President Barack Obama on Thursday urged the Israeli people to put themselves in the shoes of Palestinians and recognize their "right to self-determination, their right to justice."

In a televised speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center, Obama said there should be "two states for two peoples."

Breaking off from his prepared text, he said that he recently met with a group of young Palestinians.

---

"Talking to them, they weren’t that different from my daughters, they weren’t that different from your daughters or sons," he said.

"I honestly believe that if any Israeli parent sat down with these kids, they’d say, 'I want these kids to succeed, I want them to prosper, I want them to have opportunities just like my kids do,'" he added to applause.

Obama, on the second day of his first official trip to Israel, warned that "the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state" was through the creation of an independent Palestine.

That state had to be "viable" with real borders, he said, criticizing the building of settlements in the West Bank.

He urged ordinary Israelis to put pressure on their leaders to achieve a future in which Jews, Christians and Muslims could live in peace.

"I also know that not everyone in this hall will agree with what I have to say about peace. I recognize that there are those who are not simply skeptical about peace, but question its underlying premise, have a different vision for Israel’s future and that's a part of democracy and the discourse between our two countries," he said.

"Peace is necessary, I believe that. I believe that peace is the only path to true security. You have the opportunity to be the generation that permanently secures the Zionist dream, or you can face a growing challenge to its future," he added.

At a state dinner in Jerusalem Thursday evening, Israel's President Shimon Peres awarded Obama with Israel’s highest honor — the Presidential Medal of Distinction — emphasizing what Peres called his "unforgettable contribution" to the security of Israel.

U.S. support for the Iron Dome missile defense system had been instrumental in saving Israeli lives, Peres said.

As Obama sat at the dais with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara before a room full of Israeli dignitaries, Peres called out the U.S. president's "tireless work to make Israel strong to make peace possible."

Peres said he was "convinced" the United States "will do whatever is necessary on the Iranian threat."

Obama said he was accepting the award "on behalf of the American people."

Israel must avoid 'isolation'
In his address at the convention center Obama stressed that America would always support Israel, echoing his comments Wednesday that the U.S. was Israel's "eternal" ally.

But he said peace had to be made between "peoples" and could not be achieved through military hardware alone.

"Given the frustration in the international community, Israel must reverse an undertow of isolation. And given the march of technology, the only way to truly protect the Israeli people over the long term is through the absence of war — because no wall is high enough, and no Iron Dome is strong enough and perfect enough, to stop every enemy that’s intent on doing so from inflicting harm," he added.

Obama said Israel could not be expected to negotiate with anyone "dedicated to its destruction."

But he said he believed that Israelis had a "true partner" in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, along with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. On a visit to the West Bank earlier Thursday, Obama condemned the Palestinian Hamas party, which holds sway in the Gaza Strip and is a rival to Abbas' Fatah movement.

"So many young Palestinians have rejected violence. There’s an opportunity there. There’s a window," he said. "Peace is possible."

At one point in the speech, someone in the audience began heckling Obama, who peered toward the back of the hall to try to see what was happening.

"This is part of the lively debate we talked about," he said, referencing a line earlier in his speech. "This is good."

He joked about media reports that he and Prime Minister Netanyahu do not get along. It was just a "plot" between him and "my friend Bibi" to give journalists something to write about, he suggested.

Earlier, Obama met with Abbas in the West Bank.

After his helicopter touched down in Ramallah, Obama was greeted cordially by Abbas and the two hugged.

"We cannot give up on the search for peace, no matter how hard it is. ... Too much is at stake," the president said during a joint news conference.

'Misery' of Hamas
He sounded hopeful about Abbas and the Palestinian Authority and reiterated U.S. willingness to help.

"The United States is deeply committed to the creation of an independent and sovereign state of Palestine," he said, adding, "Simply, Palestinians deserve a state of their own."

When asked whether he thought a halt to further settlement activity was required before peace talks could begin in earnest, Obama demurred. 

"If the only way to even begin the conversation is that we get everything right from the outset … then we’re never going to get to the broader issue, which is how you actually structure a state of Palestine that is sovereign and contiguous," the president said.

"The core issue right now is how do we get sovereignty for the Palestinian people and ensure security for the Israeli people," he added. "If we solve those two problems, the settlement problem will be solved."

The president praised Abbas for his leadership and sharply criticized rival group Hamas for the "misery" of Palestinians in Gaza.

For his part, Abbas said he had "renewed confidence" in U.S. assistance with the peace process after meeting with Obama.

"We have conducted a good and useful round of talks," he said through an interpreter.

Abbas called for an end to Israeli construction of settlements in Palestinian territories.

He warned that continued building of the sites was causing Palestinians, particularly the younger generation, to lose hope that Israel and a sovereign Palestine could peacefully co-exist.

When young Palestinians see the settlements, he said, "they do not trust the two-state solution anymore, and this is very dangerous" for the future.

Two rockets that may have been a show of protest were fired into southern Israel close to the border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip early Thursday.

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This story was originally published on Thu Mar 21, 2013 4:53 AM EDT

When Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday morning that he would step down at the end of the month, the news spread around the world in minutes.

The last time this happened, things were a bit different.

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When Pope Celestine V abdicated in December 1294, five months after being elected, just 37 years had passed since the first recorded meeting of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire, according to Ohio State University’s History Timeline.

Only three years had passed since the Crusades had ended, and a scant 79 years —a single human lifetime — had gone by since King John of England signed the Magna Carta.

A few scratches with a pencil will tell you Celestine abdicated 719 years ago. But let’s have some more context. That same year, Kubla Khan, the last of the great Mongol rulers, died.

The next year, Marco Polo returned from China, full of all sorts of stories about the Far East and its exciting products. Accounts vary, but he is widely credited with introducing Europe to the ideas of paper money, coal and eyeglasses, among other things.

The Knights Templar were still riding around. They wouldn’t disband for another two decades.

It would be another 30 years before iron cannons were first forged in France; 31 until the Aztecs settled their capital in Tenochtitlan; 53 years before bubonic plague, or the Black Death, first struck Europe.

Seventy-four years would pass before Zhu Yuanzhang threw the Mongols out of Beijing and established the Ming Dynasty, whose objects we now consider almost unfathomably old.

A schism, and a resignation
There would be another resignation of sorts in 1417, when Gregory XII stepped down at the end of the Great Western Schism, according to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. But there were also two rival popes with their own followers, cardinals and administrators, and all quit or were forced out (the records are a bit sketchy), so it wasn’t quite the same as Celestine V’s simple act, and many historians simply don’t count the whole episode as a proper resignation.

But it would still have been long ago. It was less than a decade after the first windmills were built in Holland, according to the OSU history timeline, and just two years after the English army, under King Henry V, defeated the French at the famed Battle of Agincourt.

That was during the Hundred Years’ War. Remember that one from history classes? It’s not a problem if you don’t: William Shakespeare memorialized Henry’s bravery in “Henry V,” so there’s a relatively recent account. Mind you, Shakespeare died 397 years ago, which was 199 years after Gregory XII resigned and 322 years after Celestine.

But maybe even that doesn’t properly emphasize enough how long it has been since a pope resigned. A lot of things have happened since. Pretty much all of them, some would say.

That might be a stretch, but from an American perspective let’s look at it this way: In 1294, America was -- well, it wasn’t, as far as Europeans were concerned, except perhaps for some Vikings who are thought to have popped in once or twice.

That would change, of course. A mere 157 years after Celestine’s resignation, Christopher Columbus was born (Leonardo Da Vinci would be born a year later), and we all know that he went on to discover America. Except that many scholars say he didn’t.

Ah, well. He at least came close enough to get the credit in Europe, where a more modern culture that would eventually give rise to ours was forming.

Not terribly modern, of course. Pope Nicholas V would give his blessing to slavery 161 years after Celestine resigned. Printing presses would eventually come along, too.

In case you still don’t appreciate the rarity of Benedict’s announcement, consider this: 181 years after the last time this happened, Michelangelo was born, which meant the Sistine Chapel could get a proper paint job.

And just eight years after the great artist’s birth, Martin Luther was born, so Protestants would eventually have a stronger voice and a whole new schism would erupt for people to talk about.

But that’s been a while. And not much of note has happened since, unless of course you count the 16^th, 17^th, 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries.

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BOSTON -- President John F. Kennedy's library is releasing 45 hours of privately recorded meetings and phone calls, providing a window into the final months of his life.

The tapes include discussions of conflict in Vietnam, Soviet relations and the race to space, plans for the 1964 Democratic Convention and re-election strategy. There also are moments with his children.

---

On one recording, made days before Kennedy's assassination, he asks staffers to schedule a meeting in a week.

He tells them he's booked for the weekend, with no time to meet with an Indonesian general then.

"I'm going to be up at the Cape on Friday, but I'll see him Tuesday," JFK tells staffers.

The tapes, released on Tuesday by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and downloadable in .zip file format from the archive website, are the last of more than 260 hours of recordings of meetings and conversations JFK privately made before his assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

In the scheduling discussion three days before his killing, JFK also eerily comments on what would become the day of his funeral.

"Monday?" he asks. "Well that's a tough day."

"It's a hell of a day, Mr. President," a staffer replies.

Kennedy kept the recordings a secret from his top aides. He made the last one two days before his death.

Kennedy library archivist Maura Porter said Monday that JFK may have been saving them for a memoir or possibly started them because he was bothered when the military later gave a different overview of a discussion with him about the Bay of Pigs.

The latest batch of recordings captured meetings from the last three months of Kennedy's administration. In a conversation with political advisers about young voters, Kennedy asks, "What is it we have to sell them?"

"We hope we have to sell them prosperity, but for the average guy the prosperity is nil," he says. "He's not unprosperous, but he's not very prosperous. ... And the people who really are well off hate our guts."

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Kennedy talks about a disconnect between the political machine and voters.

"We've got so mechanical an operation here in Washington that it doesn't have much identity where these people are concerned," he says.

On another recording, Kennedy questions conflicting reports military and diplomatic advisers bring back from Vietnam, asking the two men: "You both went to the same country?"

He also talks about trying to create films for the 1964 Democratic Convention in color instead of black and white.

"The color is so damn good," he says. "If you do it right."

Porter said the public first heard about the existence of the Kennedy recordings during the Watergate hearings.

In 1983, JFK Library and Museum officials started reviewing tapes without classified materials and releasing recordings to the public. Porter said officials were able to go through all the recordings by 1993, working with government agencies when it came to national security issues and what they could make public.

In all, she said, the JFK Library and Museum has put out about 40 recordings. She said officials excised about 5 to 10 minutes of this last group of recordings due to family discussions and about 30 minutes because of national security concerns.

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Porter has supervised the declassification of these White House tapes since 2001, and she said people will have a much better sense of the kind of leader JFK was after hearing them. While some go along with meeting minutes that also are public, she said, listening to JFK's voice makes his personality come alive.

She said he comes across as an intelligent man who had a knack for public relations and was very interested in his public image. But she said the tapes also reveal times when the president became bored or annoyed and moments when he used swear words.

The sound of the president's children, Caroline and John Jr., playing outside the Oval Office is part of a recording on which he introduces them to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.

"Hello, hello," Gromyko says as the children come in, telling their father, "They are very popular in our country."

JFK tells the children, mentioning a dog Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gifted the family: "His chief is the one who sent you Pushinka. You know that? You have the puppies."

JFK Library spokeswoman Rachel Flor said the daughter of the late president has heard many of the recordings, but she wasn't sure if she had heard this batch.

"He'd go from being a president to being a father," Porter said of the recordings. "... And that was really cute."

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LONDON - A tall, menacing actor famous for playing gangsters waits in a bar named The Blind Beggar, once the scene of an underworld revenge killing. Welcome to East London, the diverse and often eyebrow-raising home of this month's Olympics.

Forget the usual tourist honeypots of Buckingham Palace and Big Ben: Most of the 300,000 additional international visitors expected in London during the Games will see a district that is still evolving from its impoverished, industrial past into a vibrant and appealing part of Britain's capital.

---

The main Olympic Park is well inside London's sprawling boundaries, only four miles from the city's heart. Athletes will live on the site but thousands of team officials, visitors and VIPs will travel each day from central hotels and through East London to the Games.

"I don't know what they'll make of it," said Stephen Marcus, who played dodgy dealer "Nick The Greek" in Guy Ritchie's locally filmed 1998 gangster movie "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."

Sneak peek at Olympic Village: 'Not a five-star resort'

During the Olympics, Marcus will be giving guided walking tours, offering athletes and ticket-holders the chance to re-trace the steps of the real-life 'East End' mobsters who terrorized London in the 1950s and 1960s.

It is more relevant than you might think: Escaping from poverty, sometimes by criminal means, has been East London's back story over the past five centuries.

"Its downriver position on the Thames made it the city's gateway during Britain's maritime era and the industrial revolution," said Professor Miles Ogborn, head of the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. "There were docks and sailors in the area, and everything you'd usually associate with that."

Filthy slums
With Britain's prevailing winds blowing industrial smog toward the east, London's 17^th and 18^th century developers headed in the opposite direction – establishing parks, theaters, royal residences and handsome squares in the west.

Click here for more London 2012 coverage

In contrast, the 'East End' descended into filthy slums for the diseased and destitute, earning a reputation as a den of immorality and inspiring many of the wretched characters in the novels of Charles Dickens. Not that its horrors were fictional: In 1888, five women who had turned to prostitution were murdered by a serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. The pub where he met his victims – the Ten Bells – is now a regular port of call for London walking tours.

"What is perhaps most shocking about those crimes, when you learn more about them, is the depth of poverty to which these women had fallen," said Ogborn. "This really was a terrible place to be."

But East London's darkest days came during the Second World War. Between September 1940 and May 1941, the German air force destroyed more than one million homes and killed 20,000 people in a bombing campaign known as The Blitz. The east, whose docks and factories made it a strategic target, bore the brunt of the attack.

'London's equivalent of Al Capone'
Instead of local redevelopment, post-war planners relocated many families to newly built towns and suburbs in the countryside. With the docks also in decline, derelict areas became a playground for career criminals, including the Krays – fearsome twin brothers and boxing champions who ran a casino and night-club empire on the back of protection rackets until finally convicted in 1968.

"They were London's equivalent of Al Capone," Marcus said. "They had celebrity guests and celebrity friends. They would've loved the Olympics, I'm sure ... they'd be at the opening ceremony in a VIP box."

Among the Krays' victims was rival gangster George Cornell, shot dead in front of drinkers in the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel in 1966. The bar, which sits on one of the main thoroughfares between central London and the Games site, will be the starting point for Marcus' tour.

Social improvement began with Victorian-era philanthropy – the Salvation Army was founded outside the Blind Beggar by Methodist preacher William Booth – and has since been tied up with major urban regeneration.

The 1980s saw vacant docks transformed into Britain's second-largest financial center, complete with blinking 770-foot office tower One Canada Square and a light rail system. Canary Wharf is now home to the world or European headquarters of firms including HSBC, Citigroup, State Street, Clifford Chance, MetLife, Morgan Stanley and Thomson Reuters.

The main Games site has been created from industrial wastelands near Stratford, once home to toxic industries banished from more central districts by 19^th century social improvement laws. A massive soil clean-up has allowed 740 acres of polluted low-value brownfield land to be transformed into the Olympic area – although a major sewage pumping station remains defiantly in place.

Stratford station, once a dingy calling point to be avoided at night, is now a flagship transport hub for the Games and a stopping point for trains on the high-speed London-to-Paris Eurostar line. There's also a new $2.75-billion shopping mall, which three-quarters of ticket-holders will have to walk through to reach the main venues for events like swimming, basketball and track.

"The shopping has already made a difference to the area," store sales manager and local resident Sandra Mjungwa told msnbc.com. "It's unrecognizable compared to only a couple of years ago when nobody would come here unless they had to."

Kychia Messenger, 18, an electrical apprentice from Stratford, added: "It's already a better area; you see more people putting litter in the bin and there are fewer gangs hanging around." (The jury's still out on her last point: The day after msnbc.com spoke to Messenger, a man was stabbed to death in broad daylight in the mall after a gang-related brawl only a few yards from the Olympic Park entrance.)

Get behind the scenes with our 'TODAY in London' blog 

This has not deterred thousands of tourists from taking two-hour walking tours of the Olympic site perimeter, long before the Games have begun. "The tours are very popular – we do two on Saturdays now," said London Walks' guide, Kim Dewdney. "Prior to the Olympic redevelopment, nobody ever asked me for a tour of Stratford – but the Games has brought people here and hopefully opened their eyes to the local area."

Among those taking her tour on Friday afternoon was a family of Americans who had spent the morning seeing Westminster Abbey. Also there was Steve Venckus, in London on a business trip from Washington, D.C. "Even though I won't be here when the Games are on, I really wanted to see it all up close so I can say I've been there," he said.

So can visitors expect a friendly welcome to East London? Since the arrival of Huguenot refugees from France in the 17^th century, successive waves of immigrants have made the area their home: Irish weavers, Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe and, most recently, Bangladeshis. Brick Lane – once home to fabric factories and bagel bakeries – is now known as London's 'curry mile'.

In the six official Olympic boroughs of London – Hackney, Newham, Barking & Dagenham, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest – 42 per cent of the population is from non-white ethnic groups, and the area is home to dozens of mosques.

'Challenges'
Diversity of wealth is even wider: Tower Hamlets, which takes in the banking zone of Canary Wharf as well as the government housing projects of Stepney, contains some of Britain's poorest neighborhoods as well as some of its wealthiest. "One hundred and twenty-six languages are spoken in our schools and we have some very rich areas while only a couple of streets away there are people who are just getting by; those challenges are what makes the area interesting," Lutfur Rahman, Britain's first directly elected Muslim mayor, told msnbc.com. "I hope visitors will take the time to see our parks and attractions on their way to the Games."

Visitors may also indulge in a bit of celebrity-spotting: Ralph Fiennes and Keira Knightley are among those following a crowd of hispters and artists into the resurgent districts of Hoxton, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. Once ghettos, the areas are now sought-after addresses for anyone working in arts or the media – the New York Times described East London as "by far London's trendiest area". Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in "Lord of the Rings," owns a historic pub called The Grapes near his riverside home in Limehouse.

"Artists have sought out the disused industrial spaces and made them their own," said Ogborn. "In the middle of once-bleak areas like Hackney Wick there are suddenly independent shops and bustling cafes full of artists, like the Hackney Pearl for example."

Marcus said: "It's a community here. No matter what the nationality, ethnicity, and cultural group, there has always been and always will be a strong community life."

Some of the more traditional characteristics of East London have been well-documented in the long-running BBC soap opera, EastEnders, known chiefly for its grittiness.

"There will be some moaning – some of it quite justified – but on the whole I think local people will be proud of Britain at the Olympics," said James Hamill, 25, barman at the blue-collar Princess of Wales pub in Stratford. "We'll be very pleased to see people here."

Micah Smith, Andrew Gee and Jeremy Paduano, NBC News in London, contributed to this report.

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LONDON -- A British library opened more than a century ago by one of America’s greatest writers is being closed because of austerity budget cuts.

Kensal Rise public library, in north-west London, was unveiled in 1900 by Mark Twain while he was living in the city.

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He donated five of his own works to its initial collection, which had been established in celebration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

But 112 years later -- and days away from the Diamond Jubilee of Victoria's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II -- the library is facing its end as part of spending cuts by the local council.

It has been locked up and unused for more than a year. Workers for Brent Council attempted to clear out the remaining books on Wednesday but were met with resistance from local campaigners.

Since the closure was announced, a group of activists has called for it to be saved, enlisting modern British literary figures such as Alan Bennett to their cause.

For the activists, the library is a piece of history worth holding on to but the council says the number of users is too low to justify keeping it open.

It is one of six libraries closed in the area, representing a 50 percent cut in services. The council says it has used some of the savings to support a remaining library within a civic center that is more popular.

The building was donated to the community by Oxford University’s All Souls College through an Act of Parliament. Under that law, the facility can only be used by the council as a free library. The library’s closure means ownership will pass automatically back to the college.

A spokesman for All Souls told msnbc.com: "This is not something we engineered, this is not something we ever contemplated happening and we regret what is happening."

Campaigner Margaret Bailey expressed anger at the closure and pledged to continue the fight, praising "the support of the local community."

The protesters have set up a small free-loan library outside to distribute books to the community.

Bailey hopes to present a proposal to the college to establish a private volunteer-run library at the site.

The council has suspended its closure plans the removal of books in order to consult further with the campaigners. But for now the books will stay in their boxes and the library will remain closed.

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When the British Foreign Office released thousands of colonial-era files Wednesday, one name stood out – Barack H. Obama, father of the United States president.

The elder Obama was on a list of names in a secret file about Kenyans studying in the U.S., the Guardian of London reported. The file lists Kenyans, including "OBAMA, Barrack H," who, at the age of 23, enrolled at the University of Hawaii. 

In 1959, when Barack Obama Sr. had gone to study in Hawaii, U.S. officials told the British they worried that Kenyan students had a reputation for being “anti-American” and “anti-white,” the Guardian reported.

---

Colonial administrators in Nairobi claimed that Kenyans who studied abroad were “academically inferior” to those who studied in Africa. They also criticized the African American Students Foundation – supported by actor Sydney Poitier and baseball star Jackie Robinson – which gave Obama a grant to study.

In memos between the U.S. and Britain, colonial officials questioned the caliber of the students chosen, according to the BBC. A particularly frustrated British colonial official told Americans that the students had been personally selected by sponsors who had picked candidates from their tribal groups.  

"The motives behind this enterprise, therefore, seem more political than educational," the note stated.

U.S. officials replied that Kenyans had a reputation for falling “into bad hands.”

Ultimately, officials on both sides of the pond concluded nothing could be done, the BBC reported.

"The best we can hope to achieve is to exert some influence over them while they are here," wrote one official.

In the memoir, "Dreams of My Father," Obama wrote that his father had been among the first wave of Africans to be sent the U.S. to master Western technology and bring it back to Africa.

The next year, Barack Obama Sr. met Ann Dunham while studying Russian at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and the two had a baby who would later become the president of the United States. Barack Obama Jr. was born in 1961.

In total, 8,800 colonial documents were sent to England when the colonies gained independence – for Kenya, that was in 1963. The records have been in a secret archive for the last 50 years, violating the country’s open records law, according to the Guardian.

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Princess Neslisah Osmanoglu, the oldest member of the Ottoman dynasty, has died at age 91.

Also known as Neslisah Sultan, the princess married an Egyptian prince and was twice forced into exile when both royal households were abolished.

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She died in Istanbul on Monday, according to her nephew, Abdulhamid Kayihan Osmanoglu, and her funeral was Tuesday at Yildiz imperial palace, the London Daily Mail reported.

Her nephew did not give a cause of death but The Associated Press, citing later reports, said it was a heart attack.

Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan praised the late princess.

“She was the poster-child for nobleness who carried the blood of Osman,” he said in Parliament, referring to Osman I, the Anatolian ruler who established the Ottoman Empire in 1299. “We remember her with high regard and our blessings.”

The princess took the surname Osmanoglu, or son of Osman, along with other surviving members of the dynasty.

Neslisah Osmanoglu was born in Istanbul on Feb. 4, 1921, two years before the Turkish Republic replaced the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled Turkey, parts of the Middle East and eastern Europe for 600 years.

Her grandfather, the last Ottoman Sultan Vahdettin, and all other members of the dynasty were sent into exile in 1924. The princess spent her childhood and adolescence in Nice, France, before moving to Egypt, the Daily Mail said.

“When we were in exile we lived longing for the country,” she told historian Murat Bardakci, whose biography of the princess was published last year. “My mother had friends who would go to Istanbul. I would ask them to bring me back a bit of soil from Istanbul, but none did.”

Ottoman princesses were traditionally married to members of Muslim royal families, The Associated Press said.

In 1940, Neslisah Osmanoglu married Egyptian Prince Muhammed Abdel Monem, who headed a regency committee that ruled from July 1952 to June 1953.

When new rulers of Egypt turned the country into a republic, the royal couple were accused of plotting against Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government and placed under house arrest. They were acquitted and exiled, moving to France.

In 1952, the Turkish government had allowed female members of the Ottoman family to return to Turkey, so the prince and princess moved to Istanbul in 1957, the Daily Mail said.

Prince Monem, born in 1899, died in Istanbul in 1979.

Neslisah Osmanoglu is survived by a son, daughter and a grandson.

This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.



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