POLAND-AUSCHWITZ-ANNIVERSARY

OSWIECIM, Poland — When the Soviet army entered Auschwitz exactly 70 years ago, finding piles of corpses and prisoners close to death, a Russian soldier took a small and hungry 11-year-old girl into his arms and rocked her tenderly, tears coming to his eyes. That girl, today the 81-year-old Paula Lebovics, doesn't know who that soldier was, but still feels enormous gratitude to him and the other Soviet soldiers who liberated the camp on Jan. 27, 1945. 

GREECE-NEW GOVERNMENT

ATHENS, Greece — Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and outspoken bailout critic, says will be sworn in as finance minister under the country's new left-wing government. The Cabinet that will be headed by the Syriza party and also likely to include officials from its coalition ally, the anti-bailout and right-wing Independent Greeks. 

EUROPETERROR

BRUSSELS— Anti-terror raids in France and Belgium netted eight more suspects on Tuesday as Paris urged its European Union partners to step up the fight against terror financing with new measures to make transactions more transparent. 

IRELAND-AER LINGUS-IAG

DUBLIN — Aer Lingus said Tuesday it supports a takeover bid by British Airways parent IAG, putting the Irish national airline on course for foreign acquisition nine years after its privatization. The 11-member Aer Lingus board said it could recommend IAG's latest bid of 2.55 euros ($2.85) per share, valuing the airline at 1.36 billion euros ($1.52 billion).

RUSSIA-DOWNGRADE

MOSCOW — After a top ratings agency cut Russia's credit grade to "junk" status, the government in Moscow on Tuesday announced a plan that will see the economy return to a budget surplus in 2017.

UKRAINE

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine says intensified fighting against Russia-backed separatists has left nine servicemen dead and 29 wounded over the past day. Armed forces spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov said Tuesday that some of the fiercest fighting was around the town of Debaltseve. 

SPAIN-MILITARY-PLANE-CRASH

ALBACETE, Spain — The death toll from the crash of a Greek F-16 at a Spanish military base during an elite NATO pilot training program rose to 11 Tuesday after one of the French airmen who suffered serious burns died at a Madrid hospital, Spain's Defense Ministry said. The death came as Spanish investigators tried to determine what caused the jet to lose thrust as it took off and crash into five parked planes at the Los Llanos air base in southeastern Spain, triggering a series of explosions and a fire that took about an hour to put out.

RUSSIA-NAVALNY

MOSCOW — The Moscow City Court has refused to lift the house arrest of anti-corruption campaigner and leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Navalny was convicted in late December of fraud and given a 3 1/2 -year suspended sentence, but was ordered to remain under house arrest until his appeals were exhausted.

BRITAIN-ECONOMY

LONDON — Official figures show Britain's economy slowed in the fourth quarter of 2014 but remained one of the better-performing economies in the developed world. The economy grew 0.5 percent from the previous three-month period. That's a dip from a 0.7 percent expansion rate in the third quarter and 0.8 percent in the second quarter. The quarterly rate has not been slower since the fourth quarter of 2013, when it was 0.4 percent.