Warsaw

Sometimes men are faced with impossible odds, hopelessly outnumbered or facing a merciless enemy with better weapons or other overwhelming advantages. Occasionally these terrible odds are overcome, as in the battles of Rorke’s Drift and Stalingrad. Other times, such as at the Alamo or Thermopylae, the bravest stood and fought to the bitter end with valiant efforts worthy of remembrance.

'Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe' by Kapka Kassabova (Granta, 379 pages, £15)

Leaders from Central Europe said Tuesday they reject a European Union policy that calls for all member states to receive migrants, protesting suggestions that the level of their compliance could be linked to the availability of EU funds to them.

Some four million Syrians in Turkey will be granted citizenship if "yes" votes emerge in the April 16 referendum on constitutional amendments, main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said on March 25. "Did those (four million Syrians) come to Turkey due to the parliamentary system? Who brought them from Syria?

Leaders hailed the visionary “war generation” of leaders from old foes France and Germany who signed the Treaty of Rome in the same room on March 25, 1957, along with Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; some offered personal memories of their own generation’s debts to the expanding European Union.

Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło has spoken out against a two-speed Europe as she prepared to head off to a EU summit in Italy marking the 60th anniversary of the bloc's founding Treaty of Rome.

The rising tide of an aggressive blend of nationalism and Islamism might be prompting Ankara to pursue its own WMDs, and its preference appears to be long-range missiles. As Turkey feels more threatened by real or (mostly) imagined enemies, it increasingly views maximum possible military deterrence as essential to both survival (a defensive goal) and assertiveness (an offensive one).

EU officials said on Thursday they were hopeful Greece would drop its eleventh-hour objections to a declaration marking the bloc’s 60th birthday, sparing it a major embarrassment as it struggles for unity despite the looming departure of Britain.

The leader of the ruling party in Poland has stated that Warsaw will oppose all models which create different "speeds" of integration in the EU at the upcoming summit meeting in Rome this week.

"We cannot accept the creation of a "two-speed Europe," argued Jaroslaw Kaczyński, chairman of the Eurosceptic Law and Justice Party for the Polish edition wSieci, cited by Reuters.

Poland's Constitutional Court has approved a law which may be used to ban the protests of the opposition.

The decision of the court was announced in an empty hall and streamed live on the Internet after the media were banned from attending.