Andrei Kolesnikov laid out the letters his grandfather sent home from the Stalinist labour camp where he eventually died after eight years as a political prisoner.

A truck rammed into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday, killing nine people and wounding dozens more in what German officials said was suspected to be an attack.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday opens a new road tunnel underneath the Bosphorus in Istanbul, the latest in a string of ambitious schemes to transform the country's infrastructure.

Five years since the American military completed its withdrawal from Iraq, U.S. forces are once again playing a major role in the country as part of the war against the Islamic State jihadist group.

If the Islamic State group is to be defeated and prevented from reappearing under some new guise, the root causes behind its birth and growth must be addressed, American experts say.

The Syrian government's recapture of Aleppo after a prolonged and punishing air assault is a defining moment in the country's devastating civil war: it leaves President Bashar Assad in control of almost all major urban areas — and poised to petition for a role in the world community's broader war against Islamic State militants clinging to parts of Syria's northeast.

The prospect of such cooperation would once have been considered highly improbable. Assad became anathema in the West and much of the region after the brutal means he employed during six years of carnage that killed hundreds of thousands, displaced half his population and sent millions of refugees to neighboring countries and Europe.

The Islamic State group's surprise recapture of Syria's famed ancient city of Palmyra has given the jihadist group an important propaganda boon as it comes under attack elsewhere.

These are euphoric but anxious days for South Korea, as the heady impeachment of a deeply unpopular president leaves the country without a recognized leader at a time of military tensions with nuclear-armed North Korea.

Syria's President Bashar Assad is on the verge of recapturing all of Aleppo from rebels, but the victory won't be his alone. The battle for Syria's largest city has attracted thousands of foreign forces backing Assad — including Russian soldiers and Shiite fighters from Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The remarkable political and sectarian alignment underscores Aleppo's symbolic and strategic importance, which goes beyond the confines of Syria's civil war. Syria's former commercial center has long been regarded as a major gateway between Turkey and Syria.

"To me, she was a goddess," said party worker Shankar as he joined a sea of mourners bidding farewell to Jayalalithaa Jayaram, highlighting the messianic devotion of India's poor for often controversial champions.