ALISON SMALE

A railway dispatcher apparently caused the deadly collision of two trains in the German state of Bavaria on Feb. 9 because he was playing a game on his cellphone until just before the accident, according to prosecutors.

President Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday that the United States would use its military to come to the defense of any NATO country that is threatened, sending a warning to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, about the consequences of further aggression along the border with Eastern Europe.

Russia's Defense Ministry announced new military operations in several regions near the Ukrainian border on Thursday, even as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany warned the Kremlin to abandon the politics of the 19th and 20th centuries or face diplomatic and economic retaliation from a united Europe.

There was no hint that the older man who called a couple of years back about selling a picture could be sitting on an unimaginable trove of art confiscated or banned by the Nazis. When the proffered work, "Lion Tamer" by German artist Max Beckmann, was collected, the seller seemed to be a proper gentleman in Munich dispensing with a lone, dusty art gem at the end of his life.