European leaders in Brussels were expected to mull a range of measures as they gathered on Thursday, including the use of military force to destroy ships used for trafficking.

Proposals at the extraordinary meeting are also believed to address the rescue, resettlement and repatriation of those who make the treacherous journey by boat from North Africa to southern Europe.

Chancellor Angela Merkel on arrival repeated that Europe's values and credibility in the rest of the world were on the line, cautioning that there was still a "huge amount to do."

The German Intelligence Agency (BND) assisted the US National Security Agency (NSA) in spying on European targets, including German interests, according to a report in Spiegel Online on Thursday#.

The BND provided signals intelligence (SIGINT) for the NSA in more than 40,000 instances, according to the report. One of the targets was the Airbus Group, an aerospace and defense manufacturer.

The United States accused Russia on Wednesday of building up its forces along the border with Ukraine, boosting air defense systems and training Ukrainian separatist rebels in the east.

Some 300 US paratroopers this week began training about 900 Ukrainian National Guard troops (photo), bringing sharp criticism from Moscow.

Russia was adding forces to create what would be its "largest presence on the border since October 2014," acting State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statement.

French police have thwarted five terror attacks in recent months, including a plan to target a church on Sunday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told France Inter radio station on Thursday.

He told the station that "numerous attacks had already been foiled - five if you take into account the attack which happily did not take place at Villejuif" in the suburbs of Paris, in reference to Sunday's arrest.

Police arrested a 24-year-old Algerian national on Sunday after allegedly plotting an attack on a church in the French capital. However, his plans were uncovered after he accidentally shot himself in the leg and called for an ambulance, prompting police to investigate the matter.

German Presidnet Joachim Gauck made his speech at a nondenominational religious service at Berlin Cathedral on Thursday, the eve of the 100th anniversary of the bloodshed that is estimated to have led to the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians.

In the highly anticipated speech, Gauck spoke of a "genocidal dynamic to which the Armenian people fell victim," and of "systematic acts of murder."

The later the evening, the more crowded it gets in Jardim de Santos, a small park down by the river on July 24th Avenue, and a hotspot for Lisbon nightlife.

Every single bench is occupied on Friday nights, even well past midnight. Throngs of people gather under the blossoming trees. It's noisy, bottles in bags and drinks in plastic cups are passed around: as usual on a Friday night, great quantities of alcohol are consumed.

With almost 13 liters of alcohol per person, the Portuguese rank near the top of the EU alcohol consumption list, surpassed only by the people of Andorra and most Eastern European nations.

Three months of negotiations between the Greek government and our European and international partners have brought about much convergence on the steps needed to overcome years of economic crisis and to bring about sustained recovery in Greece. But they have not yet produced a deal. Why? What steps are needed to produce a viable, mutually agreed reform agenda?

We and our partners already agree on much. Greece's tax system needs to be revamped, and the revenue authorities must be freed from political and corporate influence. The pension system is ailing. The economy's credit circuits are broken. The labor market has been devastated by the crisis and is deeply segmented, with productivity growth stalled. Public administration is in urgent need of modernization, and public resources must be used more efficiently. Overwhelming obstacles block the formation of new companies. Competition in product markets is far too circumscribed. And inequality has reached outrageous levels, preventing society from uniting behind essential reforms.

This consensus aside, agreement on a new development model for Greece requires overcoming two hurdles. First, we must concur on how to approach Greece's fiscal consolidation. Second, we need a comprehensive, commonly agreed reform agenda that will underpin that consolidation path and inspire the confidence of Greek society.

Italian prosecutors said that terror suspects, including two purported bodyguards of Osama bin Laden, arrested in raids on Friday had made preparations for a 2010 attack against the Vatican.

The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) announced Thursday that Deutsche Bank had agreed to pay $2.5 billion (2.3 billion euros) to US and UK authorities as part of a legal settlement over the bank's role in manipulating the London Inter Bank Offered Rate (Libor).

Germany's biggest lender would also terminate and ban individual employees who engaged in miscounduct, NYDFS said in a statement. In addition, the bank would set up an independent monitor for interest rate manipulation as part of the deal.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met in Brussels in a "positive and constructive" atmosphere. Tsipras urged Merkel to speed up the process towards an interim deal by the end of April, news agencies reported.

The pair met on the sidelines of a European Union summit on migration. EU officials said the German chancellor was planning to assure Athens about keeping it in the single currency area and help it avoid a default.

VW supervisory board chairman Ferdinand Piëch said Thursday that he was not "organizing Martin Winterkorn's replacement."

"We talked last week and have agreed to work together," he told the mass-circulation daily Bild, after German media reported earlier in the day that he was plotting to have Winterkorn replaced.

According to German news agency DPA and public broadcaster NDR, Piëch was trying to drum up a majority on the full supervisory board to have Winterkorn removed from his post as VW CEO.

"The view which says that global economic problems can only be solved by the World Bank, the IMF, the ADB, is an obsolete view that needs discarding," Joko Widodo told delegates on April 22 at the start of this year's Asia-Africa summit in Jakarta to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the gathering between leaders from both regions. "There needs to be change," Jokowi said, adding it was imperative that "we build a new international economic order that is open to new emerging economic powers."

When the Disney production "Avengers: Age of Ultron" opens in Germany on April 23, fans will have to head to the nearest big city to watch it.

The Hollywood blockbuster won't be shown on 686 screens in 193 small towns. The local movie theaters, mainly in cities with less than 50,000 residents, have refused to show the super hero blockbuster.

The reason is that Disney has raised its rental fee from 47.7 to 53 percent of ticket sales, which cinema owners said came as a complete surprise to them. In addition, a few new rules have been implemented: The money Disney had previously contributed to advertising has been cut, and advances for 3-D glasses have also been eliminated.

The German state-owned rail operator, Deutsche Bahn, has canceled hundreds of commuter and long-distance trains for the second day as part of a strike by the national rail drivers' union. Both the 20,000-member GDL and DB, which has about 200,000 employees within Germany, have blamed each other for the breakdown in talks that led to the strike, which has created traffic jams in Berlin and across the country.

"Our message to passengers is: They should protest against the railway's board because they're the ones to blame for this," GDL union leader Claus Weselsky, often criticized in the media for months of repeated strikes, said on Wednesday.

The monetary value of the world's oceans has been estimated at US$24tn in a new report that warns that overfishing, pollution and climate change are putting an unprecedented strain upon marine ecosystems.

The report, commissioned by WWF, states the asset value of oceans is $24tn and values the annual "goods and services" it provides, such as food, at $2.5tn.

This economic clout would make the oceans the seventh largest economy in the world although the report's authors, which include the Boston Consulting Group, say this is an underestimate as it does not factor in things such as oil, wind power and intangibles, such as the ocean's role in climate regulation.

The White House said Thursday that American Warren Weinstein and Italian national Giovanni Lo Porto were killed in a January attack on an al Qaeda compound.

"No words can fully express our regret over this terrible tragedy," the White House said, revealing the previously classified finding in a written statement shortly before US President Barack Obama held a press conference.

The raids hit Houthi positions close to the capital Sanaa, around the Taiz and in the central town of Yarim, the residents said. But the strikes were also carried out in the southern province of Lah and around the approach to the main southern city of Aden.

According to the residents of Sanaa, raids targeted positions held by rebel troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In Yarim, warplanes hit an old university building used as headquarters of the Houthi rebels and in villages north of Yemen's southern city of Aden targets included tanks of the anti-Hadi forces.

The US Senate voted in favor of Loretta Lynch on Thursday, making her the first black woman in the country's history to hold the position. Voting to confirm her for the position in the Senate had been held up for several months.

Released on April 23, the Amnesty International (AI) report says that human rights in the Maldives are in "free fall" and accuses the authorities of muzzling peaceful protesters, silencing critical media and civil society, while at the same time abusing the judicial system to imprison opposition politicians.

The AI paper comes as criminal charges have been filed in recent months against key opposition figures in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation. The most well-known case is arguably that of former President Mohamed Nasheed, who was sentenced in March to 13 years in prison on terrorism charges. The 47-year-old politician was recently found guilty of ordering the arrest and detention of a senior judge when he was in power.

You've expressed concern that much of the detail on verifying Iran's compliance with a possible deal is unresolved. You stress that inspections need to be possible anywhere, at any time. Why is that so important?

The basic reason is that Iran has cheated on its obligations in the past and has been very uncooperative on an ongoing basis. So you have to do extra things in order to make sure there are not secret nuclear sites. Iran has built many sites in secret, so you have to have this extra insurance, a more powerful tool to try to ferret out any secret nuclear activities or facilities that Iran would build.

Jonas Schiffmann leans against his balcony's railing and smiles apologetically. Behind him, the blazing sun makes Ehrenfeld, a hip Cologne neighborhood, look shiny. Schiffmann is surrounded by self-sprouted tomato and strawberry seedlings - and a few hundred bees.

Some of the bees have landed on Schiffmann's hand, his shirt, his head. The 29-year-old winces slightly every time another one joins. "We thought it would be different," he says, referring to the bees. "They are supposed to be quieter, not even noticeable."

The Calbuco volcano has erupted in southern Chile, spewing huge clouds of ash into the air. Thousands of people have been evacuated. It last erupted in 1972.

Evidence is growing that conservation - enforced by the creation of protected areas and policed by anti-poaching squads - leads to the eviction and abuse of vast numbers of people, especially tribal peoples, and is also failing to check the deepening environmental crisis. A new approach is urgently needed. Conservation should centre on protecting the land rights of the peoples to whom these vitally important areas are home.

Tribal peoples are better at looking after their environments than anyone else - their survival depends on it. When the Maasai were removed from Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania in 1974 , poaching increased; the eviction of indigenous people from Yellowstone Park in the United States in the late 19th century led to overgrazing by elk and bison; Aborigines in Australia have used controlled burning to protect forests from devastating conflagrations... the list goes on.

More than one in five Liberal Democrat and Labour election candidates have pledged to oppose fracking in defiance of their parties' promises to foster the industry during the next parliament.

Seven of the Lib Dem front bench team, including spokespeople for the environment and energy, voiced their opposition to the party line.

The pledge, circulated by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, asked candidates to promise: "If my constituency is at risk of fracking, I will oppose it. If my constituency is not at risk, I will oppose fracking nationwide."

From downtown São Paulo, the Pico do Jaraguá - the crest of a mountain ridge on the city's north-western horizon - looks like a broken tooth, crowned by a towering TV antenna. Just beyond the rocky peak and down a steep, deeply rutted, unmade road, lies the nascent village of Tekoa Itakupe, one of the newest fronts in Brazil's indigenous people's struggle for land to call their own.

Once part of a coffee plantation, the idyllic 72-hectare plot is currently occupied by three families from the Guarani community who moved onto the land in July 2014 after it was recognised as traditional Guarani territory by Funai, the federal agency for Indian affairs.

"The bookkeeper of Auschwitz" is what the German media is calling Oskar Gröning. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this title is nonsense! If Gröning had really been the bookkeeper of Auschwitz, we could even be grateful to him in some way. For it is only to the meticulousness of the accountants of Auschwitz that we owe our knowledge of the enormity of the production-line murder of the Jews of Europe.

More fitting would probably be "The porter of Auschwitz" - because one of Gröning's tasks was to clear the ramp of the luggage left behind by those who were led straight to the gas chambers upon arrival in Auschwitz.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) said on Thursday that Kazakhstan cycling team Astana will retain their World Tour status, ensuring their entries to all top races.

"The license commission shall be able to re-open the proceedingsif Astana Pro Team fails to respect one or several of the conditionsimposed, or if new elements arise," the UCI said in a statement.

Reasons for the panel's decision "will be published in due course," the statement continued. Astana management did not immediately respond to the ruling.