Europe News

FRANKFURT, Germany - Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk lamented difficulties facing writers in Turkey as the annual Frankfurt Book Fair opened Tuesday with his homeland as the featured nation, but the novelist was still upbeat about the state of Turkish literature.

WARSAW, Poland - Environment ministers agreed Tuesday that the world financial crisis must not halt efforts to combat global warming, a top United Nations climate official said.

MADRID, Spain - Spain's prime minister has accepted an invitation to visit Cuba next year and could become the first western European leader to travel to the communist-run island in nearly a decade.

LONDON - The threat of another major terrorist attack is building in Britain, a government security minister said Tuesday, a day after the House of Lords rejected a measure that would have extended the amount of time police can hold terror suspects without charge.

DUBLIN, Ireland - Waterford Crystal plans to jettison most of its remaining Irish work force and produce the bulk of its hand-cut glassware overseas, employees and union representatives said Tuesday.

GENEVA - The world's poorest people will be hungrier, sicker and have fewer jobs as a result of the global financial crisis, and cash-strapped aid agencies will be less able to help, aid groups are warning.

KIEV, Ukraine - While the world's economic giants may have averted financial collapse through rescue plans and huge infusions of cash, some smaller countries like Ukraine seem to have stumbled with little help on the horizon.

LONDON - Once dismissed as Britain's ditherer-in-chief, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has taken decisive action to rescue the nation's banks, charting the way for bailout packages in the U.S. and the European Union.

KOROLYOV, Russia - An American computer game designer boarded the international space station Tuesday, floating onto the orbital outpost 35 years after his astronaut father circled the Earth on Skylab.

KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine's prime minister said Tuesday the country cannot afford an early election in the face of a battered stock market, one of the world's highest inflation rates and massive bank withdrawals by depositors spooked by the growing political and financial instability.

LONDON - British students will have one less test to take. Education Secretary Ed Balls said Tuesday the government was scrapping its national testing of 14-year-olds in math, reading and science.

THESSALONIKI, Greece - Police in northern Greece say they have arrested two men, including a museum employee, for allegedly trying to sell dozens of illegally excavated antiquities.

ROME - Anti-Mafia prosecutors said Tuesday they are investigating a reported Mafia death threat against the Italian author of "Gomorra," the best-selling expose on the criminal underworld in Naples.

MOSCOW - Russia and the United States must cooperate in tackling global threats despite their differences over Georgia and other issues, a key U.S. congressman said Tuesday.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Officials say four former Bosnian Serb police officers have been arrested for allegedly having participated in the wartime execution of 200 civilians.

KIEV, Ukraine - Allies of Ukraine's prime minister vowed Tuesday to block President Viktor Yushchenko's efforts to push ahead with early parliamentary elections.

PODGORICA, Montenegro - Montenegro's police have banned a pro-Serb rally later this week after violent clashes injured at least 34 people on Monday.

UNITED NATIONS - The top war crimes judge for the former Yugoslavia on Monday urged the immediate arrest of the last two fugitives, Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic and ex-Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - A document written by the Czech Communist police claims that Milan Kundera — author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" — once informed on a purported Western spy, a state-sponsored institute said Monday. Kundera quickly denied the claims.