Rob Schmitz

DUBROVNIK, Croatia — The first state-imposed quarantine happened here, in present-day Dubrovnik, Croatia, an ancient walled city atop the cliffs of the Adriatic Sea. The first people to ever be quarantined — more than 500 years ago — had a nice view but not-so-nice consequences if they decided they had had enough of it.

SPLIT, Croatia — There's a lot of hype surrounding Froggyland. The brochure for the museum, located outside the walls of Split's ancient palace built for the 4th century Roman Emperor Diocletian, declares: "Froggyland and first love will never be forgotten!"

BERLIN – Germany is formally recognizing that its killing of tens of thousands of people belonging to two ethnic groups more than a century ago in present-day Namibia was a genocide.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced the recognition on Friday, saying "in light of Germany's historical and moral responsibility, we will ask Namibia and the descendants of the victims for forgiveness."

He added that Germany will support Namibia and the victims' descendants with more than $1.3 billion for reconstruction and development.

SPLIT AND DUBROVNIK, CROATIA — The Croatian immigration agent isn't impressed with my flimsy CDC-issued COVID-19 vaccination card. The paper, filled out in loopy strokes of blue cursive by a pharmacist at a Sam's Club in Houston more than a month earlier, looks easy to forge.

"Your second vaccination date hasn't even occurred yet," the immigration agent says, lifting an eyebrow and pointing to its date: 04-12-2021.

I explain that in the United States, we write the month first, then the day. "Oh!" she shouts with a giggle.

BERLIN — Since 1913, beer from the tap of the Metzer Eck pub has flowed through two World Wars, a flu pandemic and the Soviet occupation of East Berlin, which came and went over mere decades of the establishment's history.

BERLIN — Hungary's Klubradio station broadcast its news program on Feb. 14 as it had for more than two decades. The next day it was pulled off the air.

Some 3.5 million people in the capital of Budapest, more than a third of the country's population, tuned in for the show, according to the station's head of news, Mihaly Hardy. Now devoted listeners stream it online only.

"We have lost 60 to 70% of our usual audience," Hardy says.

Seven years ago, Mathias Döpfner was at a ceremony celebrating Tesla founder Elon Musk. Döpfner, the head of German media company Axel Springer, was seated next to a CEO of one of Germany's biggest carmakers, and he turned to him and asked, "Isn't this guy dangerous for you?"

As he later recounted, the CEO shook his head. "These guys in Silicon Valley, they have no clue about engineering, about building really beautiful and great cars," the CEO told him. "So we don't have to worry."

Germany's Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, is constantly on the lookout for potential threats to Germany's democratic constitutional system, and it has wide-ranging powers when it finds them.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny announced he plans to return home to Russia on Sunday from Germany, where he has spent months recovering from being poisoned.

In an Instagram post Wednesday, he said he purchased a plane ticket to Russia that morning after feeling "almost healthy enough to come back home."

Journalist Mariusz Kowalewski noticed something was amiss when his editors came to him with a new assignment: follow an outspoken critic of Poland's ruling party with a drone.

"The idea was to send this drone over to his house in order for him to notice it and to feel threatened, like he was being watched," Kowalewski recalls. "This was an intimidation method straight out of communism."

The order came from his editors at TVP, Poland's largest broadcaster, which oversees a vast network of public television and radio stations.

China's president and European leaders met Wednesday to mark their agreement on an investment deal between the European Union and China despite a request for talks on the issue by the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden.

Four years ago, Simon Neumeyer enrolled in the Saxony State Police Academy in the eastern German city of Leipzig as a 19-year-old cadet.

"At the time, I naively thought the police were 100% committed to law and order," he remembers.

His naiveté began to wear off on the academy's target-shooting grounds while he and his fellow cadets, guns in hand, listened to a lecture from their commander.

"He told us we have to shoot well, because there are many refugees coming to Germany," Neumeyer recalls. "I thought to myself: 'Wow. This is very racist.'

On the day after the U.S. election, millions of votes in swing states were still being counted and there was no winner yet. But that didn't stop Janez Jansa, the prime minister of Slovenia, birthplace of first lady Melania Trump, from posting a congratulatory tweet, cheering on a second term for President Trump – and bashing the mainstream media for good measure.

Germany officially passed 1 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus on Friday as the country's daily totals remain high through the first month of what the government calls "lockdown light." Since the beginning of November, schools and most shops have remained open, but bars, gyms and other indoor leisure centers have closed, with restaurants only open for takeaway orders.

On Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the country will have to live with these restrictions through at least Dec. 20.

The European Union's landmark stimulus plan to assist member states whose economies have been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic is now in crisis after Hungary and Poland blocked passage of the 2021-2027 EU budget.

The two Eastern European countries say they're vetoing the budget and coronavirus recovery plan over language in the measure that would dole out EU funds to member states on condition that they uphold the bloc's rule-of-law standards.

The 1.8 trillion euro ($2.1 trillion) EU budget must be approved by all 27 member states to be adopted.

At first glance, swimmers along Germany's Baltic coast thought the creature swimming toward them was a dog. A sailor had seen the animal, too, miles away from shore in the open sea, and thought it was a porpoise. But they were all mistaken. It was a wild boar.

Updated at 2 p.m. ET

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a variant of Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent, according to tests carried out by a German military laboratory. A German government spokesman said the evidence is "without a doubt."

Navalny "is the victim of a crime that intended to silence him," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during a news conference Wednesday about the findings. The crime, she said, was an "attempted murder."