In August 1941, even before the United States had entered World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D Roosevelt met secretly off the coast of Newfoundland to discuss how the world could be organised after the war.

Istanbul, in western Turkey, is one of Europe's great cities. As Constantinople, it was the capital of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and after its capture and renaming by Mehmed II in 1453, it served as the capital of the Ottoman Empire for nearly another 500 years.

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems close to ordering a general mobilization of his country's military, and Republicans in the United States are preparing for a ferocious battle with President Barack Obama's administration, in the wake of the framework nuclear agreement with Iran.