Spain conservatives win vote but face problems to form govt

June 27, 2016

MADRID (AP) — Spain's ruling conservative Popular Party has won the country's unprecedented repeat elections but it remains to be seen if acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy can muster enough support to form a new government.

The Popular Party won 137 seats in Sunday's vote, 14 more than in December but still short of the absolute majority in the 350-seat Parliament that it enjoyed after the 2011 election. Rajoy's party also won the December election but no other major party was willing to help him form a government and it's not clear if they will this time either.

The party's leadership was to meet Monday to review its options. The center-left Socialist Party placed second in the election, collecting 85 seats, five fewer seats than in December in its worst ever result.

Barring an unlikely grand coalition with the Socialists, Rajoy's best option would appear to be to strike a deal with the business-friendly Ciudadanos party, which came in fourth with 32 seats. Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera rejected backing any government led by Rajoy following the December vote, but recently suggested he might ease that stance. That would still leave Rajoy needing the support of smaller groups to make a majority.

In third place, with 71 seats, was the left-wing Unidos Podemos (United We Can) group, which brings together the communists, the Greens and the two-year-old Podemos party that grew out of a grassroots anti-austerity protest movement.

The alliance, headed by pony-tailed political science professor Pablo Iglesias, had hoped to overtake the Socialists and break the country's traditional two-party system. Spain has never had a coalition government and the Popular Party and the Socialists have alternated in power for decades.

King Felipe VI will consult party leaders in the coming weeks and likely nominate one to try to form a government. Following the December election, Rajoy acknowledged he didn't have any support to form a government and renounced the opportunity to even try. The king then called on the second-placed Socialists to try, but they were also unable and the monarch eventually called a repeat election.

"With his big victory, Rajoy now certainly has a stronger hand than after the December election," Antonio Barroso, a London-based analyst with the Teneo Intelligence political risk consulting group, said in an analysis note Monday. "However, it is unlikely that other parties will rapidly give him their support."

Speaking at a victory rally, Rajoy said "We won the election. We demand the right to govern." He said the party would begin talks with other groups immediately. The Popular Party had championed its role in Spain's strong economic recovery following a severe crisis and had to weather much criticism over high unemployment, cuts in government spending on welfare and education and unrelenting political corruption scandals.

5 killed, 20 injured in cafe shooting in Serbia

July 02, 2016

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — A man who police said was driven by jealousy opened fire with an assault gun in a crowded cafe in northern Serbia early Saturday, killing five people — including his ex-wife — and wounding more than 20 before he was arrested.

The attack occurred at 1:40 a.m. in a village close to Zrenjanin, a town 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Belgrade. A police statement said a man identified only as Z.S. first targeted his ex-wife and another woman before randomly shooting at other occupants of the Makijato cafe. The two women died, along with three men, and the wounded included minors, authorities said.

This is the third mass shooting in Serbia in recent years. Last year, a man killed six people with a hunting rifle in northern Serbia, while in 2013 a Balkan war veteran killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.

The tragedies have shocked the Balkan nation and sparked a public debate about the amount of weapons left over from wars in the 1990s. They also brought into focus widespread violence against women in the conservative society, which is being torn by deep social and economic crises.

About 30 to 40 women die each year as the result of domestic violence in Serbia, according to local human rights groups. "The latest horrific events only serve to remind us that this is one of the burning issues in our society," said Brankica Jankovic, a rights watchdog official.

Witnesses told Serbia's state TV that the attacker came to the packed cafe and saw his ex-wife there with a group of friends. He then went home and came back with a gun. "He just pulled out a gun and started shooting, first into the air," said witnesses Svetozar Manojlovic.

"It sounded like firecrackers at first," he said. "Then the guy next to me fell down and others started falling down. It was total chaos." Cafe owner Ljubomir Milinovic said people didn't immediately grasp what was going on. "It was horrible, people were screaming and there was blood everywhere," Milinovic said.

Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said cafe guests eventually managed to grab the weapon from the man's hands when he tried to run away and police caught him. He said the probable motive was jealousy, adding the man had no criminal record.

Stefanovic said the man's automatic weapon was illegal and appealed to citizens to hand over their old weapons. The Blic daily quoted the father of the slain ex-wife as saying the gunman had been violent to his daughter in the past, which is why she divorced him last year.

The wounded were taken to hospitals in nearby Zrenjanin and Novi Sad. Doctors in Zrenjanin said seven people underwent operations and were in serious condition. Local authorities have declared a three-day mourning period starting Sunday.

AP Writer Dusan Stojanovic contributed.

Iceland celebrates biggest victory with win over England

June 28, 2016

NICE, France (AP) — Aron Gunnarsson, every inch the bearded Viking, ran shirtless toward the Iceland fans and led them in their victory chants. Beating England at the European Championship was more than just Iceland's greatest sporting success. Monday was a moment of national triumph in a country where the team's improbable progress from the group stage had already outshone coverage of Saturday's presidential election.

The Scandinavian nation of just 330,000 people, by the far the smallest country to qualify for a European Championship, inflicted a shattering 2-1 defeating on England - the country that has been the model for Icelandic football for decades.

Defender Ragnar Sigurdsson, who scored Iceland's first goal and made an outstanding last-ditch tackle to deny Jamie Vardy a potential equalizer, said he had "dreamt ... a long time ago" of playing England.

But he sounded a little disappointed with what he'd found. "We didn't feel that they created any chances," he said. "(Harry) Kane had a header opportunity and headed straight to the goalkeeper, there's a lot that we were just heading away and long shots from distance."

It was a victory built on smart positioning in defense, English-style physical play and many, many individual errors from England's players. Iceland's rock-solid 4-4-2 formation was a ghost from the past of England coach Roy Hodgson, who along with Bob Houghton introduced it to Sweden when they coached there in the 1970s and 1980s. One of their disciples was Lars Lagerback, now Iceland's co-coach.

"I learned a lot from them, they changed the training methods and the coaching education in the long run in Sweden and I was really, really benefiting from that," Lagerback said, minutes after Hodgson resigned from the England job. "Respect to a really, really good coach."

Lagerback took Hodgson's gifts and turned them against his old master with devastating effect. In seven games against England with Sweden and now Iceland, Lagerback's teams have never been defeated. In Nice on Monday, Iceland neutralized the English Premier League's top two scorers, Kane and Vardy, with tight marking, positional forethought and superb awareness of where the rest of the team was at all times.

England's left winger Raheem Sterling won the penalty that gave England the lead early on. But he was then kept quiet by right-back Birkir Saevarsson. On the right, Daniel Sturridge had a little more success but found few targets for his often-wayward crosses.

Iceland's gameplan was built around shutting down England's stars, but it wasn't all negative. On the break, the Icelanders created the best chances of the game and could have scored another when Gunnarsson turned Jack Wilshere but saw his shot saved by Joe Hart.

All through the game, the vastly outnumbered contingent of Icelanders sang more than England's supporters, who were left in stunned silence for long periods. As England's players slumped onto the grass and the final whistle, Iceland's substitutes and backroom staff charged onto the pitch as if they'd won the final.

"We are a little bit colored by our love for the English football, so probably this game means a little bit more to us, who have been watching English football since we were born," Lagerback's co-coach Heimir Hallgrimsson said.

As for playing host nation France in a quarterfinal on Sunday, Hallgrimsson added: "I will take it." Fresh from beating England, tiny Iceland now feels it can take on the world. "We didn't have so much problems defending (against) the English, and also in ball possession we created a lot of good chances," Hallgrimsson said. "If the players play with the same attitude, we can beat anyone."

100 years later, France marks American's July 4 sacrifice

July 03, 2016

BELLOY-EN-SANTERRE, France (AP) — In the end, Alan Seeger's bones could no longer be distinguished from those of his Foreign Legion comrades who had fallen alongside him in one of the most brutal battles of World War I.

United across nations, it was the glorious death that he craved. Seeger — an American poet, romantic and soldier — died on that most American of days, July 4th, a century ago Monday. Barely 28, he was already fighting for a global, common cause that bound dozens of countries together at a time when the United States was still a bystander, reluctant to get involved in a faraway war in Europe.

His premonition, "I have a Rendezvous with Death," was to become his most beloved poem, and the volunteer was happy to give his life for France and its grand ideals of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity." Half a century later, it was a favorite poem of U.S. President John Kennedy.

Seeger was last seen by his Egyptian friend Rif Baer charging the German enemy, a tiny part of the massive Battle of the Somme, where more than 1 million people were killed, wounded or went missing in 4 ½ months of fighting in 1916.

"His head erect, and pride in his eye, I saw him running forward, with bayonet fixed. Soon he disappeared," Baer described the final scene — and the myth of Seeger emerged. As a belated summer comes to northern France, peonies bloom over Ossuary No. 1 in nearby Lihons where he is believed to lie, forgotten by most but still cherished by some. In the village where he fell, a gnarly apple tree planted in dedication to his sacrifice furtively tries to produce fruit from the few branches it still has. The mayor plans to graft the tree, to make sure Seeger's memory survives.

The Belloy village square is named after him and the village's World War I memorial even has him — in the Gallic "Alain Seeger" —chiseled in stone. "For France, Alan Seeger is first and foremost the symbol of commitment — commitment right up to death," said local historian Marcel Queyrat.

In his diary, Seeger wrote "I never took arms out of any hatred against Germany or the Germans, but purely out of love for France." To his mother he wrote "there should really be no neutrals in a conflict like this, where there is not a people whose interests are not involved." This, combined with his French military flair for "elan" — the forward thrust in battle — makes Seeger a standout a century later when Europeans are questioning their unity.

From the start of World War I, Seeger wanted to get the United States involved in the allied cause. Once it did, in 1917, it set the scene for the "American century" of predominance in the world. His centennial now offers a stark contrast. During this year's U.S. presidential campaign, opponents of Republican candidate Donald Trump accuse him of turning back to isolation, his "America First" slogan stoking such fears.

Seeger could not understand those who stood to the side in World War I, hardly the anti-war message that his folk-singing nephew Pete Seeger would later spread during the Vietnam War years. "Playing a part in the life of nations, he is taking part in the largest movement his planet allows him," Alan Seeger wrote in his diary.

Born into a wealthy family that built its fortune on Mexican sugar refining, and with a gift for languages, he went to study at Harvard. His life changed for good when he started hanging out with classmate John Reed, who went on to become the eyewitness writer of the 1917 Russian Communist revolution with "Ten Days that Shook the World."

After Harvard, it was on to New York and the Bohemian lifestyle of Greenwich Village. Soon Seeger was crossing the Atlantic to Paris and the Rive Gauche — the Left Bank. He arrived there in 1912, giving him two years to fall in love with the City of Lights and all things French, enough to decide to defend the nation when war came.

"An artist is not only an artist, he is also a man of action which, for me, is absolutely essential," said Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, president of the famed family Champagne house. "Seeger shows the way."

Taittinger has been smitten with Seeger's dash. At his Chateau de la Marquetterie amid the Champagne vineyards, he even has a special room with poetry and photos of Seeger, amid other World War I memorabilia. Seeger was smitten just as much with Champagne, writing of a night when he and other soldiers "in our candle-lit loft we uncorked bottles of bubbling champagne ... and clinking our tin army cups."

Early on, there was much fighting around Reims, Champagne's main city, and the destruction of the Cathedral by the Germans was considered such a sacrilege that it turned many across the world against Kaiser Wilhelm II. Those were the lands amid rusty vines that soldier Seeger roamed early on — often behind the lines while his soul yearned for action.

"And what a curious anomaly," he wrote to his mother. "On this slope the grape pickers are singing merrily at their work, on the other the batteries are roaming. Boom! Boom!" Even though France was in his heart, home kept tugging at it too. He "fairly danced for joy" being granted a July 4th leave in Paris in 1915, but the war malaise had already spread to the capital, where Seeger saw many women in mourning. It was to be his last full Independence Day.

With an uncanny sense of fate, he felt battle was near in June 1916. "We will go directly into action, magnificently, unexpectedly, and probably victoriously, in some dashing charge, even if it be only of local importance," he wrote.

That is exactly what happened at Belloy-en-Santerre. "I have a rendezvous with Death — At some disputed barricade," the poem says. On Monday, Seeger will be remembered again. "Life is very short but some lives are more full than others," said the 63-year-old Taittinger, adding that Seeger's life, cut short at 28, "is much more full than my life will ever be."

Other Europeans unhappy with EU could seek to follow UK out

June 30, 2016

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Disenchantment with the European Union is not limited to British voters who opted to leave the bloc. Across the continent, anti-EU sentiment is bubbling up, fueled by far-right movements and others unhappy about government spending cuts, the influx of migrants and other policies overseen from the 28-nation bloc's headquarters in Brussels.

Some political parties are offering to fight the cause of those disgruntled voters in upcoming national elections — while a few far-right groups are demanding a ballot in their own countries on whether to follow the United Kingdom out of the EU door.

That prospect is sending a shudder through top EU officials because it could propel a process where the bloc breaks up or collapses as fast as an Arctic ice sheet, wrecking Europe's delicate postwar balance. "Will Britain's shock vote to leave the (EU) embolden populists elsewhere in Europe? That has become the key question for Europe," Holger Schmieding, the chief economist at German bank Berenberg, wrote in an analysis.

France's far-right National Front lost no time in claiming that the U.K. referendum outcome was an emphatic endorsement for the proposals it has been putting forward for years. The nationalist party's leader, Marine Le Pen, posted a Union Jack photo on her Facebook page when the result came out last week, saying, "The United Kingdom has started a movement that will not stop."

She told the European Parliament on Tuesday: "I believe the consequences (of the U.K. vote) can only be positive ... the people can only gain from getting back their independence, a democratic process and control of their destiny."

Le Pen predicts that Europe's future shape will now be a central issue in campaigning for the French presidential election in about a year's time. Numerous polls have shown her reaching a runoff against a mainstream candidate.

The British decision to leave was also met with joy by Dutch firebrand lawmaker Geert Wilders, whose anti-Islam and euroskeptic Freedom Party is riding high in polls ahead of a general election next year.

"We want to be in charge of our own country, our own money, our own borders, and our own immigration policy," Wilders said, pledging to hold a referendum on EU membership if he takes power. "Let the Dutch people decide."

Eager to nip such talk in the bud, EU leaders are taking a tough line with the British government — refusing to hold any talks on future ties with Britain until London formally notifies Brussels it is leaving.

"No notification, no negotiation," EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Tuesday — also sending a signal that leaving the bloc won't be painless. It's not hard to find European politicians disaffected with the EU. They might not want to quit the bloc, but they do want it to do some things differently and now they are finding public support.

Earlier this month, an anti-establishment party founded by a comic triumphed in Italian mayoral runoff elections, upending the established order of municipal politics in Rome and Turin. The 5-Star Movement candidates trounced Italian Premier Matteo Renzi's mainstream rivals.

"We want a Europe that is more a 'community' and not a union of banks and lobbies," the 5-Star Movement's founder, comic Beppe Grillo, wrote on his blog after the British vote. "The European Union must change, otherwise it dies," he wrote. "There are millions and millions of European citizens ever more critical, who don't recognize themselves in this union, made of banks and economic blackmail."

Grillo was apparently referring to the deeply unpopular austerity measures designed to cut government debt in Europe after the continent's financial crisis. Although the immediate threat of a disintegration of the 19-nation eurozone that uses the euro currency has eased, the budget cuts have stayed.

So has the resentment of them. Since a general election in Portugal last year, an anti-austerity Socialist government has been kept in power by an unprecedented alliance with the Communist Party and radical Left Bloc. While Portugal has won too many benefits to want to leave the EU, the government's reversal of austerity measures is a clear act of defiance against Brussels.

EU nations such as Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and others have also defied EU officials in Brussels by refusing to accept the principle of sharing the refugee load among all EU members and helping hard-hit Greece and Italy.

Even in Germany, a bedrock EU member, there are stirrings of dissent against the bloc. Although Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc is easily the strongest political force, its ratings have sagged over recent months amid the huge surge of migrants to Germany and the fierce debate about how to respond.

At the same time, the 3-year-old nationalist Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, has surged in the polls and hopes to enter the national parliament next year. It opposes the EU becoming a "centralist federal state" and demands that the EU go back to being a community of "sovereign, loosely connected individual states."

If the EU doesn't scrap its "quasi-socialist experiment of deeper political integration, more European people will win back their sovereignty the British way," AfD leader Frauke Petry said. And even the wealthy countries of Northern Europe have not been immune from the anti-EU malaise, with the U.K. referendum result encouraging euroskeptic parties there as well.

The nationalist Sweden Democrats reiterated their calls for a similar anti-EU referendum in Sweden, while the leader of the anti-immigrant Danish People's Party, Kristian Thulesen Dahl, said Denmark should wait to see what kind of exit deal Britain gets and then hold its own referendum.

Britain's impending departure from the EU — which is apparently is going to be a much longer process than EU officials want — has not triggered a groundswell of other countries eager to follow suit. Still, it has given European leaders a lot to think about.

"Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share our euro-enthusiasm," EU President Donald Tusk said.

Elaine Ganley in Paris, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Frances D'Emilio in Italy, Michael C. Corder in The Hague and Karl Ritter in Stockholm contributed to this report.

EU lawmakers to press U.K. for quick exit ahead of summit

June 28, 2016

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union lawmakers are meeting in emergency session to discuss the U.K.'s unprecedented vote to leave the EU, set to call for Britain to trigger the exit process immediately. A non-binding draft resolution drawn up for Tuesday's session says the process should be launched once Prime Minister David Cameron notifies the outcome of the British referendum to EU leaders.

Cameron is to share his views about the referendum and perhaps Britain's future at a summit in Brussels starting at 1400 GMT on Tuesday. He has signaled that Britain might not trigger the exit clause known as Article 50 until October.

EU nations acknowledge the political chaos in the U.K. but they want Article 50 triggered as soon as possible to calm markets and reassure European citizens.

Leadership hopeful May vows to unify Britain behind EU exit

July 03, 2016

LONDON (AP) — Theresa May, the leading Conservative candidate to succeed David Cameron as British prime minister, pledged Sunday to unify her divided party and country behind a slowly negotiated exit from the European Union.

Home Secretary May, who holds a strong lead over four party rivals before Tuesday's initial leadership ballot, billed herself as best placed to bridge the gulf between ardent opponents and supporters of EU membership.

May said that under her leadership, the United Kingdom wouldn't formally declare its intention to leave the EU until next year, meaning a British exit from the 28-nation bloc might not happen until 2019. Under Article 50 of EU treaty law, members who formally apply to leave face a two-year deadline to negotiate new agreements with EU partners.

"What's important is that we do this in the right timescale to get the right deal for the UK. We shouldn't invoke Article 50 immediately," May said in a BBC television interview. "It shouldn't be before the end of the year. We need to establish our own negotiating position."

May officially supported Cameron's pro-EU efforts but avoided campaigning herself. She argued Sunday this relative neutrality would help her build consensus between the 17 million who voted for a British exit, or "Brexit," and the 16 million who voted to remain in the June 23 referendum.

"I've been clear that Brexit means Brexit," she said. "What we need to do is to bring those two sides together, bring 'leave' and 'remain' together, and bring the country together." Four other Conservatives are competing with May to take the helm of Britain's governing party following Cameron's resignation in the immediate wake of his referendum defeat.

Tuesday's initial ballot of 330 Conservative members of the House of Commons will eliminate the least popular candidate, followed by two more internal party votes Thursday and July 12 to reduce the field to two. Both surviving candidates will spend weeks seeking support from the party's approximately 150,000 grass-roots members before a winner is declared Sept. 9.

Media polling of Conservative MPs suggests that May already has more than 100 lawmakers' votes secured, while three others — anti-EU candidates Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom and pro-EU candidate Stephen Crabb — have secured around 20 each. The other anti-EU candidate, former Defense Secretary Liam Fox, has secured only a handful of votes and is considered most likely to be eliminated from the race Tuesday.