Germany’s Merkel: Don’t link Navalny case to pipeline plan

BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel says Germany has a duty to do what it can to help get to the bottom of the apparent poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. But she said Friday that the issue shouldn’t be linked to the fate of a German-Russian gas pipeline project whose completion the U.S. wants to prevent. Navalny, an opposition politician and corruption investigator who is a longtime foe of President Vladimir Putin, has been at Berlin’s Charite hospital f