ANDREW HIGGINS

Pelted by hailstones and buffeted by an icy wind, Yasser Arslanuk, a 55-year-old Syrian engineer, his wife and two young sons wobbled across the border from Russia into Norway astride bicycles last week, the latest migrants to complete an improbable new route to Europe.

Compared with the hundreds of thousands of people who made the trek to Europe last year through Turkey to Greece, the flow of refugees and migrants on the Arctic route through Russia -- first into Norway and later into Finland -- is tiny. But the stop-go traffic has added a hefty dose of geopolitical anxiety, not to mention intrigue, to a crisis that is tearing the European Union apart.

Belgium has conceded another blunder in its investigation into the plotters of the attacks last week on Brussels, appealing to the public for help and saying the real suspect remained at large.

When the family of Abdelhamid Abaaoud received word from Syria last fall that he had been killed fighting for the Islamic State, they rejoiced. But it hadn't happened.

One by one on Friday evening, all the ordinary reflexes, expectations and hopes of urban life fell away as tens of thousands of Parisians and visitors to their city confronted what President François Hollande would describe as a display of “absolute barbarity.”

One of the two brothers suspected of killing 12 people at a satirical newspaper in Paris traveled to Yemen in 2011 and received terrorist training from al-Qaida’s affiliate there before returning to France, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.

A Chinese businessman with deep pockets is looking to buy land in Norway, stirring speculation about moves by China to gain a permanent foothold in the Arctic.

Fred Schiphorst's workday begins unfailingly at 9 a.m. -- with two cans of beer, a down payment on a salary paid mostly in alcohol. He gets two more cans at lunch and then another can or, if all goes smoothly, two to round off a productive day.