STEVEN MYERS

Across wide swaths of Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State, with the goal of building a credible government, has set up a predatory and violent bureaucracy that wrings every last U.S. dollar, Iraqi dinar and Syrian pound it can from those who live under its control, or pass through its territory.

Russia's Defense Ministry announced new military operations in several regions near the Ukrainian border on Thursday, even as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany warned the Kremlin to abandon the politics of the 19th and 20th centuries or face diplomatic and economic retaliation from a united Europe.

The vigorous legal response by Russian authorities to a Greenpeace oil protest in the Arctic, including the seizure of its ship, appears to have caught Greenpeace off guard and left the crew's families and friends worried that the consequences of what the activists considered a peaceful protest could prove much graver than any expected when they set out.