TURKEY-JOURNALISTS
ANKARA, Turkey Turkey's main opposition party says as many as 64 journalists are in prison and a further 123 are on trial, accusing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government of turning the country into "semi-open prison" unfit for journalists to live in. The Republican People's Party on Tuesday released a report on imprisoned journalists in Turkey, a country where human rights groups say press freedoms are in decline and self-censorship by media groups is rife.
SPAIN-MIGRANTS
MADRID Spain's Interior Ministry says some 400 sub-Saharan migrants tried to scale a barbed-wire border fence to enter the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco, with some 100 making it across. Melilla ministry spokeswoman Irene Flores said Tuesday the majority of those who managed to cross the fence had been intercepted and would be placed in a temporary accommodation center while authorities try to repatriate them.
FRANCE-GYPSIES
PARIS A French lawmaker is defending himself against accusations that he made an offensive reference to Nazi mass murder during a tense standoff with a group of Gypsies. Gilles Bourdouleix, a member of parliament and mayor for the town of Cholet near Nantes, says that a recording of him saying "Maybe Hitler didn't kill enough of them" during an altercation Sunday is a "manipulation and a frame-up" and he threatened violence against the reporter who released the recording.
ALBANIA-DEMOCRATS' NEW LEADER
TIRANA, Albania Lulzim Basha has been elected as new leader of the center-right Albanian Democratic Party. The 39-year-old, who is mayor of the capital, Tirana, replaces outgoing Prime Minister Sali Berisha, who resigned from the post after conceding defeat in the June 23 national elections, taking personal responsibility for the heavy loss to the rival Socialist Party of Edi Rama.
BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL
GERMANY-CELLPHONE-DEAL
BERLIN Spain's Telefonica has agreed to buy German mobile unit E-Plus from Dutch telecommunications company Royal KPN NV for 5 billion euros ($6.58 billion) plus shares, a deal that would create Germany's biggest cellphone operator in terms of customers. The proposed deal announced Tuesday would bring together E-Plus, currently Germany's No. 3 operator with 23.4 million customers, with O2 the fourth-biggest, which is already owned by Telefonica and has 19.3 million customers. By Geir Moulson.
SPAIN-FINANCIAL CRISIS
MADRID The Bank of Spain says the country(asterisk)s economy contracted the second quarter but by a smaller amount compared to the previous three months, mainly thanks to strong exports.
WORLD MARKETS
MILAN Easing fears of an economic slowdown in China pushed world markets higher on Tuesday. By Colleen Barry.
SWEDEN-VATTENFALL
STOCKHOLM Sweden's Vattenfall, the largest utility in the Nordic region, said Tuesday it has written down 29.7 billion kronor ($4.6 billion) off the value of its assets and intends to split its operations into two due to the increasingly bleak prospects for energy markets.
GERMANY-RAIL-TRACK-CARTEL
BERLIN Germany's antitrust regulator has fined eight companies a total of 97.6 million euros ($129 million) for colluding on orders for railway tracks and related products.
