U.S. officials will meet with the Taliban on Thursday in a major breakthrough aimed at opening peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan, as the U.S. prepares for the end of its combat involvement.

Eva Countess Kendeffy, the top German official in Florida who helped organize Obama’s previous visits to Germany, is nostalgic about Obama’s Berlin visit. She will retire at the end of June.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Pope Francis swept away years of tension between the administration and the Roman Catholic Church on Monday during what Maduro called an “extraordinary” meeting.

The Turkish government is open to holding a referendum over an Istanbul development plan that has had a central role in nearly two weeks of mass protests, a spokesman for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party said Wednesday.

Hundreds of riot police overran improvised barricades at Istanbul's Taksim Square on Tuesday, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons in running battles with protesters who have been occupying the area for more than a week.

Former President Nelson Mandela's condition remains serious but stable on Monday, his third day in a Pretoria hospital, the South African government said.

Turkey's prime minister took a combative stance on his closely watched return to the country early Friday, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must come to an end.

With massive protests by middle-class Brazilians demanding wholesale government reforms, people all over this continent-sized country have reached a verdict on the streets and online: "The giant has awakened."

Some comments by Brazilians participating in protests across South America's biggest country:

While State Department officials are fond of saying they’re providing hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the Syrian opposition, only a fraction of the promised funds has arrived, and none has gone to the political body the U.S. looks to as an alternative to President Bashar Assad’s regime.

To understand the changes likely to occur under Iran’s new president, Hasan Rowhani, consider this summation of the outgoing regime by a veteran foreign policy analyst.

The decision by Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to name 17 new provincial governors, including several who belong to his former party, triggered another round of violence here and the reported resignation of a top minister. The events stoked fears that Egypt’s first democratically elected leader was increasing Islamists’ control over the nation.

For Syrians, no visit to Damascus' Old City is complete without a stop at a more than century-old ice cream parlor in its main souq where you can watch them make their distinctive desert by pounding it into shape with giant wooden mallets, then enjoy a bowl of it sprinkled with pistachios.

Egypt's top Muslim cleric declared Wednesday that peaceful protests against the president are permitted, in a snub to hard-line Islamist backers of Mohammed Morsi who declared that those behind opposition protests planned for June 30 are heretics.