Croatia adopts euro, enters borderless Europe club

Croatia adopts euro, enters borderless Europe club

• Croatia switched to the euro and entered into Europe's passport-free zone - two major milestones for the country after joining the EU nearly a decade ago.
• At midnight the Balkan nation bid farewell to its kuna currency and became the 20th member of the eurozone.
• It also became the 27th nation in the passport-free Schengen zone, the world's largest, which enables more than 400 million people to move freely around its members.
• Croatia, a former Yugoslav republic of 3.9 million people that fought a war of independence in the 1990s, joined the EU in 2013.

Lula returns for third term as Brazil President

• Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office Sunday for a third term as Brazil's president, in a ceremony snubbed by outgoing leader Jair Bolsonaro, underlining the deep divisions the veteran leftist inherits.
• The 77-year-old ex-metalworker, who previously led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, took the oath of office before Congress, vowing to "maintain, defend and obey the constitution" as he returns to lead Latin America's biggest economy after a bitterly division.
• Lula faces numerous urgent challenges in the Latin American giant, which looks little like the commodities-fuelled dynamo he led in the 2000s. They include rebooting economic growth, curbing rampant destruction of the Amazon rainforest and delivering on his ambitious agenda to fight poverty and inequality.

Former Pope Benedict XVI Dies At 95

• Former pope Benedict XVI has died at the age of 95, the Vatican announced Saturday, almost a decade after he became the first pontiff to resign in six centuries.
• The German pope emeritus, whose birth name was Joseph Ratzinger, had been living a quiet life in a former convent inside the Vatican grounds since his shock decision to step down in February 2013.
• Benedict was 78 when he succeeded the long-reigning and popular John Paul II in April 2005, the first German pope of the modern era.
• Back in 2013, he had cited his declining physical and mental health in his decision to become the first pope since 1415 to give up the job as head of the worldwide Catholic church.