World Briefs

HAVANA – Fidel Castro said Monday that Cuba is not afraid to talk to the United States and that the communist government does not thrive on confrontation as its detractors claim.

In a column published in state-controlled newspapers, the former president also praised U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, saying the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "is walking on solid ground" with a proposal to appoint a special envoy to reshape U.S.-Cuba relations.

Castro wrote that "those capable of serenely analyzing the events, as is the case of the senator from Indiana, use an irrefutable argument: The measures of the United States against Cuba, over almost half a century, are a total failure."

And he repeated Cuba's willingness to talk with Washington.

L'AQUILA, Italy – A powerful earthquake in mountainous central Italy knocked down whole blocks of buildings early Monday as residents slept, killing more than 70 people in the country's deadliest quake in nearly three decades. Tens of thousands were homeless and 1,500 were injured. At least 91 deaths have been confirmed.

WASHINGTON – A U. S. immigration judge on Monday lifted the stay of deportation for accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk, who faces charges in Germany in the deaths of 29,000 Jews, but ruled he still could pursue his bid to reopen his case.

Although he lifted the stay effective on Wednesday, the judge ruled that lawyers for the 89-year-old retired Ohio autoworker should have filed the request to reopen his case with another immigration court - a step that could result in a new delay.

ANKARA – US President Barack Obama, seeking to boost ties with a key Muslim ally, firmly backed on Monday Turkey's bid to join the EU and tread carefully on Armenia's decades-old claims of genocide.

Obama urged Turkey and Armenia to move forward in their tentative dialogue to normalise ties and signalled he would not interfere in their dispute over whether the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire was "genocide".

SYDNEY – Australian researchers sifting papers belonging to the author of "Schindler's List" discovered a yellowing roll of 801 men saved from the Holocaust by the German industrialist — the very copy the writer used to bring the story to the world's attention, a curator said Monday. The 13-page document is a copy of one of Oskar Schindler's famed compilations of names that eventually included 1,100 men and women he saved by employing them in his factories in WWII.