's influential Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said on Wednesday that a new government could be formed within a few days if talks keep going positively.
Malaysia's foreign ministry said it had summoned France's charges d'affaires in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday to express concern over alleged hate speech and defamation of Islam.
Azerbaijan and Armenia accused each other of killing civilians by shelling cities in and around Nagorno-Karabakh on Wednesday, in an escalation of a month-long conflict over the mountain enclave that has defied three ceasefires.
Joe Biden plans to scrap what he calls the "dangerous failure" of President Donald Trump's maximum pressure policy on Iran should he win the U.S. election, but after years of confrontation his diplomacy-first approach to a historic Middle East foe could prove an unforgiving challenge.