Police said they had detained dozens of Turkish and Azerbaijani nationals

International News via Reuters:

Montenegro temporarily suspended a visa-free regime for Turkish nationals on Monday following a weekend of violence triggered by the stabbing of a Montenegrin man in the capital Podgorica by a group of Turks.

Police said they had detained dozens of Turkish and Azerbaijani nationals, while President Jakov Milatovic called for calm and condemned attacks by angry Montenegrins targeting Turkish citizens and property in the tiny Adriatic country.

The Montenegrin man was stabbed on Saturday night after an exchange of insults with a group of Turkish citizens. His injuries were not life-threatening.

Dozens of local people retaliated on Sunday by vandalising vehicles with Turkish number plates and at one point forced some Turkish citizens to barricade themselves in a casino. A Turkish-run restaurant was broken into and its windows smashed in the centre of Podgorica on Sunday night.

The police said they had detained two people suspected of being involved in the stabbing incident, a Turkish national and an Azerbaijani, as well as an additional 45 Turkish and Azerbaijani citizens suspected of lacking legal residence documents.

They fined seven of those detained and ordered the deportation of eight others, police said in a statement.

TURKEY SAYS ITS CITIZENS MUST BE PROTECTED

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan spoke with Montenegro’s Prime Minister Milojko Spajic and Foreign Minister Ervin Ibrahimovic by phone on Monday. He said Ankara expected Montenegrin authorities to take necessary measures to ensure the safety and rights of Turkish citizens, a Turkish foreign ministry source said.

In its statement announcing interim visas for Turkish citizens, Montenegro’s government struck a conciliatory tone.

“Montenegro fully takes into account the interests and status of approximately 14,000 citizens of the Republic of Turkey who are on its territory, and will take all necessary steps to ensure that their stay is unhindered and in accordance with the law,” it said.

It will provide an accelerated visa issuance procedure for all Turkish nationals who plan to arrive, stay or transit through Montenegro to minimise disruption, the statement said.

Officials say there has been an increase in the number of Turkish citizens opening businesses or seeking work in Montenegro, which is heavily reliant on tourism, ahead of its expected accession in the coming years to the European Union.

President Milatovic said on X: “There must be no room for collective guilt or the stigmatization of an entire people. Montenegro needs a more responsible immigration policy: firm against abuses and crime, fair towards all who respect our laws.”

Reporting by Stevo Vasiljevic and Daria Sito-Sucic, Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Gareth Jones

Family company Hidrau Model had been going for 50 years but incurred losses of around 1.5 million euros in stock, materials and machinery when the floods swept through Algemesi

International News via Reuters:

The makers of piano stools for stars such as Lady Gaga and Elton John are back in business after losing everything during the deadly floods that ravaged Spain’s southeastern Valencia region one year ago, killing 229 people.

Family company Hidrau Model had been going for 50 years but incurred losses of around 1.5 million euros ($1.75 million) in stock, materials and machinery when the floods swept through Algemesi, 35 km (22 miles) south of Valencia city.

“I didn’t know how we were going to do it, but I knew I wanted to move forward after this,” General Manager Raul Romera said.

With the help of volunteers and peer companies, Hidrau has been able to fulfil orders and gradually reopen with all 35 employees. They are still waiting for the insurance money to come through to cover their costs.

Among their former clients are Lady Gaga, who performed with one of their stools at the 2017 Super Bowl half-time show.

($1 = 0.8575 euros)

Reporting by Eva Manez, Miguel Gutierrez and Guillermo Martinez; Writing by Ana Cantero and Miguel Gutierrez; Editing by David Latona and Alison Williams

Wadephul was originally due in the Chinese capital from Sunday on the first visit by a minister of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government, but canceled at the last minute

International News via Reuters:

China and Germany sought on Monday to downplay suggestions of rising tension between the world’s second and third largest economies, after German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul postponed his first trip to Beijing.

Wadephul was originally due in the Chinese capital from Sunday on the first visit by a minister of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government, but canceled at the last minute after the Chinese acceded to just one of his meeting requests

The cancellation came amid strained ties over Chinese export curbs on chips and rare earths that are harming the German economy and increasingly assertive comments from Berlin on China’s support for Russia and its actions in the Indo-Pacific.

One senior German parliamentarian accused China of having provoked the cancellation from a fear of debate. Others, however, said it would only stoke more tension and hurt Germany’s economy, already facing a third year of contraction.

German deputy government spokesperson Steffen Meyer said Berlin remained interested in a “respectful and good exchange” with Beijing and did not see the postponement having “any major impact on the federal government’s further policy.”

BOTH COUNTRIES HIT HARD BY US TARIFFS

Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson of China’s foreign ministry, said “China has always viewed and developed its ties with Germany from a strategic and long-term perspective”.

The “current circumstances” provided further reason for both countries to seek common cause, he told a news conference on Monday, without giving details.

Both export-oriented economies have been hard hit by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which in turn led China to overtake the U.S. as Germany’s largest trading partner in the first eight months of the year.

Germany is China’s top European trade partner, with two-way trade exceeding $200 billion in 2025, Chinese data shows.

The German Chamber of Commerce in China had said it regretted the trip cancellation, saying businesses need more clarity on bilateral issues.

Andreas Kroll-Pietsch, the managing director of a commodities trading company who was part of a planned business delegation to accompany Wadephul on the trip, said he could not comment on its cancellation.

But “politically motivated trade conflicts and export restrictions destroy prosperity and must be resolved through constructive dialogue,” he said. “Further escalation is not in the interest of the German economy.”

BERLIN GETS TOUGH ON BEIJING

Neither the Chinese nor German side has made any official visits since Merz’s Christian Democratic Union party defeated the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, at the polls this year.

In comparison, China’s top diplomat has visited Austria, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Switzerland this year.

Wadephul has struck an increasingly tough stance on China since he took office as foreign minister in May.

He has highlighted Beijing’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, its “increasingly aggressive behaviour” in the Indo-Pacific, and its export curbs on rare earths and semiconductors.

In doing so, he has to an extent gone further than predecessor Annalena Baerbock, already seen as outspoken, who labelled Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator”.

In general Germany’s conservatives have in recent years struck a more hawkish stance on China than the SPD, now a junior partner in Merz’s coalition.

An official for the SPD-run finance ministry said plans remained afoot for a possible continuation of the German-Chinese finance dialogue. It is China’s turn to receive the German finance minister.

Merz had also been expected to visit China soon. German government spokesperson Meyer said the postponement did not have to affect possible visits by other cabinet members.

Reporting by Liz Lee in Beijing; Sarah Marsh, Andreas Rinke, Holger Hansen in Berlin; Writing by Joe Cash; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Clarence Fernandez, William Maclean

The discovery of the bacteria that cause paratyphoid fever and louse-borne relapsing fever showed, alongside previous work, that several infections had circulated among soldiers

International News via Reuters:

The retreat from Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Grande Armée in 1812 was a cataclysmic event that marked the beginning of the end for his empire and personal dominance in Europe, with about 300,000 soldiers perishing in a force that originally numbered roughly a half million.

A new study involving DNA extracted from the teeth of 13 French soldiers who were buried in a mass grave in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius along the route of the retreat is offering a deeper understanding of the misery the Grande Armée experienced, detecting two pathogens not previously documented in this event.

The discovery of the bacteria that cause paratyphoid fever and louse-borne relapsing fever showed, alongside previous work, that several infections had circulated among soldiers already enfeebled by cold, hunger and exhaustion.

The Vilnius site, discovered in 2001, contains the remains of approximately 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers from Napoleon’s army.

“Vilnius was a key waypoint on the 1812 retreat route. Many soldiers arrived exhausted, starving and ill. A substantial number died there and were interred rapidly in mass graves,” said molecular biologist and geneticist Nicolás Rascovan, head of the microbial paleogenomics unit at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and senior author of the study published in the journal Current Biology.

“While cold, starvation and typhus have long been emphasized, our results show that paratyphoid fever and louse-borne relapsing fever were also present and may have contributed to debilitation and mortality,” Rascovan added.

Paratyphoid fever typically is food- or water-borne, with symptoms including fever, headache, abdominal pain, diarrhea or constipation, weakness and sometimes a rash. The form of relapsing fever detected is transmitted by body lice and causes episodes of recurring high fever, with headache, muscle pain and weakness.

In the study, four of the 13 soldiers tested positive for the paratyphoid fever bacterium and two for the relapsing fever bacterium. The symptoms of the two ailments match those described in historical accounts of the retreat.

A 2006 study involving DNA from 35 other soldiers from the same cemetery detected the pathogens behind typhus and trench fever, diseases that cause symptoms similar to those of paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever. The new study did not detect typhus and trench fever.

Napoleon led the Grande Armée on an invasion of Russia in 1812 and marched into Moscow, but the campaign unraveled and he was forced to retreat thanks to factors including dwindling supplies, counter-attacks and the onset of the brutal Russian winter.

The new findings add nuance to the story of the plight of the French emperor’s soldiers, pointing to a scenario not of a single or a couple of ailments in circulation but rather a high prevalence of various infectious diseases. The study does not quantify the overall impact of the newly identified pathogens or establish them as widespread across the entire army but helps explain the medical complexity of the retreat.

“Ancient DNA lets us put names to infections that symptom-based accounts alone cannot resolve. The co-occurrence of pathogens with different transmission routes underscores how dire sanitary conditions were,” Rascovan said. “Future work across more sites and individuals will refine the disease landscape of 1812.”

The study illustrates how the steadily improving science of ancient DNA analysis can provide new insight into historical events.

“Ancient DNA allows us to test historical hypotheses directly, adding evidence that can confirm or complicate narratives built from chronicles and symptoms,” Rascovan said. “With careful authentication, genomics reveals which pathogens were present, how they evolved and persisted, and how they spread – helping historians and scientists reconstruct complex crises with greater resolution.”

Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis