America’s top representative to NATO on Tuesday blasted comments by French President Emmanuel Macron that the 70-year-old alliance is “experiencing brain death,” saying an attempt to divide members is “not even rational.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Tuesday the military was fielding additional military police units to carry out joint patrols with Turkey. He didn’t elaborate.

Sweden on Tuesday dropped its investigation into an alleged rape by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently in prison in Britain, because too much time has elapsed since the accusation was made over nine years ago.

Berlin prosecutors told the dpa news agency that the suspect is a 26-year-old Syrian who got information online on how to build bombs and talked about planning an attack in internet chats.

Dutch emergency services gave medical assistance Tuesday night to a group of 25 stowaways found on board a ship that was heading to England.

German driver’s licenses used to have no expiration date, but since 2013 European Union rules require drivers to renew their licenses every 15 years.

About 750 students at small middle schools in the Kaiserslautern area will attend the same school on Vogelweh as of the next academic year, when three schools are merged into one, a top school official said.

A two-decade journey led 1st Lt. Loren Hintz's descendants to the spot where his plane and remains lay entombed 15 feet below ground. Three generations of his family will bury the last of his remains this weekend.

An ace of spades embellished with a Russian-made SA-17 could tip a game of Texas Hold ‘em in a soldier’s favor, while also helping him identify a surface-to-air missile system on the ground.

U.S. Postal Service estimates it will deliver 28 million packages per day between Dec. 16-20, about 7 million more than its average number of daily deliveries the remainder of the year.

The Navy said it never received an order to halt warship maneuvers in the Black Sea earlier this year, despite testimony in a congressional impeachment hearing that President Donald Trump asked for the cancellation after he heard about it on television.

The incident is just one of a number of recent cases of young U.S. service members in Germany getting in trouble after drinking too much.

Obituary

Holocaust survivor Branko Lustig's film career took him to movie sets across Europe and to Hollywood, where in 1994 he shared the Academy Award for best picture as a producer of "Schindler's List." Lustig died Nov. 14 in Croatia. He was 87.

British media on Sunday slammed Prince Andrew’s effort to rebut claims that he had sex with a teenager who says she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, branding his televised interview a complete public relations disaster.

Italy's government declared a state of emergency Thursday in flood-ravaged Venice, seeking to release funds to repair the historic lagoon city after it was damaged by the highest tide in 50 years.

Three Ukrainian naval ships that were seized by Russia nearly a year ago have been returned, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Monday.

A truffle weighing 1,005 grams (2 pounds, 3.4 ounces) fetched 120,000 euros — more than twice the price of gold — from a Hong Kong buyer at this year’s auction.

Venetians are fed up with what they see as inadequate responses to the city’s mounting problems: record-breaking flooding, environmental and safety threats from cruise ship traffic and the burden on services from over-tourism.

Austrian news agency APA reported Monday that a mudslide in Bad Gastein, south of Salzburg, destroyed two homes overnight, burying two women.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had returned the letter President Donald Trump sent him last month warning him not to be a "tough guy" as his military prepared to invade Kurdish territory in northern Syria.

U.S. State Department officials were informed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was feeling pressure from the Trump administration to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden even before the July phone call that has led to impeachment hearings in Washington, two people with knowledge of the matter told The Associated Press.

Migrants gathered in Morocco normally try to scale the 19.5 foot wire fences that separate Ceuta from Morocco but rarely try to cross in vehicles.

The Carabinieri paramilitary art crime squad said that police at dawn Monday carried out searches in Britain, Germany, France and Serbia, as well as in Italy.

Questions about the British government’s failure to release a report on Russia’s interference in the country’s politics continued to dog Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday as critics said leaks from the document raised concerns about the security of next month’s election.

The Korean Air Boeing and Air Namibia Airbus planes hit each other shortly after both landed at the airport on Saturday evening.

Authorities said about 28,000 people marched across France on Saturday, including 4,700 in Paris. Yellow vest activists said there were 44,000.

Frode Berg was arrested December 2017 in Moscow and handed a 14-year sentence on espionage charges for collecting information about Russian nuclear submarines.

The flooding has raised renewed debates about the city’s Moses flood defense project, a corruption-riddled underwater barrier system that is still not operational after more than 16 years of construction and at least 5 billion euros of public funding.

Last week, an independent observer filmed a woman trying to stuff ballots into a box at a polling station in Brest. Election Commission chief Lydia Yermoshina responded by saying the observer who made the video should be stripped of his accreditation.

Analysis

In a meeting Thursday at the White House, coalition partners were unable to reach an agreement on what to do about the detention of thousands of militants in makeshift prisons in Syria amid reports that Islamic State fighters are resurgent in Syria and Iraq, and that some are slipping away to Libya and other areas.

Britain's Prince Andrew, in an interview with the BBC trying to contain damage from his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and accusations of sexual misconduct, denied allegations that he slept with one of Epstein's "sex slaves" when she was 17.

A senior U.S. coalition commander said Friday the partnership with Syrian Kurdish forces remains strong and focused on fighting the Islamic State group, despite an expanding Turkish incursion into areas under Kurdish control.

Europe Quick Trips

Capri is a mecca for boaters and beachgoers, but it also is made for pedestrians, with walking paths winding throughout the island.

Service members, family members and civilians who work for the U.S. military whose vehicles are registered “through their installation with Armed Forces in Italy plates” are exempt from the law, officials said.

Heavy, gray clouds hung low above a makeshift migrant camp on Bosnia’s border with Croatia, heralding more rain and misery for hundreds of people stuck in the remote tent field as they try to get to Western Europe.

After 29 years in the Air Force, Chief Master Sgt. Ramon Colon-Lopez is poised to become the military’s top enlisted service member, capping a career that has included long stints as a special operator in Afghanistan.

The father of the boy who died is a soldier assigned to the Vilseck-based 2nd Cavalry Regiment’s Field Artillery Squadron.

The two retired Coast Guard vessels were formally handed over to Ukraine at a ceremony in the port of Odessa on Wednesday — the same day that U.S. diplomats testifying in an impeachment hearing in Washington said delays in U.S. military aid have raised doubts about the Trump administration’s commitment to Ukraine.

An American man suspected of being a member of the Islamic State group is being repatriated to the United States after spending three days in a no man's land between Turkey and Greece, Turkey’s Interior Ministry said Thursday.

NATO is deploying a specialized team to Montenegro to try to thwart hybrid attacks by pro-Russian factions against the small Adriatic nation, which holds its first elections since becoming an alliance member next year, officials said.

The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France will meet in Paris on Dec. 9 to try to seek a settlement for the five-year conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed 13,000 people.

A prominent human rights group is warning that migrants trying to reach Western Europe are living in “dangerously cold and harsh conditions” in Bosnia, where hundreds rallied on Friday amid tensions over the influx of people fleeing war and poverty.

European and other members of the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group must take back and prosecute their nationals detained in Iraq and Syria to help keep ISIS from regaining territory, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday.

Analysis

The historic lagoon city of Venice exists on the edge of a double threat: As it sinks, the seas rise. That reality became more stark this week when Venice was hit with its worst flood in over 50 years.

Injecting a local anesthetic next to a bundle of nerves in the neck can significantly reduce post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in service members, based on the results of a two-year clinical trial published Wednesday.

Ukraine is at the center of today’s east-west geopolitical battle, but it’s feeling increasingly alone and abandoned by its U.S. backers amid the impeachment drama unfolding in Washington.

An international team of investigators piecing together a criminal case in the July 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine said Thursday that evidence suggests links between Russia and separatists in the region were closer than previously believed.

The Austrian army says a 31-year-old soldier appears to have been killed by two service dogs he was tasked with feeding.

The bomb was found about six to 10 feet underground Tuesday by construction crews near the former Opel automobile factory next to U.S. Army’s Rhine Ordnance Barracks, a Kaiserslautern city spokesman said Wednesday.

The water reached 6.14 feet above average sea level Tuesday, the second-highest level ever recorded in the city and just 2½ inches lower than the historic 1966 flood. Another wave of exceptionally high water followed Wednesday.

An Iranian citizen has been jailed in Sweden on suspicion of carrying out crimes against humanity and murder in the late 1980s in Iran, a Swedish prosecutor said Wednesday.

Mom will have to knit that sweater a little earlier if she wants to send it by space-available mail from the States to an Air Force post office in Europe in time for the end-of-year holidays.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Donald Trump have a difficult agenda that includes Turkey’s decision to buy a Russian air defense system and its attack on Kurdish forces in Syria. Trump calls Turkey a critical ally and cites the strong economic upside to the relationship, saying the two countries have enough in common to overcome their differences.

Ukrainian and separatist rebel officials say both sides have begun pulling back forces and equipment from a frontline area of the conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people in the past five years.

At least 3.9 million unauthorized migrants — and possibly as many as 4.8 million — lived in Europe in 2017 with half of them in Germany and the United Kingdom, according to a study published Wednesday.

Burger King’s popular Impossible Whopper, Qdoba’s meatless burritos and Dunkin’s meat-free breakfast sausage are being sold on many Army, Air Force and Navy bases in the United States.

video, gallery

Instructors and students from Defense Department schools across Europe are participating in the military school system’s annual visual and performing arts workshop.

The Navy’s three biggest bases in Europe are undergoing a multimillion dollar retrofit to boost energy efficiency and create alternative power sources in case the main grid is disabled by an adversary, natural disaster or storm.

American service members will work alongside Montenegrin cyber defenders “to counter malicious cyber actors on critical networks and platforms,” the U.S. Embassy in Montenegro said.

Basketball icons the Harlem Globetrotters brought early holiday cheer to troops and their families at Aviano this week as they played their longtime nemeses, the Washington Generals, signed autographs and posed for pictures at the base’s Dragon Fitness Center.

Actors dressed as U.S. soldiers at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin have been banned from the iconic Cold War location because of their aggressive and abusive way with tourists, city officials said.

France commemorated the fourth anniversary of the Islamic State attacks that struck the heart of Paris with a solemn reading Wednesday of the names of 131 dead, and the growing certainty that the group’s recruits will return home in increasing numbers.

Germany will hit NATO defense spending targets by 2031, seven years after the goal set by the alliance for members to spend at least 2% of economic output on their militaries, Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said Thursday.

Spanish police said Wednesday they have been unable to locate a Venezuelan former spymaster wanted by the United States for extradition on charges of drug trafficking.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Thursday thanked the United States and a former U.S. tank commander for their commitment to Germany during the Cold War.

U.S. and French armored units are fighting mock battles in southern Germany this week to prepare for the Americans’ deployment to the former Eastern bloc, aimed at deterring Russian aggression against the Baltic states and Poland.

A St. Petersburg court on Monday ordered a prominent history professor suspected of murdering and dismembering a female student to be held in custody pending trial.

Auditors on Wednesday urged the European Union to improve its approach to easing migrant pressure on Greece and Italy as people languish in camps on the Greek Islands, and to draw lessons from its shortcomings before a new crisis hits.

A former British army officer who helped found the White Helmets volunteer organization in Syria was found dead in Istanbul early Monday, Turkish officials and the group said. The cause of death was under investigation.

French President Emmanuel Macron marked Armistice Day on Monday by visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under Paris’ Arc de Triomphe as a giant tricolor flag flew overhead.

The Czech defense minister says the government is planning to sign a deal with the U.S. government by year’s end to purchase 12 military helicopters.

The ceremony takes place every year on the nearest Sunday to the anniversary of World War I's end on Nov. 11, 1918.

Police in the Russian city of St. Petersburg plan to interrogate a prominent professor who has been detained on suspicion of killing a female student after he was pulled from a frigid river with a backpack containing severed arms.

On Nov. 9, 1989, Sgt. Michael Rafferty heard on Armed Forces Network that East Germans would soon be allowed to travel unimpeded to the West. He called a guard on duty at Checkpoint Charlie to see if anything had changed. "No," was the reply. He went to bed. The next morning, though, there was pandemonium, Rafferty recalled.

Germany marked the 30th anniversary Saturday of the opening of the Berlin Wall, a pivotal moment in the events that brought down Communism in eastern Europe.

The U.S. Embassy in Berlin unveiled a statue of Ronald Reagan on Friday at a site overlooking the location of the former president's iconic speech imploring the Soviet Union to remove the Berlin Wall.

Declaring they had "nothing to hide," Serbian officials expressed hope on Friday that the U.S. wouldn't punish the Balkan country with sanctions that it levies on states which buy weapons from Russia.

After a surprising court reversal on Friday, a former Venezuelan spymaster accused of attempting to "flood" the United States with drugs is one step closer to being extradited from Spain, The Associated Press has learned.

The mayor of the town that gave birth to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini has ignited a national row by refusing to participate in a program that pays for students to visit Nazi concentration camps.

Turkey's interior minister said the suspected militants would be sent home, even in cases where governments had stripped suspects of their citizenship.

An 11-year-old Albanian boy whose mother took him to Syria five years ago when she joined the Islamic State group returned on Friday to Italy for a joyous reunion with his father and sisters.

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser says Trump will confront Turkey’s leader about his decision to buy a Russian air defense system when they meet Wednesday at the White House.

A federal judge agreed Friday to let indicted lawmaker Rep. Duncan Hunter to travel overseas to be part of a congressional delegation traveling to Belgium for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stressed Friday the need for traditional Western allies to work together to face modern threats, while at the same time defending Trump administration policies on tariffs, NATO spending and other issues that have raised the ire of traditional friends.

Austrian prosecutors charged a retired colonel with spying for Russia, saying the man is suspected of having passed information about weapons systems and other matters to Russian military intelligence for about 25 years.

French authorities reopened one of Jerusalem's most magnificent ancient tombs to the public for the first time in over a decade, despite a dispute over access to the archaeological-cum-holy site in the city's volatile eastern half.

An 89-year-old Auschwitz survivor who is a senator-for-life in Italy has unwittingly provoked one of the country's most intense confrontations with anti-Semitism since the end of Italy's Fascist dictatorship during World War II.

Analysis

Months before the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989, with the Soviet stranglehold over the Eastern Bloc crumbling, a young political scientist named Francis Fukuyama made a declaration that quickly became famous. It was, he declared, "the end of history."