Mass killings? Mutual bloodletting? Genocide? The hundreds of thousands of dead have been silent for a century, but generations on, Armenians are still battling to get the World War I slaying of their ancestors recognized as a genocide.

As Armenians around the world gear up to mark 100 years since the start of the slaughter on April 24, the struggle to get the world -- and above all Turkey -- to use the term "genocide" remains deeply divisive.  

Negotiations with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) reached a dead end after the group placed tough conditions to release the servicemen in its captivity, media reports said on Friday.

According to al-Mustaqbal newspaper, ISIL links the release of the hostages to the operation carried out by the Lebanese army on Lebanon's eastern border with Syria.

Al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri is expected to travel to Washington on Monday for a one week visit, al-Joumhouria daily reported.

The agenda of his trip is still not complete, the newspaper said Friday.

The chief executive of the mine where 301 miners died in 2014 in Turkey's deadliest industrial accident on Thursday insisted he was not a murderer and said he was still struggling to understand the causes of the tragedy.

"What hurt me the most were the charges. I am not a murderer," Can Gurkan, the chief executive of the Soma Komur mining company, said on the third day of the trial into the disaster.

The Turkish government on Thursday said a Turkish-Armenian advisor to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutogou had "retired", days after he caused a furore within the ruling party for describing the mass killings of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

The government denied any link between the departure of Etyen Mahcupyan and the looming 100th anniversary on April 24 of the start of the 1915 killings of Armenians, which Yerevan regards as genocide.

Erham Tayfor lowers the black woollen shawl she knits outside her market stall and ponders the business she might have were her homeland not deemed illegal by almost every country on Earth.

"I hope we can change things," says the 62-year-old, who lives in the northern part of the walled city in the Cypriot capital Nicosia. "We want to be able to move freely and to trade without embargoes."

Two Canadian students appeared in a Montreal court Wednesday over fears they were plotting to commit crimes related to "terrorism," CBC's Radio-Canada said.

El Mahdi Jamali and Sabrine Djaermane, both 18, were ordered to remain in custody.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Wednesday kicked off his ruling party's campaign for June 7 legislative elections, vowing to change the constitution in order to create a presidential system.

At a glitzy rally in Ankara marked by flashing lights and thumping Turkish pop music, Davutoglu unveiled the party's election manifesto called "A Contract for a New Turkey."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday warned Turkey would ignore any decision by the European Parliament qualifying the 1915 killings of Armenians in World War I as genocide, saying such recognition would go "in one ear and out from the other".

The European Parliament is due to vote Wednesday on a "motion for resolution on the commemoration of the centennial of the Armenian genocide".

British police have arrested six people on suspicion of terrorism after Turkish authorities stopped a group crossing the Syrian border, police said.

Four people aged between 22 and 47 were arrested at Manchester airport in north west England early Wednesday, following on from the arrest on Tuesday of a 21-year-old man at Birmingham airport in central England and a 31-year-old man in Rochdale, near Manchester.