SWEDEN-ASSANGE

LONDON — Swedish prosecutors on Friday offered to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London, potentially breaking a stalemate in an almost five-year-old investigation into alleged sex crimes. 

UKRAINE-CHILDREN OF WAR

KHARTSYZK, Ukraine — Seryozha colors in his drawing of a tank, lost in thought. Like many 7-year-olds in eastern Ukraine, he has trouble recalling a time before the war. "They've always been shooting," he says, vigorously scratching with the brightest of pencils. The United Nations Children's Fund estimates that 1.7 million children on both sides of the front line have been harmed through lack of proper shelter, nutrition, medicine or schooling. 

UKRAINE

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine says it has placed a formal request with the United Nations for a peacekeeping mission to be deployed in its eastern regions, where a cease-fire between government and Russian-backed separatist forces is in place.

TURKEY-MIGRANT-SHIP

ANKARA, Turkey — A Turkish official says the Coast Guard has fired on and stopped a migrant ship, detaining 337 mostly Syrian refugees who were hoping to illegally reach Italy. 

RUSSIA-PUTIN

MOSCOW — The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been out of public view for more than a week, is to meet on Monday with the president of Kyrgyzstan. Putin earlier this week postponed a planned summit with the leaders of Kazakhstan and Belarus, drawing attention to his unusual long hiatus of public appearances and raising speculation that he was ill. 

GREECE BAILOUT

BRUSSELS — The head of the European Union's executive says talks between Greece and its European creditors over the country's reform plans are taking too long. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Friday that he was "not satisfied" with developments over recent weeks, as he went into talks in Brussels with visiting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. 

RUSSIA-ECONOMY

MOSCOW — Russia's central bank cut its key interest rate on Friday by one percentage point to 14 percent in an attempt to support the economy, which is sliding into a brutal recession. It is the second interest rate cut in as many months as the Central Bank reverses some of the sharp rate increases it made in December.