Britain’s security minister said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin bears ultimate responsibility for the nerve agent attack targeting a former spy in England, also warning that the U.K. would counter Russian “malign activity” with both overt and covert measures.

Ben Wallace said Putin and his government “controls, funds and directs” the military intelligence unit known as the GRU, which Britain believes used Novichok to try to kill ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were hospitalized for weeks in critical condition after they were exposed to the Soviet-developed nerve agent in the city of Salisbury on March 4. They are now recovering in a secret location for their own protection.

In the nearby town of Amesbury, local woman Dawn Sturgess died and her boyfriend Charlie Rowley was sickened after they came across remnants of the poison in June.

Britain on Wednesday announced charges in absentia against two alleged Russian agents, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov — names that are likely aliases. Prime Minister Theresa May said the murder attempt had been approved “at a senior level of the Russian state.”

Moscow strongly denies involvement in the attack, and Russian officials said they didn’t recognize the suspects.

Britain plans to press its case against Russia at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.

The Skripals’ poisoning ignited a diplomatic confrontation in which hundreds of envoys were expelled by both Russia and Western nations. But there is limited appetite among Britain’s European allies for further sanctions against Moscow.

Wallace told the BBC that Britain would “push back the Russian malign activity” with “whatever means we have within the law and our capabilities.”

He said Britain would “challenge the Russians in both the overt and the covert space, within the rule of law and in a sophisticated way.”

A German official is criticizing representatives of Romania’s governing party for engaging in “a campaign of defamation” against the southeastern European country’s German minority.

Bernd Fabritius, a German lawmaker who was born in Romania, said in a statement late Wednesday that the defamation had recently reached “a new peak.” He cited a Facebook post by Romania’s former finance minister, Darius Valcov, which showed the country’s ethnic German President Klaus Iohannis with a Hitler-style moustache.

Fabritius, who was appointed by the German government to represent the interests of German minorities in eastern Europe, said he had written directly to Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancila, urging her to distance herself from the “collective insults” by her government or Social Democratic party.

The British luxury fashion brand Burberry will stop using real fur in its products.

The company said Thursday there will be no real fur in its London Fashion Week catwalk show later this month. It will also phase out existing real fur products.

The company has made only limited use of real fur in recent years with clothing incorporating fur from rabbit, fox, mink and Asiatic racoon. Those will now be eliminated.

The Sept. 17 show will mark the debut collection for new creative chief Riccardo Tisci, who replaced Christopher Bailey at the helm.

The Latest on Europe’s migrant crisis (all times local):

11:05 a.m.

Germany’s interior minister says the issue of migration is “the mother of all political problems in this country.”

Horst Seehofer, who also heads the Bavarian equivalent of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right party, told daily Rheinische Post in an interview published Thursday that voters are linking their concerns to the issue of migration.

Seehofer has taken a tougher line on migrants than Merkel, at times sparring with her publicly, as his Christian Social Union party faces steep losses in next month’s Bavarian state election.

Germany has taken in more than 1 million people seeking shelter from war and persecution since 2015.

Seehofer told the newspaper that he understood the outburst of public anger seen in the eastern city of Chemnitz in recent days following a fatal stabbing blamed on migrants.

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10:45 a.m.

Spanish authorities say rescuers have found five dead migrants and 53 survivors in a boat partially sunk in waters east of the Strait of Gibraltar.

The Maritime Rescue Service said Thursday that a surveillance plane found the dinghy in a stretch of the Mediterranean known as the Alboran Sea on Wednesday. The bodies and survivors were taken to Almeria.

The service said that 181 northern African migrants — mostly adult men — were rescued Thursday morning from five boats attempting the shortest route into Europe.

On Wednesday, a total of 501 people were pulled from 12 boats, with three migrants found crossing the Alboran Sea in a jet ski.

A recent spike in migrant arrivals has put a strain on public services and added pressure to the Spanish government.

Floods, typhoons, earthquakes and a record-shattering heat wave. The summer of 2018 has been an unusually destructive and deadly one in Japan, even for a country prone to natural disasters:

JUNE 18: OSAKA EARTHQUAKE

A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck during the morning rush hour in the city of Osaka, killing five people and injuring more than 400 others. Two of the victims were hit by falling cinder-block walls, including a 9-year-old girl outside her school, sparking an inspection and tearing down of many of the aging structures.

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JULY: WEST JAPAN FLOODS

Unusually heavy rain in western Japan claimed 221 lives as landslides buried homes and rivers broke through embankments. Floodwaters reached the top of the first story of buildings. The cities of Hiroshima and Kurashiki and nearby areas were hardest hit. Weeks later, more than 1,500 people are still living in shelters.

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JULY: RECORD HEAT

A prolonged heat wave was blamed for at least 116 deaths, as two high pressure systems trapped warm and humid air above the region. The temperature reached 41.1 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit) on July 23 in Kumagaya, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of Tokyo, the highest recorded anywhere in Japan in recent history.

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SEPT. 4: TYPHOON JEBI

The strongest typhoon to hit Japan in 25 years ripped off building roofs, tossed cars onto their sides and flooded one of Japan’s busiest airports, forcing it to close for at least three days. Eleven people died. The bridge connecting the offshore airport to the mainland was severely damaged when the storm drove a tanker ship sideways into it.

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SEPT. 6: HOKKAIDO EARTHQUAKE

A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck around 3 a.m. on Hokkaido, leaving deep gashes in roads, triggering landslides and knocking out power and train service across Japan’s northernmost main island. As of late afternoon, seven people had been confirmed dead, with the search continuing for the missing.

Australian prosecutors are appealing for a tougher sentence for the most senior Roman Catholic cleric convicted of covering up child sex abuse.

A magistrate last month ordered former Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson to be detained at his sister’s house for at least six months of a one-year sentence before he is eligible for parole. The 67-year-old cleric was convicted in May of failing to report to police the repeated abuse of two altar boys by a pedophile priest in the Hunter Valley region north of Sydney during the 1970s.

The Director of Public Prosecutions’ office said in a statement Thursday that prosecutors are appealing the “inadequacy” of the sentence in the New South Wales state District Court. Wilson had faced a possible sentence of up to two years in prison.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – Lexington Police have arrested a man they say physically assaulted a woman multiple times while holding her in captivity for hours.

Police say the man charged is 63-year-old Richard French.

They say he began drinking at approximately 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Police say from that time until about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday evening, French physically assaulted a woman, breaking her phone when she attempted to call authorities for help.

They say French strangled the woman multiple times until she went unconscious.

Police say French prevented the woman from sleeping, leaving, or making phone calls when she tried to reach out for help.

According to Lexington Police, the woman said she thought she was going to die throughout the 20-hour span.

French is charged with assault, unlawful imprisonment, intimidating a participant in the legal process, and terroristic threatening.

He is scheduled to answer to those charges in court Thursday.

GRU isn’t as well-known a baleful acronym as KGB or FSB. But Russia‘s military intelligence service is attracting increasing attention as allegations mount of devious and deadly operations on and off the field of battle.

The latest charge came Wednesday, when Britain identified two suspects in this year’s nerve-agent poisonings as GRU agents.

An overview of the GRU:

THE AGENCY

Formally named the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, the agency is almost universally referred to by its former acronym GRU.

It is the most shadowy of Russia’s secret services. When its previous director Igor Sergun died in 2016, the Kremlin announcement was so terse that it gave neither the date, cause or place of death.

The agency has an apparently broad mandate. According to the Defense Ministry website, it is tasked not only with “ensuring conditions conducive to the successful implementation of the Russian Federation’s defense and security policy” but with providing officials intelligence ” that they need to make decisions in the political, economic, defense, scientific, technical and environmental areas.”

ALLEGATIONS

Britain claims that two GRU agents carried out this spring’s attack with the nerve agent Novichok on Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who became a British double agent, and his daughter. Both survived the poisoning in the city of Salisbury, but three months later two area residents were sickened by the same nerve agent, one of them fatally — it is believed they found the discarded bottle that had carried the Skripals’ poison.

This week’s claim came less than two months after the U.S. indicted 12 alleged GRU agents for hacking into the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Party and releasing tens of thousands of private communications, part of a sweeping conspiracy by the Kremlin to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election.

Also this year, the investigative group Bellingcat reported that a GRU officer was in charge of operations in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists were fighting Ukrainian forces, in July 2014 when a Malaysian passenger airliner was shot down, killing all 298 people aboard. International investigators say the plane was shot down by a mobile missile launcher brought in from Russia. The GRU officer named by Bellingcat reportedly was responsible for weapons transfers.

Russia’s RBC news service reported this year that the GRU oversees Russian mercenaries in Syria, fighting there as a so-called shadow army.

Russian authorities generally deny allegations against the GRU and refuse to discuss its activities. They said they didn’t recognize the suspects Britain named Wednesday in the Salisbury poisoning.

OTHER AGENCIES

The GRU is one arm of Russia’s extensive security and intelligence apparatus, which also includes the Foreign Intelligence Service, known as the SVR, and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which conducts domestic intelligence and counterintelligence. The SVR and FSB were spun off from the KGB after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin ran the FSB before ascending to the presidency.

And as president, Putin names the top brass in the GRU. Of all the agencies, the FSB looms largest in Russians’ minds because it hunts domestic threats. The GRU, created under Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, has a more ruthless reputation, but focuses its energies on foreign threats.

The agencies’ operations appear to both compete and cooperate.

Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent Moscow-based military analyst, told The Associated Press that if “the SVR runs into military intelligence, they have to share it with the GRU; that means they try not to run into military intelligence and tell their agents not to report anything military even if they know it. The other way around, military or GRU assets are asked never to report anything political.”

But in the case of the alleged U.S. election-related hacking, he said, “I believe that was an inter-service operation, because it’s not military but they gained some kind of hacking access and then they shared it with the FSB and the SVR.”

———

Kate de Pury contributed to this report.

GRAYSON, Ky. (WTVQ) — According to the Carter County Sheriff’s Office, the search effort for missing 62-year-old Richard Lea has been scaled back, after exhausting all possible resources.

According to a post on their Facebook page, the Sheriff’s Office used all resources possible, including: search dogs, dive teams, helicopters, sonar, ground pounders, and ATVs.

Lea is described as 5’6″ tall, and is non-verbal with dementia.

He went missing from the Grayson Lake area.

If you see him, please call police immediately.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An opinion piece in The New York Times by an anonymous senior administration official claiming to be part of a “resistance” working “from within” to thwart President Donald Trump’s “worst inclinations” set off a wild guessing game inside and outside the White House on the author’s identity.

In an extraordinary move, a furious Trump tweeted a demand Wednesday night that if “the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called on the “coward” who wrote the piece to “do the right thing and resign.”

White House officials did not immediately respond to a request to elaborate on Trump’s call for the writer to be turned over to the government or the unsupported national security ground of his demand.

To some, the ultimatum appeared to play into the very concerns about the president’s impulses raised by the essay’s author. Trump has demanded that aides identify the leaker, according to two people familiar with the matter, though it was not yet clear how they might go about doing so. The two were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

A “House of Cards”-style plot twist in an already over-the-top administration, Trump allies and political insiders scrambled to unmask the writer.

The author, claiming to be part of the “resistance” to Trump “working diligently from within” his administration, said, “Many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”

“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” the author continued. “We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”

The text of the op-ed was pulled apart for clues: The writer is identified as an “administration official”; does that mean a person who works outside the White House? The references to Russia and the late Sen. John McCain — do they suggest someone working in national security? Does the writing style sound like someone who worked at a think tank? In a tweet, the Times used the pronoun “he” to refer to the writer; does that rule out all women?

The newspaper later said the tweet referring to “he” had been “drafted by someone who is not aware of the author’s identity, including the gender, so the use of ‘he’ was an error.”

Hotly debated on Twitter was the author’s use of the word “lodestar,” which pops up frequently in speeches by Vice President Mike Pence. Could the anonymous figure be someone in Pence’s orbit? Others argued that the word “lodestar” could have been included to throw people off.

Trump, appearing at an unrelated event Wednesday at the White House, lashed out at the Times for publishing the op-ed.

“They don’t like Donald Trump and I don’t like them,” he said of the newspaper. The op-ed pages of the newspaper are managed separately from its news department.

In a blistering statement, the press secretary accused the author of choosing to “deceive” the president by remaining in the administration and putting himself or herself “ahead of the will of the American people. The coward should do the right thing and resign.”

Sanders also called on the Times to “issue an apology” for publishing the piece, calling it a “pathetic, reckless, and selfish op-ed.”

Showing her trademark ability to attract attention, former administration official Omarosa Manigault Newman tweeted that clues about the writer’s identity were in her recently released tell-all book, offering a page number: 330. The reality star writes on that page: “many in this silent army are in his party, his administration, and even in his own family.”

The anonymous author wrote in the Times that where Trump has had successes, they have come “despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”

The assertions in the column were largely in line with complaints about Trump’s behavior that have repeatedly been raised by various administration officials, often speaking on condition of anonymity. And they were published a day after the release of details from an explosive new book by longtime journalist Bob Woodward that laid bare concerns among the highest echelon of Trump aides about the president’s judgment.

The writer of the Times op-ed said Trump aides are aware of the president’s faults and “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.”

The writer also alleged “there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment” because of the “instability” witnessed in the president. The 25th Amendment allows the vice president to take over if the commander in chief is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It requires that the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet back relieving the president.

The writer added: “This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pressured by Democrats with Donald Trump on their minds, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh rejected repeated requests at Wednesday’s Senate confirmation hearing to reveal his views about a president pardoning himself or being forced to testify in a criminal case.

For a second day, the judge nominated by Trump insisted he fully embraced the importance of judicial independence. But he refused to provide direct answers to Democrats who wanted him to say whether there are limits on a president’s power to issue pardons, including to himself or in exchange for a bribe. He also would not say whether he believes the president can be subpoenaed to testify.

“I’m not going to answer hypothetical questions of that sort,” Kavanaugh said in response to a question from Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont about pardons. Still, he began his long day in the witness chair by declaring that “no one is above the law.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing has strong political overtones ahead of the November congressional elections, but as a practical matter Democrats lack the votes to block Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

They are concerned that Kavanaugh will push the court to the right on abortion, guns and other issues, and that he will side with President Trump in cases stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties to the Trump campaign. The 53-year-old appellate judge answered cautiously when asked about most of those matters, refusing an invitation from Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut to pledge to step aside from any Supreme Court cases dealing with Trump and Mueller’s investigation.

Kavanaugh’s most uncomfortable moment may have come near the end of nearly 12 hours in the witness chair, when Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris asked whether he had discussed the investigation with anyone at a law firm founded by Marc Kasowitz, a onetime lawyer for Trump. Kavanaugh said he couldn’t recall any conversations, but asked for a list of lawyers at the firm. Harris said she thought Kavanaugh had a name in mind but did not want to reveal it. She promised to follow up, amid Republican complaints that she was being unfair.

Protesters continued their efforts to interrupt the hearings, but senators basically ignored their shouts as they were removed by police. U.S. Capitol Police said 66 people were removed from the committee room Wednesday and charged with disorderly conduct. Six more at a different Senate office building were charged with crowding, obstructing or incommoding.

Democrats also persisted with their complaints that they were being denied access to records from Kavanaugh’s time in the George W. Bush White House.

One TV viewer gave Kavanaugh a rave review.

Trump said he had been watching the hearings and thought the Democrats were “grasping at straws” in questioning the man he chose to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy. He said he “saw some incredible answers to very complex questions.”

The committee’s top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California, disagreed. “He’s not being very specific,” she said during a break in the proceedings.

The Democrats weren’t the only ones who recognized the importance of questions about Trump and the Russia investigation. Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, asked Kavanaugh right away whether he would be independent from the president who chose him for highly prestigious lifetime position.

Kavanaugh said, “The first thing that makes a good judge is independence, not being swayed by political or public pressure.”

He cited historic cases, including the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that desegregated schools and the U.S. v. Nixon decision that compelled the president to turn over the Watergate tapes — a ruling Kavanaugh had previously questioned.

“That takes some backbone,” he said of the justices who decided those cases.

But when asked more specific questions, including whether a president can be required to respond to a subpoena, Kavanaugh said, “I can’t give you an answer on that hypothetical question.”

The Supreme Court has never answered that question, and it is among the potentially most important since Trump could face a subpoena from special counsel Mueller.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, asked whether a president could be criminally investigated or indicted. Kavanaugh again said he had never taken a position on those issues, though he did write in a 1998 article that impeachment may be the only way to hold a president accountable while in office.

“The Constitution itself seems to dictate, in addition, that congressional investigation must take place in lieu of criminal investigation when the President is the subject of investigation, and that criminal prosecution can occur only after the President has left office,” he wrote in the Georgetown Law Review.

On abortion, Kavanaugh wouldn’t say whether the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that ensures access to abortion was correct, but noted it has been affirmed “many times.”

“Respect for precedent is important. … Precedent is rooted right in the Constitution itself,” he said.

Kavanaugh likened Roe v. Wade to another controversial, landmark Supreme Court decision, the Miranda ruling about the rights of criminal suspects. Kavanaugh said the court specifically reaffirmed both decisions in later cases that made them “precedent on precedent.”

Kavanaugh defended his dissenting opinion last year in the case of a pregnant immigrant teen in federal custody. Kavanaugh would have denied her immediate access to an abortion, even after she received permission from a Texas judge.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, praised Kavanaugh for hiring female lawyers as clerks as a judge on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and then posed questions about whether Kavanaugh was aware of sexual harassment allegations against retired circuit court Judge Alex Kozinski in California. Kavanaugh considered the judge a friend and mentor and Kozinski testified at Kavanaugh’s 2006 confirmation hearing to be an appellate judge.

Kavanaugh said he had known nothing about the allegations until they were disclosed last year. “It was a gut punch for me,” he said, and he was “shocked, disappointed, angry.”

Asked about an email list Kozinski allegedly used to send offensive material, Kavanaugh said, “I don’t remember anything like that.”

The judge’s work in the Bush White House also has figured in the hearing, particularly as Democratic senators have fought for access to documents from his three years as staff secretary. They say those could shed light on his views about policies from that era, including the detention and interrogation of terror suspects. Majority Republicans have declined to seek the papers, and instead have gathered documents from his work as White House counsel to Bush. Many are being held as confidential within the committee.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Kavanaugh if he would seek a delay in his hearing so the paper trail could be vetted.

But Kavanaugh declined to engage, saying, “I do not believe that’s consistent” with the way prior nominations have been handled.

Kavanaugh stood by his 2006 testimony, when he was nominated for the appellate court, when he said he was not involved in some Bush-era policies, particularly a bill-signing statement on the treatment of terror suspects that would have passed his desk as staff secretary.

Kavanaugh said his earlier testimony was “100 percent accurate.”

Republicans hope to confirm Kavanaugh in time for the first day of the new Supreme Court term, Oct. 1. They now have a 51-49 majority in the Senate, after Jon Kyl was sworn in Wednesday to fill the seat held by the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

One of several Democrats who could potentially vote for Kavanaugh, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, joined the hearing in the audience for a while. He is up for re-election this fall in a state Trump won handily in 2016. Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine also stopped in for part of the session.

Local government says more than 30 feared buried in landslides in town hard hit by quake; 4 dead and 290 injured.

Well, now we know what happened to Frank Underwood.

We just don’t know how.

In a new teaser for the final season of “House of Cards,” it seems like Kevin Spacey‘s character has been killed off.

It’s a short 24-second clip that was tweeted out by Netflix on Wednesday, but the caption is, “You should have known.”

In the clip, Robin Wright’s character Claire Underwood is speaking to her seemingly deceased husband at his gravestone and says, “I’ll tell you this Francis, when they bury me, it won’t be in my backyard.”

She continues, “And when they pay their respects, they’ll have to wait in line.”

The camera pulls away to show “Francis Underwood” written on a gravestone and the death year is 2017.

But who — or what — killed Frank Underwood, Spacey’s memorably ruthless U.S. president? Viewers will have to wait until November 2, when the series returns for its final season, to find out.

It was announced in December that “House of Cards” would resume production without Spacey after Netflix cut ties with the actor in November, days after accusations of sexual impropriety against him surfaced.

The accusations against Spacey emerged with “Star Trek: Discovery” star Anthony Rapp accusing Spacey of making a sexual advance on him at a party in 1986 — when Rapp was just 14-years-old.

Spacey responded on Twitter with a message that read in part, “I’m beyond horrified to hear this story.”

“I honestly do not remember the encounter,” the actor continued in the tweet. “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.”

After that, others spoke out against Spacey.

Spacey — a two-time Academy Award winner who also won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Frank Underwood on “House of Cards” and a Tony for his Broadway role in “Lost in Yonkers” — was also replaced by Christopher Plummer in the upcoming film, “All the Money in the World.”

Yesterday, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office said prosecutors had declined to file sexual assault charges against the actor for one of those accusations.

Spacey had been accused of assaulting a man in West Hollywood in 1992. According to the declination, the statue of limitations has expired. The spokesperson added that the case did not involve an underage victim.

When the presidents of Russia, Turkey and Iran meet Friday in Tehran, all eyes will be on their diplomacy reaching a last-minute deal to avert a bloodbath in Idlib, Syria‘s crowded northwestern province and last opposition stronghold.

The three leaders, whose nations are all under U.S. sanctions, have an interest in working together to contain a potentially catastrophic offensive by President Bashar Assad’s forces to recapture the province, but Idlib is complicated and they have little common ground when it comes to Syria.

The province and surrounding area is home to about 3 million people — nearly half of them civilians displaced from other parts of Syria — but also an estimated 10,000 hard-core fighters, including al-Qaida-linked militants.

For Russia and Iran, both allies of the Syrian government, retaking Idlib is crucial to complete what they see as a military victory in Syria’s civil war after they recaptured nearly all other major towns and cities, largely defeating the rebellion against Assad.

A bloody offensive that creates a massive wave of death and displacement, however, runs counter to their narrative that the situation in Syria is normalizing, and could hurt Russia’s longer-term efforts to encourage the return of refugees and get Western countries to invest in Syria’s postwar reconstruction.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, which supports Syria’s rebels, stands to lose the most from an assault on Idlib.

Turkey already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees and has sealed its borders to newcomers. It has also created zones of control in northern Syria and has several hundred troops deployed at 12 observation posts in Idlib. A government assault creates a nightmare scenario of potentially hundreds of thousands of people, including militants, fleeing toward its border and destabilizing towns and cities in northern Syria under its control.

“I don’t think that there is a total solution for Syria on the table, but certainly it is a defining moment,” said Sam Heller, a senior analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. He said if Damascus retook Idlib, it would mark its near-total victory over the opposition, but it will likely also bring humanitarian suffering and carnage on a scale not yet seen in the seven-year war.

A lot of expectations hang on the Iran summit bringing together Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Staffan de Mistura, the U.N.’s Syria envoy, made a personal appeal to Erdogan and Putin to find a “soft solution to this crisis.”

“We look to Russia, Turkey, Iran to come with hope to the civilians in Idlib,” he said. “There are indeed many more babies than there are terrorists in Idlib. There are a million children.”

Friday’s meeting in Tehran marks the third time the presidents of Turkey, Russia and Iran have met over Syria in less than a year. In the absence of an engaged United States, they have taken it upon themselves to manage Syria’s messy civil war, and their previous meetings in Sochi and Ankara established so-called de-escalation zones in several areas, including Idlib, that temporarily reduced violence. All these agreements were later violated as Syrian troops, backed by Russia and Iran, moved to retake those areas after pounding them into submission with airstrikes.

Capitulating rebels and militants from Homs, Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa were packed in green buses and taken to Idlib, where the war’s last showdown is about to unfold. Only this time, there is nowhere left to go, and remaining fighters are more likely to fight until the end.

Speaking to Russian news agencies Wednesday in Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov repeated Russian statements that Idlib is turning into a breeding ground for terrorists and needs to be dealt with accordingly.

He added, however, that Russia “is acting cautiously, selectively and is trying to minimize possible risks for civilians.” He added that the Russian and U.S. militaries, as well as diplomats, are still in touch on the situation in Idlib.

“I think the military situation will become clearer after the leaders of the three countries hold talks on Friday,” he said.

The meeting takes place against the backdrop of much saber-rattling.

Assad has built up forces around Idlib, vowing to retake the province. Turkey, which backs the rebels in Idlib, is warning against such a move, saying it will be disastrous. Moscow, meanwhile, has moved 10 warships and two submarines off the coast of Syria in a huge show of force.

At the core of Idlib’s predicament is the thousands of jihadists entrenched in the province along with the civilians. The al-Qaida-linked Levant Liberation Committee remains the dominant force there, and any deal would most likely entail intensified Turkish efforts to oust the militants. Russia is reportedly talking to the group through mediators about dissolving itself.

Instead of a full-scale assault, Russia, Turkey and Iran could agree to a piecemeal approach that would see government forces taking off bites of the province, including cities like Jisr al-Shughour, close to Assad’s coastal heartland in Latakia province, and Maaret al-Numan and Khan Sheikhoun, which lie on the M5, a key highway that runs through Syria’s major cities.

According to an analysis by the International Crisis Group, one compromise plan could entail ending recurrent rebel drone attacks on Russia’s Hmeimeem air base in Latakia by withdrawing the de-escalation zone’s protection from specific problem areas, and reopening key highways in return for suspending a government offensive in Idlib to enable Turkey to find a solution to the province’s jihadist challenge.

Another approach could be to get Turkey to agree to a government return to parts of Idlib while guaranteeing Turkish interests in northwestern Syria, at least in the short term.

For Turkey, however, the loss of Idlib would represent a humiliating failure that threatens to completely defeat Ankara’s interests in Syria.

Can Acun, foreign policy researcher at the Ankara-based Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, or SETA, said Turkey will try to push at the summit for any operation in Idlib to be limited, “one that targets only terror and radical groups.”

He said Turkey could propose that the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces and other moderate groups in Syria be used “to weaken” the radical groups in Idlib.

Russia, which has seen its ties with Turkey grow amid Ankara’s ongoing row with Washington, may be willing to compromise to protect the budding relationship.

Volkan Bozkir, head of the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a senior official of Turkey’s ruling party, said he was hopeful a political solution would emerge at the meeting.

“They (Turkey, Russia and Iran) are all smart nations,” Bozkir said. “I am hopeful that a formula can be reached with diplomatic ways, with smart policies and not through the use of guns.”

———

Associated Press writers Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow, Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) — Police say a man was taken to the hospital early Thursday morning after crashing into two parked cars on North Broadway.

According to police, a man drove into two unoccupied parked cars on North Broadway, near 7th Street, around 1:00 Thursday morning.

They say three other people were inside the car at the time.

They say the driver had no visible injuries, but was taken to the hospital.

They are still investigating the cause of the accident.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) — Police have arrested a man they say pointed a gun at a father and son back in May, while they worked on a car outside their home.

Police say on May 21st, 28-year-old Lonnie Davis walked up to a father and son working on a car and pointed a gun at them without provocation.

According to police, Davis began screaming at the two men, which prompted the son to pull out a knife from the car.

Police say that caused Davis to run off.

He is charged with wanton endangerment.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis were set to hold long-delayed talks Thursday with top Indian officials, looking to shore up the alliance with one of Washington’s top regional allies.

The so-called “2+2” talks, scheduled to last just a few hours and focus on strategic and security issues, come amid a series of divisive issues, including Washington’s demands that India stop buying Iranian oil and a Russian air-defense system. There are also news reports that President Donald Trump has privately mimicked the accent of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But with trade and strategic ties growing quickly between the U.S. and India, both countries were keen to downplay potential diplomatic troubles.

“Freedom means that at times nations don’t agree with each other,” Mattis told reporters on his way to India, when asked about India’s plans to buy a sophisticated Russian air-defense system. “That doesn’t mean we can’t be partners. That doesn’t mean we don’t respect the sovereignty of those nations.”

The purchase of the S-400 ground-to-air missile system could trigger U.S. sanctions on India.

But C. Raja Mohan, one of India’s top foreign policy analysts and the director of the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, noted that New Delhi-Washington ties have strengthened immensely over the past couple decades, and Trump has ramped up diplomatic pressure on India’s main rivals, Pakistan and China, earning him plenty of goodwill.

He presumes both countries want a way to get past the question of the Russian missile system.

“India doesn’t want to wreck the relationship for the S-400,” he said. He also downplayed reports in the U.S. and Indian media that Trump has mimicked Modi’s accent in meetings with his top officials.

Modi, he notes, is long past the days when, as the top official in the Indian state of Gujarat, he was denied a U.S. visa because of accusations he did not do enough to quell 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots.

“This government is pragmatic,” Mohan said. Modi “has seen a lot worse than people mocking his accent.”

The India-U.S. “2+2” talks, called that because they include the top diplomatic and defense officials of both countries, have been postponed twice, the last time when Pompeo was dispatched in July for talks in North Korea.

Pompeo met Wednesday in Islamabad with Pakistan’s new prime minister, Imran Khan. Khan said later he was optimistic he could reset the relationship with Washington after the U.S. cut aid payments over Islamabad’s alleged failure to combat the country’s militants.

Cambodia’s one-party legislature has confirmed Prime Minister Hun Sen for another five-year term, cementing his status as one of the world’s longest-serving leaders.

The National Assembly approved the appointment Thursday with all 125 members voting in favor without any debates. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party won a July 29 general election by a landslide, but critics consider the polls unfree and unfair because the only credible opposition grouping, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, was dissolved by court order last year in an action seen as politically motivated.

The 66-year-old Hun Sen has been in power for 33 years, combining guile and strong-arming to dominate his country’s politics. He declared before the election that he intended to serve two more terms at the helm.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s trust in U.S. President Donald Trump remains unchanged, according to South Korea’s special envoy, who met with Kim in Pyongyang on Wednesday.

“Chairman Kim emphasized that he has never made a negative comment about Trump,” Chung Eui-yong, South Korea’s top national security adviser, said at a media briefing on Thursday.

Kim also reaffirmed his nation’s commitment to “actively engage in denuclearization if the countermeasures are taken simultaneously” and “expressed frustration that his goodwill is not being properly delivered to the international community.”

Kim stressed to Chung that North Korea’s nuclear tests have become permanently impossible at Poongye-ri as two-thirds of its tunnel is destroyed. The dismantled missile-engine test site at Tongchang-ri is North Korea’s only test facility.

This means North Korea “will completely halt long-range missile tests in the future, and is a very practical and significant step,” Chung added.

North Korean state media supported what Kim told South Korean officials.

“Supreme leader said he fully supports and sympathizes with” President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, with Kim saying “he remains unchanged in his determination to strive hard to bring the fellow countrymen better results at an early date, bearing in mind the mission before the nation and its expectation,” Korean Central News Agency reported, citing Kim’s reply to a personal letter from Moon.

The two Koreas also agreed to hold a third summit Sept. 18-20 in Pyongyang. The two leaders will again discuss making progress on denuclearizing the peninsula, relieving military tensions near the border and opening a joint liaison office in the Kaesong Industrial Complex.

Moon and Trump are planning to meet at the U.N. General Assembly later this month.

Kim said he agreed with South Korea’s position that an official declaration ending the Korean War would help build mutual trust between the nations.

“Kim expressed his stance that a weakening of the United States-South Korea alliance or United States’ troops withdrawal from Korea has nothing to do with the war-end declaration,” Chung said.

The two Koreas are aligned in formally ending the war, a measure that has helped thaw relations between the two countries. For the U.S., denuclearizing remains the top priority.

“Moon and Kim are pushing for a peace declaration to notionally end the civil war. The U.S. says, eliminate North Korean nuclear weapons first,” said Stephen Ganyard, an ABC News contributor and former deputy assistant secretary of the state. “Moon, Trump and Kim all have different agendas and goals. Someone will be forced to give in this month. Might be Trump if Moon sides with Kim.”

ABC News’ Hakyung Kate Lee, Liz Sunwoo Kim and Soohyun Kim contributed to this article.

Starbucks is opening its first store in Italy, betting that premium brews and novelties like a heated marble-topped coffee bar will win customers in a country fond of its daily espresso rituals.

Decades ago, Milan’s coffee bars inspired the chain’s vision. Now Starbucks is hoping clients will visit its new store, called the Reserve Roastery, to watch beans being roasted, sip coffee or enjoy cocktails at a mezzanine-level bar in a cavernous, former post office near the city’s Duomo, or cathedral.

Starbucks chief design officer Liz Muller told The Associated Press earlier this week that the company’s “not coming to Italy to teach people about coffee. This is where coffee was born.”

Instead, Muller said, Starbucks “wanted to come and bring a premium experience that is different to what people in Italy are used to.”

She described that formula as including “many different brewing techniques and a space where we want you to stay longer and relax and enjoy.”

In Italy, an espresso at a coffee bar is usually a quick morning or after-lunch ritual performed standing up. In many neighborhoods, cafes are practically on every corner, and Italians are on a first-name basis with their trusted barista.

Italy is Starbucks’ 78th global market, and the Milan opening comes 20 years after Starbucks opened its first store in Europe, in London. The company has described the Milan store as “the crown jewel of Starbucks global retail footprint.” It says it plans more cafes for Milan later this year.

Milan is the first place where Starbucks has opened a store in its Roastery format in untested territory. It opened a Roastery in Seattle, the U.S. city that is home to its corporate headquarters, in 2014, and a second one in Shanghai last year.

Italians are used to marble counters for coffee bars, but Starbucks boasts that it outfitted its counter tops in the Milan store with heating so they won’t feel stone cold on chill days. The centerpiece of the Milan store is a 6.5-meter (22-foot) high bronze cask, part of the roasting process.

The company also hopes the store’s cocktail bar will be an attraction: Many who work in Milan, Italy’s fashion and financial capital, cherish the tradition of meeting friends or colleagues for an “aperitivo,” or pre-dinner cocktail, often in cafes.

———

D’Emilio reported from Rome.

Starbucks is opening its first store in Italy, a bold effort to introduce an Americanized version of Italian coffee traditions.

The Starbucks Reserve Roastery, one of the chain’s high-end stores, will be located in an historic building on a grand square in downtown Milan. The store will serve a range of Starbucks coffees familiar to foreigners, but only to Italians in name.

Starbucks describes he store as a showcase of “next-level coffee art and innovation.”

Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, has spoken about the “magic experiences of Milanese coffee houses” he had during a visit in 1983, after which he decided to replicate that coffee and café feeling around the world.

Starbucks stores can be found from Beijing to Buenos Aires and in every large city in the U.S. But it is only now, 47 years after the first coffee beans were roasted at Starbucks’ first location in Seattle, that Schultz has finally brought his coffee chain to Italy.

Last year at a global food summit, he told the audience that “his imagination was captured by Italian coffee” during that 1983 visit.

“We are coming to Italy with humility and respect to show what we have learned,” Schultz said.

The Milan store will have 300 employees, known as “partners,” who have received months of training as baristas, roasters and bakers.

There is skepticism that a glitzy store with couches and free Wi-Fi, where consumers are likely to linger, will be able to attract Italians used their ritual of standing at a bar while drinking their coffees quickly before heading to work or school.

For locals, coffee is more than just a caffeine pick-me-up. It is a ritual of taking a quick pause, repeated a few times a day. Many huddle with colleagues while a barman prepares “the usual” drink.

Starbucks hopes that by setting up shop in Milan they can earn a piece of the country’s lucrative coffee market.

The Italian catering industry group, Fipe, estimates that cafés and bars in Italy serve six billion espressos a year, generating about $7.5 billion dollars. On average, an espresso is roughly €1.00 or $1.15. Starbucks’ unique coffees start at double that price.

But, coffee to go, iced coffee and flavored lattes go against traditional Italian coffee culture. The country’s consumers are going to have to be convinced that their espresso, a thimble size shot of freshly made coffee served in a glass “tazzina,” or small cup, can be replaced by one in a paper cup. The quality of the cup of coffee is scrutinized and discussed whether it is served at a gas station or fine restaurant.

“Pull off the highway at any Autogrill, a gas station basically, and you will get a better cappuccino than at Starbucks,” wrote Laura Giannatempo, a contributor to Conde Nast Traveler. “Most tourists want to taste the original, authentic Italian espresso, and Italians are not likely to seek it out, other than an oddity you sample once.”

A key to the success of the new Milan store will be the employees helping to transition Italians from traditional coffee culture to Starbuck’s methods and products, according to Martin Brok, Starbucks president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

“Those who are hired will be at the forefront of delivering this magic for our new Italian customers,” he told prospective applicants.

They will also have to convince Italians to branch out in their coffee tastes to explore the flavored coffees and specialty drinks for which Starbucks is known.

John Henderson, an American journalist living in Rome, wrote for “The Local” that “if you walked into a rough-and-tumble bar in Rome and ordered ‘an iced, half-calf, ristretto, venti, four-pump, sugar free, cinnamon, dolce soy skinny latte, you would get tossed out.”

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – Kentucky has lost 31 straight to Florida.

In that span, there have been plenty of close calls; including last season’s 28-27 loss in Lexington.

One or two plays can change the outcome of a game.  One or two plays can take you from forgotten to unforgettable.

Keeping that in mind, is there any way to prepare a team for the atmosphere of the Swamp?

Hear from Mark Stoops in the video.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – Explosive plays can change the game.

UK hit on a few big plays out of the backfield in the season opener versus Central Michigan.

Benny Snell and A.J. Rose busted 50-yard touchdown runs.

But there were some missed opportunities as well.  A handful to be exact if you ask head coach Mark Stoops.

Hear from Stoops in the video.