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A fire at a luxury hotel in the Georgian Black Sea resort city of Batumi left 11 people dead and 21 others hurt, officials said Saturday. 

The fire erupted late Friday evening at the Leogrand Hotel and Casino where participants in the Miss Georgia 2017 beauty pageant were having dinner, Russia’s TASS news agency quoted the Georgian Interior Ministry as saying.  

All 20 participants escaped unhurt using a fire escape ladder, it said. At least 100 other guests and employees also escaped.  

Eleven people died and 21 were injured, the ministry reported. Those hurt included one Israeli and 12 Turkish nationals.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. 
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Pope Francis heads to Myanmar and Bangladesh with the international community excoriating Myanmar’s crackdown on Rohingya Muslims as “ethnic cleansing,” but his own church resisting the label and defending Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi as the only hope for democracy.

Francis will thus be walking a fraught diplomatic tightrope during the Nov. 27-Dec. 2 visit, which will include separate meetings with Aung San Suu Kyi, the powerful head of Myanmar’s military as well as a small group of Rohingya once Francis arrives in neighboring Bangladesh.

Francis has defined his papacy by his frequent denunciations of injustices committed against refugees, and he would be expected to speak out strongly against the Rohingya plight. But he is also the guest of Myanmar’s government and must look out for the well-being of his own tiny flock, a minority of 659,000 Catholics in the majority Buddhist nation of 51 million.

‘Interesting diplomatically’

“Let’s just say it’s very interesting diplomatically,” Vatican spokesman Greg Burke responded when asked if Francis’ 21st foreign trip would be his most difficult.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, an American Jesuit commentator, was more direct: “I have great admiration for the pope and his abilities, but someone should have talked him out of making this trip,” Reese wrote recently on Religion News Service.

Reese argued that Francis’ legacy as an uncompromising champion of the oppressed will come up against the harsh reality of blowback for Myanmar’s minority Christians if he goes too far in defending the Rohingya against the military’s “clearance operations” in Rakhine state.

“If he is prophetic, he puts Christians at risk,” Reese said. “If he is silent about the persecution of the Rohingya, he loses moral credibility.”

WATCH: Pope Francis Faces Diplomatic Challenges with Visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh

Term ‘Rohingya’ may be avoided

Francis isn’t known for his deference to protocol and he tends to call a spade a spade. But he has already been urged by the Catholic Church in Myanmar and his hand-picked cardinal, Charles Bo, to refrain from even using the term “Rohingya,” which is rejected by most in Myanmar.

“The pope clearly takes this advice seriously,” Burke said. “But we’ll see together.”

Francis has used the term “Rohingya” in the past, when he condemned the “persecution of our Rohingya brothers,” denounced their suffering and called for them to receive “full rights.”

Myanmar’s government and most of the Buddhist majority don’t recognize the Rohingya as an ethnic group, insisting they are Bengali migrants from Bangladesh living illegally in the country. It has denied them citizenship, even though they have lived in Myanmar, also known as Burma, for generations.

The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said Francis would likely call for a lasting solution for the Rakhine Muslims that takes into account “the importance for the people of having a nationality.” He declined in a Vatican Radio interview to use the term “Rohingya.”

Francis had originally intended his 2017 itinerary to involve a visit to India and Bangladesh. But preparations fell apart in India, and Myanmar was added in late, after Myanmar and the Holy See established diplomatic relations during a visit by Aung San Suu Kyi to Rome in May.

Since then, the situation on the ground has deteriorated badly, after Rohingya militants attacked security positions in poverty-wracked Rakhine in August. Myanmar security forces responded with a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages that the U.N., U.S. and human rights groups have labeled as textbook “ethnic cleansing.”

The Rev. Bernardo Cervellera, editor of the AsiaNews news agency that closely covers the Catholic Church in Asia, said he expected Francis would use the visit to help shore up Aung San Suu Kyi, whose international stature has suffered as a result of the crisis even though she is limited constitutionally in what she can say or do against the military.

“The question of the Rohingya is a ‘casus belli’ to eliminate the government of Aung Sang Suu Kyi,” Cervellera said. “If we take away Aung San Suu Kyi, the military dictatorship returns, which means setting all the minorities on fire.”

Francis will host an interfaith peace meeting in the garden of the Dhaka archbishops’ residence, at which a small group of Rohingya are expected.

Other highlights of the trip include Francis’ meeting with Myanmar’s Buddhist monks and encounters with Catholic youth capping the visit in each country.

The youth encounters “demonstrate that it’s a young church with hope,” Burke said.
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London police found no casualties Friday after investigating reports of shots fired at a busy subway station. Police initially responded as if the incident were terror-related, but later said they “have not located any trace of any suspects, evidence of shots fired or casualties.”
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Pope Francis is decrying those whipping up fear of migrants for political gain, and is urging people to view global migration as a peace-building opportunity and not as a threat. 

The message was issued Friday by the Vatican, in preparation for the Catholic church’s annual World Peace Day, which it marks on Jan. 1.

Without citing any nation, Francis said many countries have seen “the spread of rhetoric decrying the risks posed to national security or the high cost of welcoming new arrivals” of migrants. 

He added that those who “for what may be political reasons, foment fear of migrants instead of building peace are sowing violence, racial discrimination and xenophobia.”

Anti-migrant politics have been gaining influence in many places in Europe, including in the Vatican’s backyard in Italy.
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A U.S. company says it has been selling lethal weapons to Ukraine since last year, ahead of an expected decision by the Trump administration on whether to provide such weapons to Ukraine.

“We started delivering our product to Ukraine last year and we are continuing deliveries up until now,” said Richard Vandiver, Chief Operating Officer at the Texas company AirTronic, USA, in an interview with VOA’s Ukrainian service.

Vandiver said the sales have been limited to short-range defensive weapons, principally Precision Shoulder Fired Rocket launchers (PSRLs), which are a redesigned and updated version of the widely deployed Soviet RPG-7 anti-tank weapon. Ukraine is engaged in a struggle against Russian-trained and funded separatists in its eastern region and fears an armored assault.

“The ability to stop armored vehicles is essential for Ukraine to protect itself,” said General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 26.

Vandiver told VOA the PSRL should be considered a defensive weapon because of its limited range.

“Obviously, PSRL is a lethal system, but it’s a defensive lethal system,” Vandiver said. “The RPG-7 has the effective range of under a thousand meters.

“As long as the weapon system stays [in government-controlled territory], it’s not an offensive weapon, but if armor starts to cross the river than I would assume that the Ukrainian defense forces would employ our systems to stop the armor.”

The U.S. Congress has approved $350 million in security aid for Ukraine in its most recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including $47 million for defensive lethal weapons. The act awaits final approval in the House of Representatives before going to President Donald Trump for his signature.

Trump is reported to be considering a recommendation received from his National Security Council this week to provide lethal weaponry to Ukraine. The weapon considered most likely to be included is the shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank missile, which features a sophisticated self-guidance system and a range more than four times greater than the PSRL.

‘De facto embargo’

Any sales of lethal weaponry to Ukraine marks a reversal of a non-binding policy implemented under the administration of former president Barack Obama.

“In the formal sense, there is no embargo on Ukraine, but you could say that there is a de facto embargo,” said Michael Carpenter, senior director of the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania. “Formally speaking, [Obama] did not make a decision on sending weapons to Ukraine, so de facto that became an embargo.”

Any such U.S. military sales must be licensed by the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, which says it is restricted under federal regulations from commenting on commercial sales export licensing activity.

However, the department issues a list of defense articles and services that have been authorized as direct commercial sales each year. The most recent list shows that more than $26.9 million in military sales to Ukraine were authorized in 2016, with more than $17.6 million of that having been shipped.

More than $5 million of the authorized sales comprised lethal weaponry, mainly comprising firearms and ammunition. The report does not show how much of that was actually shipped.

AirTronic, US coordination

Vandiver declined to discuss exact details of the AirTronic supply contract with Ukraine, but he emphasized that the activities are conducted in “very close coordination with the U.S. Embassy, with the U.S. State Department, with the U.S. Pentagon and with the Ukrainian government.”

“It took quite a bit for us to secure authorizations that we needed, because of the sensitivity of the issue under Minsk II,” Vandiver said, adding that the lethal system is not banned by the agreement. The Minsk II agreement — brokered by Germany and France in negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko in February of 2015 — was aimed at limiting the fighting in the East of Ukraine, but has had only limited success. 

“We are very familiar with the accords that were reached in Europe under the treaties … and we abide by those,” he said. He added that AirTronic obtained an export license for the sale, “following the same application process as any defense contractor would follow.”

The Ukrainian government hopes to expand its purchases of lethal weapons from the U.S. substantially, and attaches great hope to the possibility that the White House will approve financial assistance for those purchases.

The $47 million in possible lethal aid for Ukraine included in the NDAA would allow Kyiv to obtain more powerful defensive weapons, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S. Valery Chaly told VOA.

“We hope that the bill [NDAA], which has been already approved by Congress, will be signed by President Trump. This would allow to unlock about $50 million in lethal defense assistance for Ukraine. The decision is with the U.S. president and then we will be talking about more powerful weapons,” Chaly said.

During his visit to Ukraine in August this year, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis rejected any suggestion that the provision of such weapons may be considered provocative by Russia. “Defensive weapons are not provocative unless you are an aggressor, and clearly Ukraine is not an aggressor since it is their own territory where the fighting is happening,” Mattis said.

Still, some analysts doubt that the Trump administration is willing to abandon the self-imposed restriction on lethal arms sales to Ukraine.

“I remain a pessimist on this,” said Carpenter, director of the Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania. However, he said, “I’ve long supported providing defensive arms to Ukraine. I think this is the right thing to do. It’s the moral thing to do and also the strategic thing to do for the United States, because it would deter further Russia aggression.”
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Pope Francis on Thursday evening led a special prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica for peace in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Earlier this year, he said he was studying the possibility of going to South Sudan, which has been beset by famine and civil war. But he told the faithful during the service that that wasn’t possible.

Francis said that “with prayer we want to sow seeds of peace” in South Sudan and Congo. He called for courageous peace efforts through dialogue and negotiations.

Peace talks are aimed at finding a resolution to South Sudan’s civil war, which has lasted nearly four years.

In DRC, tensions over the continued tenure of President Joseph Kabila, whose official mandate ended in December 2016, have fueled deadly demonstrations. An election official recently said the presidential vote wouldn’t be held until late 2018.
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A separatist leader in Ukraine’s east on Thursday accused a former official of trying to unseat him as a showdown between the two entered its third day.

Breaking almost a week of silence, Igor Plotnitsky, leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, claimed that former Interior Minister Igor Kornet “tried to seize power by force.”

“It seems that a small man harbored big ambitions,” Plotnitsky said on the separatist television station, adding that he intended to “resolve the conflict with the help of the law.”

More than 10,000 people have been killed and a million displaced in a long-simmering conflict between separatists in Luhansk and in parts of the neighboring Donetsk region since 2014. Parts of the two regions have been under separatist control since spring 2014, and the area has been plagued with infighting among various armed groups and warlords.

Suspicious deaths

Several high-profile commanders have been killed in the region in suspicious circumstances in what was widely viewed as power struggle. While the unruly commanders were dying in car bombings, the leadership of the rebel-controlled parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions came to be dominated by bureaucrats with ties to ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The showdown between Plotnitsky and Kornet began on Tuesday with dozens of armed people loyal to Kornet surrounding the main administrative buildings in the regional capital, Luhansk. A convoy of armed vehicles entered the city in the middle of the night in a show of support for Kornet.

In a video released on Thursday, the ousted interior minister lashed out at Plotnitsky, suggesting that “the republic’s leadership” was under the influence of Ukrainian spies. Kornet also acknowledged that he was receiving military support from the neighboring separatist Donetsk People’s Republic.

The rebels originally sought to join Russia but the Kremlin stopped short of annexing the area or publicizing its military support for the rebels. It is widely assumed that Moscow provides the rebels with weapons and funding.
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Hungary’s parliament has banned a camerawoman from working on the premises after she insulted a lawmaker during an interview.

Parliament press chief Zoltan Szilagyi said Thursday in a statement that Petra Laszlo’s ban would be enforced for the rest of the current legislative period, which ends in mid-December.

In January, Laszlo was sentenced to three years’ probation for disorderly conduct after she was filmed kicking and trying to trip migrants on the border with Serbia in 2015.

Laszlo, who works for a pro-government website, could be seen on video arguing Monday with Gyorgy Szilagyi from the far-right Jobbik party.

Szilagyi said he did not want to talk to reporters from pestisracok.hu because he considered them government “propagandists.”

During the 2015 incident, Laszlo was working for N1TV, which is close to Jobbik.
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France is seeking an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the alleged sale of African migrants as slaves.

President Emmanuel Macron called the video footage aired last week by U.S. news network CNN “scandalous” and “unacceptable.”

“It is a crime against humanity,” Macron said after meeting with African Union chief Alpha Conde. “I hope we can go much further in the fight against traffickers who commit such crimes, and cooperate with all the countries in the network to dismantle these networks.”

CNN aired footage of an apparent auction where black men were presented to buyers as potential farmhands and sold off for as little as $400. The video sparked international outrage, with protests erupting across Europe and Africa.

The UNSC meeting will likely be next week, a French diplomat said.

On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was horrified and that the auctions should be investigated as possible crimes against humanity.

Criticism of EU

Human rights groups have criticized the European Union for pressuring Libya into stopping the flow of migrants to Europe.

Conde also put the blame on the European Union, accusing it of encouraging the Libyans to keep migrants in the North African country despite there being no single, universally recognized government.

“What happened in Libya is shocking, scandalous, but we must establish the responsibilities,” Conde said. “In Libya, there is no government, so the European Union can not choose a developing country and ask that country to detain refugees … when it doesn’t have the means to do so.”

Human rights groups have said the increased vigilance by Libyan maritime forces has forced the migrant smugglers to look for ways to unload their human cargo that can’t be transported to Europe.
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Facebook Inc. said Wednesday that it would build a web page to allow users to see which Russian propaganda accounts they have liked or followed, after U.S. lawmakers demanded that the social network be more open about the reach of the accounts.

U.S. lawmakers called the announcement a positive step. The web page, though, would fall short of their demands that Facebook individually notify users about Russian propaganda posts or ads they were exposed to.

Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Twitter Inc. are facing a backlash after saying Russians used their services to anonymously spread divisive messages among Americans in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. elections.

U.S. lawmakers have criticized the tech firms for not doing more to detect the alleged election meddling, which the Russian government denies involvement in.

Facebook says the propaganda came from the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization that according to lawmakers and researchers employs hundreds of people to push pro-Kremlin content under phony social media accounts.

As many as 126 million people could have been served posts on Facebook and 20 million on Instagram, the company says. Facebook has since deactivated the accounts.

Available by year’s end

Facebook, in a statement, said it would let people see which pages or accounts they liked or followed between January 2015 and August 2017 that were affiliated with the Internet Research Agency.

The tool will be available by the end of the year as “part of our ongoing effort to protect our platforms and the people who use them from bad actors who try to undermine our democracy,” Facebook said.

The web page will show only a list of accounts, not the posts or ads affiliated with them, according to a mock-up. U.S. lawmakers have separately published some posts.

It was not clear whether Facebook would eventually do more, such as sending individualized notifications to users.

Lawmakers at congressional hearings this month suggested that Facebook might have an obligation to notify people who accessed deceptive foreign government material.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who had asked for notifications, said Facebook’s plan “seems to be a serious response” to his request.

“My hope is that it will be a responsible first step towards protecting against future assaults on its platform,” he said in a statement.

Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, called it a “very positive step” and said lawmakers look forward to additional steps by tech companies to improve transparency.
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The disappearance this month of an Argentine navy submarine with 44 crew aboard showed the perils that submariners face. Although submarine disasters are rare, here are some of the worst of recent decades.

Kursk catastrophe

On August 12, 2000, the Russian guided missile submarine K-141 Kursk sank to the floor of Barents Sea after two explosions in its bow. All 118 men aboard the nuclear-powered sub died. After recovering the remains of the dead from the sub, officials determined that 23 crew members, including the Kursk’s commander, had survived the initial accident before suffocating.

Sinking of the K-8

A fire that broke out aboard the Soviet attack submarine K-8 on April 8, 1970, disabled the nuclear-powered vessel in the Bay of Biscay, forcing the crew to abandon ship. The crew boarded the sub again after a rescue vessel arrived. But the sub sank while under tow in heavy seas, taking 52 submariners with it.

The Scorpion vanishes

In May 1968, the U.S. Navy nuclear-powered attack submarine Scorpion disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean with 99 men aboard. The wreckage was found in October about 400 miles (644 kilometers) southwest of the Azores islands, more than 10,000 feet (3,050 meters) below the surface. There have been several theories about the disaster: It may have involved the accidental release of a torpedo that circled back and hit the Scorpion, an explosion of the sub’s huge battery, or even a collision with a Soviet sub.

The sinking of K-129

The K-129, a nuclear-powered Soviet ballistic missile submarine, sank on March 8, 1968, in the Pacific Ocean, taking all 98 crewmen with it. The Soviet navy failed to locate the vessel. A U.S. Navy submarine found it northwest of the Hawaiian island of Oahu at a depth of about 16,000 feet (4,900 meters). A deep-sea drill ship, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, was able to salvage part of the sub in a secret operation. The remains of six Soviet crewmen found in the sub were buried at sea.

The Thresher implosion

On April 10, 1963, the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered attack submarine Thresher was lost with all 129 men aboard. The sub broke apart in 8,400 feet (2,560 meters) of water during deep-dive trials southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. According to U.S. military reviews of the accident, the most likely explanation is that a pipe joint in an engine room seawater system gave way, shorting out electronics and triggering a shutdown of the vessel’s reactor that left it without enough power to stop itself from sinking.

K-19: nuclear accident

The K-19, one of the first two Soviet nuclear ballistic missile submarines, had been plagued by breakdowns and accidents before its launch. During its first voyage, on July 4, 1961, the sub suffered a complete loss of coolant to its reactor off the southeast coast of Greenland. The vessel’s engineering crew sacrificed their lives to jury-rig an emergency coolant system. Twenty-two of the 139 men aboard died of radiation exposure. The remaining 117 suffered varying degrees of radiation illness. The accident was depicted in the 2002 movie K-19: The Widowmaker.
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The United Nations’ Yugoslav war crimes tribunal ruled Wednesday former Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic is guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

The court convicted Mladic on 10 of the 11 charges he faced, including persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, terror and unlawful attacks on civilians. He was sentenced to life in prison.

“The crimes committed rank among the most heinous to humankind, and include genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity,” judge Alphons Orie said in reading the verdict.

Genocide

The court said Mladic intended to destroy the Bosnian Muslim population in Srebrenica, and in Sarajevo personally directed a campaign of shelling and sniping meant to spread terror and perpetrate murder among civilians.

It also cited as a window into his motivations his expressions of a commitment to seek an ethnically homogenous Bosnian Serb republic.

Mladic appeared in the courtroom, but was not present as Orie read the verdict. He requested a bathroom break partway through Wednesday’s session, which was granted for five minutes but stretched on for 45 minutes.

When the proceedings resumed, his lawyer said Mladic’s blood pressure was dangerously high and requested the judge either stop reading the verdict or skip ahead to the court’s judgment.

Orie said the proceedings would go on as planned, at which point Mladic started yelling until he was ordered removed from the courtroom.

‘Butcher of Bosnia’

After the verdict, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein praised the court’s decision as a “momentous victory for justice” and the “epitome of what international justice is all about.”

“Today’s verdict is a warning to the perpetrators of such crimes that they will not escape justice, no matter how powerful they may be nor how long it may take,” Zeid said in a statement.

WATCH: ICTY Hands Down Mladic Verdict 

Mladic, known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” is the last former military leader to face war crimes charges in the court, which was set up to deal with the aftermath of the Bosnian war that raged from 1992 through 1995.

He was charged with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged role in leading sniper campaigns in Sarajevo and the 1995 killings of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica — the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.

Prosecutors asked the International Criminal Tribunal to sentence Mladic to life in prison. Last year, attorney Alan Tieger said anything less than a life sentence would be “an insult to the victims, living and dead, and an affront to justice.”

Mladic’s defense lawyer, Dragan Ivetic, accused prosecutors of seeking to make the former general a “symbolic sacrificial lamb for the perceived guilt” of all Serbs during the war. He called for Mladic, 75, to be acquitted on all charges.

At the end of the war in 1995, Mladic went into hiding and lived in obscurity in Serbia, protected by family and elements of the security forces.

Mladic was indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity but evaded justice for 16 years. He was eventually tracked down and arrested at a cousin’s house in rural northern Serbia in 2011.

The Bosnian Serbs’ political leader, Radovan Karadzic, was found guilty of war crimes in March 2016 and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
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Ahead of the judgement Wednesday of Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, here is a timeline of the 1990s Balkans conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.

– Bickering after Tito dies –

Communist Yugoslavia, which emerged shortly after the end of World War II, was made up of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

Following the death of its autocratic leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, the Yugoslav federation found itself in crisis, with bickering between ethnic groups and surging nationalist sentiments.

By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, inter-ethnic relations in Yugoslavia were at breaking point. The first multiparty elections in the republics in 1990 were won mostly by nationalists.

The most prosperous republics, Slovenia and Croatia, started advocating a greater decentralization of Yugoslavia’s government.

But the largest republic, Serbia, led by Slobodan Milosevic, rallied fellow Serbs throughout Yugoslavia in a push for centralized control.

– Slovenia and Croatia declare independence –

On June 25, 1991, the parliaments of Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, which led to the deployment of the Belgrade-controlled Yugoslav army (JNA) towards affected borders and airports.

After a 10-day conflict, the JNA withdrew from ethnically homogeneous Slovenia.

But in Croatia, Serbian troops sided with ethnic Serb rebels who opposed independence, launching what would become a four-year war.

The eastern town of Vukovar was razed to the ground during a siege by Yugoslav forces in autumn 1991, while the medieval Adriatic town of Dubrovnik was severely damaged.

– Bosnian referendum –

In Bosnia, the most ethnically and religiously diverse republic and home to four million people, Muslims and Croats organized an independence referendum.

The move was fiercely opposed by Belgrade-backed Bosnian Serbs, who made up more than 30 percent of the population.

While Serbs boycotted the vote, 60 percent of Bosnia’s citizens voted for independence.

– Bosnian war –

In April 1992 war broke out between Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats, who were on one side, and Bosnian Serbs. Bosnia won international recognition a day later.

Led by Radovan Karadzic and armed by the JNA, the Serbs declared that territories under their control belonged to an entity called Republika Srpska.

Soon after, Bosnian Croats turned against the republic’s Muslims.

– Siege of Sarajevo –

Bosnian Serb troops immediately started a siege of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo which would last 44 months.

The city’s 350,000 residents struggled to get basic necessities and at least 10,000 were killed by sniping and shelling by Serbs.

By May 1992 Bosnian Serbs controlled two-thirds of Bosnia.

– Ethnic cleansing –

In August the first images of skeletal prisoners in camps awoke the world to the campaign of ethnic cleansing by Serb forces.

An estimated 20,000 women, mostly Muslims, were raped.

– Srebrenica massacre –

In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces took over the UN-protected “safe area” of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and massacred up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

Described by two international courts as genocide, the massacre was the worst mass killing in Europe since the end of World War II.

– NATO airstrikes, Dayton agreement –

In August 1995, after the fall of Srebrenica and the bombing of a Sarajevo market in which 41 people were killed, NATO unleashed airstrikes on Bosnian Serb positions.

On November 21, 1995, following three weeks of talks in the US city of Dayton, Ohio, the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia agreed to a peace deal.

In December 1995 a NATO peacekeeping force was deployed in Bosnia, which had been divided into a Muslim-Croat Federation, covering 51 percent of the territory, and a Serb entity, the Republika Srpska.

– The Kosovo conflict –

War then broke out in 1998 in Serbia’s southern province of Kosovo between ethnic Albanian rebels seeking independence and Serbia’s armed forces.

The fighting ended in 1999 after an 11-week bombing campaign by NATO, by which time about 13,000 people had been killed and hundreds of thousands had fled their homes.

Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move Serbia refuses to recognize.

– Legal postscript –

The International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia, established in 1993, has continued prosecuting those responsible for war crimes since the end of the conflicts.

It has indicted 161 people, convicted 83 and acquitted 19. Among those sentenced is Bosnian Serb wartime leader Karadzic, while Milosevic died in prison before being judged.

The court is scheduled to close down on December 31, and a separate tribunal has been set up to handle remaining appeals and other issues.
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The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is set to hand down a verdict in the case against former General Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb wartime commander charged with crimes in the 1990s ethnic conflict in Bosnia. Hero for many Serbs and a criminal known as “the Butcher of Bosnia” for many others, Mladic will hear his verdict on Wednesday after five years in jail and almost 16 years on the run. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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The White House said President Donald Trump talked with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, a day after the Russian leader held discussions with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad about a political resolution to end nearly seven years of fighting in Syria.

Trump and Putin spoke informally several times last week when they both were attending a Southeast Asia summit in Vietnam. Among other issues, they discussed principles for the future of war-wracked Syria, where about 400,000 people have been killed and millions of refugees have been forced to flee their homes because of the fighting.

The Kremlin said Tuesday it called Assad to the Black Sea resort of Sochi for talks with Putin about Russia’s peace proposals for Syria, ahead of Putin’s summit Wednesday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Russia has bolstered Assad’s rule with airstrikes since late 2015 against groups trying to overthrow his regime, with Iranian fighters also supporting Damascus, and Turkey backing the Syrian opposition.

His power ensured, Asssad said he expressed his gratitude to Putin “for all of the efforts that Russia made to save our country.”

Putin, according to the Kremlin, told Assad Russia’s “military operation is coming to an end. Thanks to the Russian army, Syria has been saved as a state. Much has been done to stabilize the situation in Syria.”

He praised Assad, predicting terrorism would suffer an “inevitable” defeat in Syria.

The Kremlin quoted Assad as saying, “It is in our interest to advance the political process. … We don’t want to look back. And we are ready for dialogue with all those who want to come up with a political settlement.”

U.N.-led peace talks about Syria are scheduled for November 28 in Geneva.
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On November 5, more than 50,000 runners and two million spectators turned out for the New York Marathon. The event took place just a few days after a lone attacker drove a van into cyclists and pedestrians beside a busy Manhattan highway, killing eight people.

Security was beefed up for the marathon: sand-filled sanitation trucks were deployed at key intersections to block vehicles, while hundreds of extra police backed by sniffer dogs and snipers were positioned along the 21-kilometer route.

The precautions underline the changing nature of the terror threat, 16 years after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks on the same city.

“They are moving towards the lower technology attacks, using knives, using vehicles, and using weapons that they can perhaps purchase on the black market but not have to make themselves,” said leading counter-terror analyst Brooke Rogers of Kings College, London.

He said, beyond short-term, enhanced security, an urban environment can adapt.

“For example, by having blast-proof glass installed in these grand glass structures. Or having different security measures, physical security measures – some of that could be scanning technology, some of it could be CCTV (closed circuit television) based, but also human measures, in terms of the staff not only walking around the perimeter, walking around inside with highly visible uniforms, but also staff who are less visible,” said Rogers.

In France, thousands of extra security personnel including soldiers have been deployed since the 2015 Paris attacks. But Rogers notes they have themselves become targets for terrorists.

London has installed physical barriers to separate vehicles and pedestrians in the wake of this year’s vehicle attacks in Westminster and on London Bridge. Permanent protection has been built around government buildings, with some of it adapted into street furniture like benches. But sectioning off every walkway is simply not practical.

“The amount of engineering that goes into those can cost millions of dollars. But we have to be careful because everything that we secure means that we are then turning the attention of these terrorist groups to softer targets,” said Rogers.

As a result, more attention is being given to educating the public. Since 2010 the U.S. Department for Homeland Security has been running an awareness campaign titled, “If you see something, say something”. In London, the mantra is similar: “See It, Say It, Sorted.”

British authorities have also issued a campaign on what to do if you’re caught in a terror attack – summarized as “Run, Hide, Tell.”

Rogers says such campaigns aren’t pushed hard enough by authorities. “They’re very anxious that if they start making people think about that type of attack in the public places, that they’re going to frighten them and maybe scare them away. We have a lot of evidence that suggests that that is not the case. It doesn’t have a significant impact in terms of the perceived threat at all and in fact it builds higher levels of trust.”

Increasingly, security services see public awareness as a key line of defense against the changing terror threat.

 
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The Vatican and China will exchange paintings, vases and sculptures in a bid to mend often strained ties through “the diplomacy of art”, officials said on Tuesday.

Forty works from the Vatican will go on show in Beijing’s Forbidden City and 40 from China in the Vatican Museums in unprecedented simultaneous exhibitions in March, art chiefs from both countries told a news conference.

“It will be an event that overcomes borders and time and that unites different cultures and civilizations,” Zhu Jiancheng, the head of the government-backed China Culture Investment Fund, said.

“It will strengthen the friendship between China and the Vatican and it will favor the normalization of diplomatic relations,” he said of the project, in which each side will loan art works to the other.

Relations between the Vatican and Beijing have been strained for decades.

Chinese Catholics are divided between those loyal to the pope – the so-called “underground Church” – and those who belong to state-backed Church known as The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

The main dispute blocking diplomatic ties is the Vatican’s insistence that the pope – and not the government – be responsible for appointing bishops.

Pope Francis and his predecessors Benedict and John Paul have tried to improve relations with Beijing, whose communist party severed relations in 1951. But efforts at agreement have often stalled.

“With no fear and no barriers, beauty and art are truly a vehicle of dialogue,” said Barbara Jatta, the director of the Vatican Museums.

“This is the key of the success that we, at the Vatican Museums, love to call the ‘diplomacy of art’,” said Jatta, the first woman to head the museums, which receive about six million visitors a year.

The simultaneous shows reminiscent of the “ping-pong diplomacy” of the early 1970s, when China and the United States each hosted national teams of the sport as a prelude to President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing in 1972.

Jatta told Reuters that for the Beijing exhibition, experts would select 39 works of art that originated in China and are now in the Vatican’s Anima Mundi (Soul of the World) ethnological collection, which numbers 80,000 pieces, 20,000 of them Chinese.

“In a sense, 39 of them will be going back home,” she said.

The 40th piece would be an object of Western European Christian art, a painting which has not yet been selected.

The Chinese art works displayed in the Vatican will be 10 paintings by contemporary Chinese artist Zhang Yan and 30 works of art from China’s state collections representing various periods of Chinese history.

 
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The European Union went back to its roots Monday by picking cities from two of its founding nations — France and the Netherlands — to host key agencies that will have move once Britain leaves the bloc in 2019.

During voting so tight they were both decided by a lucky draw, EU members except Britain chose Amsterdam over Italy’s Milan as the new home of the European Medicines Agency and Paris over Dublin to host the European Banking Authority. Both currently are located in London.

“We needed to draw lots in both cases,” Estonian EU Affairs Minister Matti Maasikas, who chaired the meeting and in both cases made the decisive selection from a big transparent bowl.

Frankfurt, home of the European Central Bank, surprisingly failed to become one of the two finalists competing for the banking agency.

The relocations made necessary by the referendum to take Britain out of the EU are expected to cost the country over 1,000 jobs directly and more in secondary employment.

The outcomes of the votes also left newer EU member states in eastern and southern Europe with some bitterness. Several had hoped to be tapped for a lucrative prize that would be a sign the bloc was truly committed to outreach.

Some 890 top jobs will leave Britain for Amsterdam with the European Medicines Agency, giving the Dutch a welcome economic boost and more prestige. The EMA is responsible for the evaluation, supervision and monitoring of medicines. The Paris-bound European Banking Authority, which has around 180 staff members, monitors the regulation and supervision of Europe’s banking sector.

After a heated battle for the medicines agency, Amsterdam and Milan both had 13 votes Monday. That left Estonia, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, to break the tie with a draw from the bowl. Copenhagen finished third, ahead of Slovakian capital Bratislava in the vote involving EU nations excluding Britain. One country abstained in the vote.

“A solid bid that was defeated only by a draw. What a mockery,” Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said on Twitter.

Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra was elated.

“It is a fantastic result,” he said. “It shows that we can deal with the impact of Brexit”

The European Medicines Agency has less than 17 months to complete the move, but Amsterdam was considered ideally suited because of its location, the building it had on offer and other facilities.

Even though rules were set up to make it a fair decision, the process turned into a deeply political contest.

Zijlstra said that “in the end, it is a very strategic game of chess.”
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Germany has been plunged into political crisis after coalition talks between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and two smaller parties broke down. Analysts say the indecisive election result in September has revealed a splintering of German society and politics, posing a serious challenge to Chancellor Merkel. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the political chaos could have a much wider impact on issues like climate talks and European Union reform.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would prefer a new election to ruling with a minority after talks on forming a three-way coalition failed overnight, but Germany’s president told parties they owed it to voters to try

to form a government.

The major obstacle to a three-way deal was immigration, according to Merkel, who was forced into negotiations after bleeding support in the September 24 election to the far right in a backlash at her 2015 decision to let in over 1 million migrants.

The failure of exploratory coalition talks involving her conservative bloc, the liberal pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens raises the prospect of a new election and casts doubt about her future after 12 years in power.

Merkel, 63, said she was skeptical about ruling in a minority government, telling ARD television: “My point of view is that new elections would be the better path.”

Watch related video by Henry Ridgwell

Her plans did not include being chancellor in a minority government, she said after meeting President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Steinmeier said Germany was facing the worst governing crisis in the 68-year history of its post-World War Two democracy and pressed all parties in parliament “to serve our country” and try to form a government.

His remarks appeared aimed at the FDP and the Social Democrats (SPD), who on Monday ruled out renewing their “grand coalition” with the conservatives.

“Inside our country, but also outside, in particular in our European neighbourhood, there would be concern and a lack of understanding if politicians in the biggest and economically strongest country [in Europe] did not live up to their responsibilities,” read a statement from Steinmeier, a former foreign minister who has been thrust center-stage after taking on the usually largely ceremonial head of state role in March.

Steinmeier’s intervention suggests he regards a new election — desired by half of Germany’s voters according to a poll — as a last resort. The SPD has so far stuck to a pledge after heavy losses in the September election not to go back into a Merkel-led broad coalition of center-left and center-right.

Merkel urged the SPD to reconsider. “I would hope that they consider very intensively if they should take on the responsibility” of governing, she told broadcaster ZDF, adding she saw no reason to resign and her conservative bloc would enter any new election more unified than before.

“If new elections happened, then … we have to accept that. I’m afraid of nothing,” she said.

Business leaders also called for a swift return to talks. With German leadership seen as crucial for a European Union grappling with governance reform and Britain’s impending exit, FDP leader Christian Lindner’s announcement that he was pulling out spooked investors and sent the euro falling in the morning.

Both the euro and European shares later recovered from earlyselling, while German bond yields steadied near 1-1/2 week lows, as confidence about the outlook for the euro zone economy helped investors brush off worries about the risk of Germany going to the polls again soon.

Fear of far-right gains

Earlier, Merkel got the strong backing of her CDU leadership. Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of Germany weekly Die Zeit said she could rely on CDU support for now, but added: “I will not bet on her serving out her entire four-year term.”

The main parties fear another election so soon would let the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party add to the 13 percent of votes it secured in September, when it entered parliament for the first time. Polls suggest a repeat election would return a similarly fragmented parliament.

A poll published on Monday showed a new election would bring roughly the same result as the September election, with the Greens set to see the biggest gains.

If Germans voted next Sunday, Merkel’s conservatives would get 31 percent, the SPD 21 percent, the Greens and the AfD both 12 percent, the FDP 10 percent and the Left party 9 percent, the Forsa survey for RTL television showed.

This compares with the election result of 32.9 percent for the conservatives, 20.5 percent for the SPD, 12.6 percent for AfD, 10.7 percent for FDP, 9.2 percent for the Left party and 8.9 percent for the Greens.

The failure of coalition talks is unprecedented in Germany’s post-war history, and was likened by newsmagazine Der Spiegel to the shock election of U.S. President Donald Trump or Britain’s referendum vote to leave the EU — moments when countries cast aside reputations for stability built up over decades.

Any outcome in Germany is, however, likely to be more consensus driven. “The problem is stagnation and immobility, not instability as in Italy,” said Joffe.

The unraveling of the German talks came as a surprise since the main sticking points – immigration and climate policy — were not seen as FDP signature issues.

Responding to criticism from the Greens, FDP vice chairman Wolfgang Kubicki said a tie-up would have been short-lived. “Nothing would be worse than to get into a relationship about which we know that it will end in a dirty divorce,” he said.

Even if the SPD or the FDP revisit their decisions, the price for either party to change its mind could be the departure of Merkel, who since 2005 has been a symbol of German stability, leading Europe through the euro zone crisis.

The inability to form a government caused disquiet elsewhere in Europe, not least because of the implications for the euro zone reforms championed by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Germany’s political impasse could also complicate and potentially delay the Brexit negotiations — Britain has just over a year to strike a divorce deal with the EU ahead of an exit planned for March 29, 2019.

“It’s not in our interests that the process freezes up,” Macron told reporters in Paris, adding he had spoken with Merkel shortly after the failure of talks.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she will consult Monday with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier after weeks of talks to form a coalition government fell apart with one potential partner withdrawing from the process.

“It is at least a day of deep reflection on how to go forward in Germany,” Merkel told reporters. “But I will do everything possible to ensure that this country will be well led through these difficult weeks.”

She spoke after the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) decided to exit a possible coalition with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, along with the left-leaning Greens.

FDP leader Christian Lindner said his party opted to withdraw rather than compromise its principles and agree to policies it does not completely support.

“It is better not to govern than to govern falsely,” Lindner said.

The parties have clashed on several issues, including immigration and the environment.

With the failure of the coalition talks, Germany could be headed to new elections. Merkel could still try to form a minority government, or try to convince the Social Democratic Party to change its mind and continue as a junior coalition partner in a new government.

But the Social Democrats have said since a disappointing result in the September election that they would be heading to the opposition.
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One-third of the newest crop of Rhodes Scholars from the United States are African-Americans, the most ever elected in a U.S. Rhodes class.

Of the 100 Rhodes Scholars chosen worldwide for advanced study at Oxford in Britain each year, 32 come from the United States, and this time, 10 of those are African Americans. One of them is Simone Askew, the first black female student to head the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy.

Other American scholars include a transgender man and students from U.S. colleges that had never had a student win a spot in the Rhodes program.

The Rhodes Scholar program is the most prestigious available to American students, but it had been criticized for excluding women and blacks until the 1970s.

The scholarship program was set up in 1902 by Cecil Rhodes, a wealthy British philanthropist for whom the nation of Rhodesia was named.  After a civil war removed Rhodesia’s white-minority government, that nation was renamed Zimbabwe.  

 
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Germany’s would-be coalition partners appeared to have reached an impasse over immigration policy as a self-imposed Sunday evening deadline for agreeing the outlines of a government program passed with no deal.

A deadline of 1700 GMT passed with no announcement being made, suggesting Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens had been unable to agree the painful compromises needed to wrap up talks, which appear set to continue.

The reluctant partners were forced to pursue the three-way tie-up, untested at national level, by voters who deserted the main parties of left and right in a September election, returning a highly fragmented parliament.

Failure could precipitate Germany’s worst political crisis in decades, since the Social Democrats (SPD) have already said they intend to go into opposition after coming second. Options include new elections or a minority government, unprecedented in the country’s post-war history.

“Everyone has to take a success back home,” said Julia Kloeckner, deputy chair of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), highlighting the difficulty of compromise. “People must ask themselves if they are prepared for this to fail over details.”

Strange bedfellows

The tie-up represents Merkel’s only realistic chance of securing a fourth term. But the FDP, freshly returned to parliament after four years in the wilderness, and the Greens, out of power for 12 years, are reluctant to put their hard-won return at risk by alienating their rank-and-file.

“The FDP is now waiting for the Greens and the conservatives to see how far they are prepared to go and if we can then look each other in the eye,” said Greens chairwoman Nicola Beer, suggesting it was now for the others to make concessions.

For Merkel’s own arch-conservative allies in Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU), the stakes are existential. The CSU fears that a failure to secure an immigration cap could fuel a far-right surge in a regional election next year, perhaps even unseating the CSU after 60 years in power.

While the FDP continues to demand tax cuts, the trickiest sticking point concerns immigration, where the CSU insists on capping new arrivals at 200,000 a year.

The cap is opposed by the Greens, who also want to preserve a rule allowing successful asylum seekers to bring family members to join them – though the CDU’s Kloeckner implored the Greens to acknowledge this as only a “subsidiary right”.

Failure to reach a deal could lead to a new election, something all the parties are anxious to avoid as they fear this could lead to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) making further gains after surging into parliament in September.
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Brexit is still well over year away but two European cities on Monday will already be celebrating Britain’s departure from the European Union.

Two major EU agencies now in London — the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Authority — must move to a new EU city because Britain is leaving the bloc. The two prizes are being hotly fought over by most of the EU’s other 27 nations.

Despite all the rigid rules and conditions the bloc imposed to try to make it a fair, objective decision, the process has turned into a deeply political beauty contest — part Olympic host city bidding, part Eurovision Song Contest.

It will culminate in a secret vote Monday at EU headquarters in Brussels that some say could be tainted by vote trading.

The move involves tens of millions in annual funding, about 1,000 top jobs with many more indirectly linked, prestige around the world and plenty of bragging rights for whichever leader can bring home the agencies.

“I will throw my full weight behind this,” French President Emmanuel Macron said when he visited Lille, which is seeking to host the EMA once Britain leaves in the EU in March 2019. “Now is the final rush.”

At an EU summit Friday in Goteborg, Sweden, leaders were lobbying each other to get support for their bids.

The EMA is responsible for the scientific evaluation, supervision and safety monitoring of medicines in the EU. It has around 890 staff and hosts more than 500 scientific meetings every year, attracting about 36,000 experts.

The EBA, which has around 180 staff, monitors the regulation and supervision of Europe’s banking sector.

With bids coming in from everywhere — from the newest member states to the EU’s founding nations — who gets what agency will also give an indication of EU’s future outlook.

The EU was created as club of six founding nations some 60 years ago, so it’s logical that a great many key EU institutions are still in nations like Germany, France and Belgium. But as the bloc kept expanded east and south into the 21st century, these new member states see a prime opportunity now to claim one of these cherished EU headquarters, which cover everything from food safety to judicial cooperation to fisheries policy.

Romania and Bulgaria were the last to join the EU in 2007 and have no headquarters. Both now want the EMA — as does the tiny island nation of Malta.

“We deserve this. Because as we all know, Romania is an EU member with rights and obligations equal with all the rest of the member states,” said Rodica Nassar of Romania’s Healthcare Ministry.

But personnel at the EMA and EBA are highly skilled professionals, and many could be reluctant to move their careers and families from London to less prestigious locations.

“You have to imagine, for example, for the banking authority, which relies on basically 200 very high-level experts in banking regulatory matters to move to another place,” said Karel Lannoo of the CEPS think tank. “First of all, to motivate these people to move elsewhere. And then if you don’t manage to motivate these people, to find competent experts in another city.”

As the vote nears, Milan and Bratislava are the favorites to win the EMA, with Frankfurt, and perhaps Dublin, leading the way for the EBA.

 
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When Britain’s 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth married 26-year-old Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in 1947, the wedding sparked joy and celebration in a country just recovering from World War II. 

Seven decades on, the couple who would become Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, both now in their 90s, are still going strong, their marriage a bedrock in British public life amid a world of change.

On Monday, they mark their 70th wedding anniversary, though officials say the milestone will be celebrated privately and no public events are planned. The royal family is reportedly marking the date with a gathering at Windsor Castle. 

The queen is the first monarch in British history to celebrate a platinum wedding anniversary. 

At their 50th wedding anniversary, Elizabeth praised her husband as “quite simply… my strength and stay all these years.”

Elizabeth first met Philip, a naval officer and the son of Prince Andrew of Greece, as they attended the wedding of Philip’s cousin in 1934. 

The pair wed at Westminster Abbey in London on Nov. 20, 1947. It would be nearly another six years before Elizabeth would be crowned as monarch, also at Westminster Abbey. 

In the decades that followed, Philip, who also holds the title Duke of Edinburgh, spent almost the entire duration of their marriage supporting his wife in her role as head of state. Both have cut back on their public engagements in recent years, and Philip retired from official duties earlier this year. 

The royal couple has four children, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
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Ukraine has summoned the Polish ambassador in Kyiv after Poland denied entry to a Ukrainian official in an escalation of a diplomatic spat over the two neighbors’ troubled past.

Poland’s decision to refused entry on Saturday to the head of Ukraine’s commemoration commission, Svyatoslav Sheremet, was in response to a ban imposed earlier this year by Kyiv on the exhumation of Poles killed in Ukraine during World War II, Polish state news agency PAP reported.

“The Ukrainian side has complained that Mr. Sheremet was not allowed into Poland,” Poland’s ambassador to Kyiv, Jan Pieklo, told PAP after the meeting with Ukrainian authorities.

“I have been also informed that this is a problem that concerns the restarting of exhumations because Sheremet is the person responsible for this,” Pieklo said, adding that both sides had agreed that the exhumations should be restarted.

In an apparent effort to mend ties, representatives of the Polish and Ukrainian presidents said on Friday that they “reconfirmed their commitment to strengthening the strategic partnership.”

“The parties agreed that the ban on the search and exhumation works in Ukraine should be lifted,” the statement published Friday said.

The denial of entry to Sheremet came after the Polish foreign minister said earlier in November that Poland would bar Ukrainians with “anti-Polish views.”

Poland last year passed a resolution that declared the World War II-era killing of about 100,000 Polish men, women and children by units in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) “genocide.”

Ukraine rejects that label, saying the killings were a result of bilateral hostilities.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc and two smaller parties pushed Saturday to find agreement on climate change and immigration, with an eye on producing compromises by weekend’s end so they can move ahead with talks on building a ruling coalition.

Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and sister Bavarian-only Christian Social Union parties met throughout the day with the pro-business Free Democrats and the traditionally left-leaning Greens. The four parties are trying to establish the framework for a coalition never before tried at the national level.

They had hoped to agree Thursday whether to start formal coalition negotiations, but said they now are aiming for a resolution before Monday.

The Greens have faced opposition to a demand for Germany to end its use of coal and combustion engines by 2030, although party leaders have signaled they would be open to a compromise.

The other parties are committed to reducing carbon emissions, but Merkel’s bloc hasn’t put a date on when to phase out coal. The Free Democratic Party has expressed concern about what the moves would mean for jobs and Germany’s economic competitiveness.

A dispute over whether immigrants who have received protection but not full asylum in Germany should be allowed to bring close relatives to the country has been a bigger sticking point.

The Greens argue that extending family sponsorship rights would not result in many more immigrants and would help those already in Germany better integrate. The Christian Social Union, in particular, is against any loosening of the family reunification policy.

A decision to open coalition negotiations would require approval from Greens members at a party congress later this month, so any compromise would have to be something party leaders could sell to their membership.

Failure to reach a coalition agreement could result in a new election. The center-left Social Democrats, Merkel’s partners in the outgoing government, have been adamant about going into opposition after a disastrous result in the Sept. 24 election.

Polls so far suggest that a new vote would produce a very similar parliament to the current one, making efforts to form a new government similarly difficult.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged all sides to avoid pushing the country back to the polls. He told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper he does not think any political parties are eager for another election.

Steinmeier, a former Social Democrat who is now unaffiliated with a political party according to the tradition for German presidents, said it was also good that the sides were tackling issues important to the public.

“If the … negotiators are battling hard now over questions like migration and climate protection, that isn’t necessarily bad for democracy,” he said.
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Naim Suleymanoglu, the Turkish weightlifter who won three Olympic gold medals and was known as “Pocket Hercules,” died Saturday. He was 50.

Suleymanoglu was considered one of the sport’s greatest athletes and earned his nickname for his strength and diminutive size. He died at an Istanbul hospital where he was receiving treatment for cirrhosis of the liver. He had been in intensive care since Sept. 28 and received a liver transplant in October, according to Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency.

The weightlifter – 1.47 meters (4-foot-10) tall – won three straight Olympic gold medals for Turkey between 1988 and 1996. The Bulgarian-born Suleymanoglu could lift three times his weight.

He came out of retirement to try for a fourth gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 but missed all three of his lifts.

“I know only gold,” Suleymanoglu had said as he returned to competition. “I do not know about silver or bronze.”

Suleymanoglu also won seven world and six European championships.

He was born to an ethnic Turkish family in Bulgaria, and defected to Turkey in 1986 while training in Australia.

Regarded as a national hero in his adopted country, Suleymanoglu captured the hearts of Turks after winning his first gold at Seoul, South Korea, in 1988. Whenever Suleymanoglu returned home from a tournament, he would be greeted by thousands of fans who would lift him up on their shoulders.

Suleymanoglu missed the 1984 Games at Los Angeles because of a Soviet-led boycott. Although only 17, he was the favorite to win the bantamweight gold.

He was an outspoken critic of the Bulgarian government’s treatment of the Turkish minority in his homeland, and was forced by the authorities to change his surname to the more Slavic-sounding Shalamanov.

When the Bulgarian weightlifting team went to a training camp at Melbourne, Australia, in 1986, he slipped away from the group while pretending to visit the restroom at a hotel.

Suleymanoglu hid in Australia for several days before he went to the Turkish consulate to seek asylum. Eventually the Bulgarians allowed him to switch nationalities and he kissed the airport tarmac on arrival in Turkey. In 1986 he changed his name to the more Turkic-sounding Suleymanoglu.

He went to the Seoul Olympics as a Turk and twice broke the world record in the snatch on the way to winning the gold medal.

He competed unsuccessfully for a seat in Turkish parliamentary elections in 1999 and 2007.
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