Up to three race-related incidents are now being reported to the police in Northern Ireland every single day, a new study of racism in the region has found.
But only 12 out of a reported 14,000 race hate crimes in Northern Ireland over the last five years have resulted in successful prosecutions, according to a report backed by the power-sharing administration in Belfast.
Despite an increase in racist attacks in the first six months of this year, so far the police clear-up rate for race hate crimes is just over 8% of incidents reported between January and April 2014, the report reveals.
The annual Human Rights and Racial Equality Benchmarking Report 2013/2014, released on Tuesday, points out that there were 982 racist incidents in 2013-14 while there were 750 such incidents in 2012-2013.
The survey, which was commissioned by the Northern Ireland Council For Ethnic Minorities (Nicem), also found that racism has supplanted traditional sectarianism as the main reason for employees being harassed, bullied or threatened in the region’s workplaces.
It noted that over the last five years 75% of all complaints about harassment in the office, shop or factory to the Equality Commission in Northern Ireland are related to racial abuse and intimidation.
Yet while over the last year Northern Ireland has become one of the worst hot spots for racist crimes and race-hate linked incidents, the authors of the report say that the region is home to only 1% of all the non-EU/European Economic Area migrants who have come into the UK.
Overall, in local schools, the report reveals that 75% of children from ethnic minority groups experience derogatory racist name calling and that 42% of minority ethnic 16-year-old students had been “a victim of racist bullying or harassment in their school”.
Young French politician and Front National parliamentarian, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, said that her colleagues from the centre-right UMP and Socialist Party “have organised French political impotence”. She was participating last night in a debate on the “War of the right-wing parties” on the talkshow “Les mots croisés” on France 2, the state-owned channel.
Marion Maréchal-Le Pen on last night’s programme
Maréchal-Le Pen went further and claimed, in a rare statement for a sitting parliamentarian and member of the National Assembly in her country, that “one may well ask oneself the question, whether politics still has the capacity to change things”. She blamed “successive transfers of sovereignty to Europe, as well as government by the judges of the European Court of Human Rights whose ultra-extensive jurisdiction takes precedence over internal law” for this state of affairs. Circulars from Brussels to governments constitute another source of power abuse as bureacrats dictate to politicians what to do in their home countries.
According to Marion Maréchal Le Pen, the centre-right UMP “has been an accomplice to all of that”, and regardless of their sympathies for the Gaullist tradition in France, she feels that the European issue has to be confronted as it affects “the power of politics and the maintenance of politics in France”.
Gazprom considers Ukraine’s position a form of blackmail and a method to negotiate an ultra-low price, Aleksey Miller, head of Russia’s Gazprom, said on Monday.
“These absurd and unreasonable actions will ultimately hurt the Ukrainian economy, but after the Minister of Foreign Affairs comment last week, I am surprised by very little,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said after holding talks with Gazprom head Aleksey Miller and Russia’s Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak.
“Russia is ready to continue gas talks with Ukraine, but only on the condition of debt repayment,” Medvedev said at the meeting, noting Ukraine’s outstanding debt of $4.5 billion.
On Monday Gazprom introduced a prepayment system for Ukraine, who is months behind on its gas bills, and in the future will only get natural gas it pays for in advance.
Russia has offered Ukraine a final gas price of $385 per 1,000 cubic meters, but Ukraine has requested an interim price of $326, which was suggested by the EU.
“The terms offered to Kiev on gas were better than those that were given to the Yanukovich government,” Miller said. Under Yanukovich’s tenure, Ukraine scored a major discount and imported natural gas for $268.50 per 1,000 cubic meters, which was cancelled after his overthrow and the establishment of a coup-appointed government in Kiev.
“The system for prepaid gas is the result of the Ukrainian government’s unconstructive stance,” Gazprom head added.
Ukraine’s energy minister Yuriy Prodan in turn has confirmed that gas supplies from Moscow to Kiev have been reduced to zero, but insists that deliveries to Europe are safe.
Only 185 million cubic meters of natural gas per day will be transported through Ukraine to European markets, Prodan said.
Ukraine has more than 14 billion cubic meters of gas in underground storage, enough to meet its needs until December, the chief executive of state gas company Naftogaz said on Monday.
Prodan’s comments echo the earlier statements from Gazprom’s spokesperson, who said that as of Monday, Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned gas and oil company, will receive gas only for which prepayment has been made, and since it has paid for nothing, it will receive nothing.
“Volumes of gas for European customers will be fully met in compliance with their contracts. Naftogaz must ensure transportation to the delivery points,” Kupriyanov said earlier. – RT.COM
Before remarking on Germany’s xenophobia, Joe Biden said the US needed to invest further in a skilled workforce and infrastructure.
US Vice President Joe Biden undoubtedly ruffled some feathers in Germany on Tuesday when he suggested the country was “xenophobic” and much less accommodating to immigrants compared to the United States.
Speaking at an event held by the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington, DC, Biden gave a speech in which he described three things the United States needs to do to “keep our edge” in the global economy. One of these priorities is passing comprehensive immigration reform, but the way Biden chose to frame the issue has made headlines and raised plenty of eyebrows.
“We have to pass an immigration bill,” Biden said, as quoted by the Washington Examiner, which also obtained a recording of the segment. “Look at Germany, look at the rest of the world. We’re the only non-xenophobic nation in the world that’s a major economy.”
In a tweet by Detroit News DC Bureau Chief David Shepardson, the journalist said Biden went even further than that and added other countries in the mix, claiming that Germany, Japan, and China are all “not nearly as welcoming of immigrants” as the US.
Biden reportedly did not expand on his analysis, leaving many to question just how truthful it was. As noted by the German edition of The Local, the notion that Germany is hostile to immigrants doesn’t fit in with the facts inside Europe’s largest economy.
Biden: "We're the only non-xenophobic nation in the world that's a major economy"
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— David Shepardson (@davidshepardson) 10 juni 2014
According to a May report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Germany has experienced a “boom” in immigration over the last few years, leapfrogging Canada and the United Kingdom to take second place as a top destination for migrants around the world, behind only the US. The OECD stated that between 2009 and 2012, permanent migration rose 38 percent as Germany moved up from eight place.
“Such a strong increase from one year to another has been rarely observed in any major OECD country,” Thomas Liebig, one of the study’s authors, said to Bloomberg. “We can clearly speak about a boom of migration to Germany without exaggeration.”
Meanwhile, The Local noted that new data from Germany’s Federal Statistics Office show more than 15.3 million people out of the country’s 81 million-strong population have a migrant background.
Before remarking on Germany’s xenophobia, Biden said the US needed to invest further in a skilled workforce and infrastructure, bemoaning the current lack of consensus on the issue.
“We have to invest in infrastructure,” he said. “That used to be an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in the united states of America. For the past 150 years it’s been a consensus; not at the moment.”
Notorious for making controversial statements or gaffes, Biden’s comments regarding Germany aren’t the first time he’s been scrutinized. The vice president made waves in the past for being caught on a hot mic telling President Obama the Affordable Care Act is a “big f**king deal,” announcing his support for gay marriage before the president himself, and making questionable comments like telling a politician in a wheelchair to stand up for an applause. – RT.COM
A regional leader of the Front National in France who has been a party member since 2002, has resigned, saying the “oven batch issue” has been one “little detail too much”.
The leader of the Bas-Rhin division of the Front National resigned from the party on Friday 13 June in protest against the recent polemical remarks by Jean-Marie Le Pen in which he used the word “fournée” or “oven batch”.
“I am leaving the Front National, full stop,” said Pascale Ellès, 48. “The little detail that finally caused it, was the issue of the oven batch, because I have always had good relations with the Jewish and Muslim communities,” she explained. She is also married to a Muslim.
Pascale Ellès was in tenth position on the Front’s list during the European elections in the east of France. She joined the party in 2002. On Wednesday she sent her letter of resignation to the party’s presidency, addressing it to vice-president Florian Philippot, the right-hand man of Marine Le Pen, its leader.
According to the ex-member from the Alsace region, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s remarks flew in the face of the “work” of Florian Philippot in the party, “who has criticised no-one druing his European campaign”.
“Florian Philippot campainged around the issues confronting France and appealed to all French people, whoever they might be,” she emphasised.
In October 2013, Pascal Ellès, also made known her disagreement with the controversial statement of Advocate André Kommann, who was then in line for the heading the FN’s municipal list in Strasbourg. He cause some controversy by suggesting that the Swiss police should use attack dogs against criminals. He finally withdraw and was replaced by Jean-Luc Shcaffhauser who has since been elected as a European MP in the Ile-de-France region around Paris.
Ukraine’s volatility exacerbates the risk for the country’s 15 Soviet-style nuclear reactors, warn German experts. They demand more attention for the country where the world’s worst nuclear accident took place.
The recent news of a water shortage due to a broken pipeline affecting thousands in strife ravaged Eastern Ukraine spells trouble for the safety of the country’s nuclear power plants.
That’s because the security and reliability of a country’s critical infrastructure like its electrical power and water grid is essential to safely run nuclear reactors.
“Once you have decided to operate a nuclear power plant or like in this case a nuclear reactor park, you must guarantee you don’t have unstable social situations and you definitely can’t have a war,” Michael Sailer, chairman of the German Nuclear Waste Management Commission and member of the German Reactor Safety Commission, told DW.
“We are talking about nuclear power plants that have a high risk even when they are constructed well and properly maintained,” Sailer who also heads Freiburg-based environmental think tank Öko-Institut added.
“And in the Ukraine we are talking about the additional problem that there is an increased potential for human error due to less motivated nuclear operators than elsewhere and the fact that the security features of these reactors are a lot weaker than those of modern reactors.”
Ukraine currently has four nuclear power plants with 15 reactors online providing roughly half of the country’s energy needs which makes it practically impossible to shut them down during the crisis. All of the reactors stem from the Soviet era, went on the grid in the 1980s and are similar to the Chernobyl reactor that blew in 1986 causing the worst nuclear accident in history. Ukraine’s largest plant in Zaporizhia is located about 200 kilometers from Donetsk, the epicenter of the clash between pro-Russian militants and the Kyiv government.
The older Soviet-style reactors are already less safe than those in Western Europe, Lothar Hahn, former director of the Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit (GRS), Germany’s leading nuclear safety research center, told DW. “But this is even overshadowed by the danger of sabotage or war. Then you would immediately have a dramatic situation on your hands.”
The experts did not want to describe possible sabotage or war scenarios on the record, but stressed that they consider this a real danger. “You don’t need an army, only 20 to 30 highly trained men,” said Hahn. “These things are totally incalculable.”
Nuclear experts usually don’t focus on such instable situations and the people who are concerned with instable situations like diplomats usually don’t realize how sensitive a nuclear power plant is.”
The leader of the Front National party Marine Le Pen talks to Sophie Shevardnadze on RT.
SS: Obama said the security of America’s European allies is sacrosanct, promising to boost U.S. military deployments and exercises around Europe. Does Europe need this kind of support?
MP: To defend ourselves against whom? […] To defend ourselves against whom? Well, you know that we are for leaving NATO, for France leaving NATO, we have a Gaullian vision of what international politics must be like, we are for developing our relations with Russia, without breaking ties with the United States. We believe that France must maintain its relations with all of the world’s great nations, and we do not want to be imposed with a way of seeing things by anybody. We aspire to have the freedom to determine the quality and the level of our international relations. But… to defend ourselves against whom? When we asked this question to a French politician, his answer was “China”. It almost makes you laugh. We can clearly see that, as a matter of fact, this is an opportunity for the United States to carry out military integration, and maybe tomorrow, economic integration, to extend the scope of its influence. The free-trade agreement that the United States want to sign at any price is really just another way to tie the European Union, in a quasi-definitive way, to the United States. This is, once again, a loss of independence, not to mention the catastrophic consequences that this free-trade agreement would have for us in terms of agriculture, industry, defence, etc. So this is much more a geopolitical treaty than a purely commercial or economic treaty.
S: The G7 condemned Russia for the situation in Ukraine, vowed more sanctions…Why are Western leaders calling on Russia and President Putin to end the violence, and not the government in Kiev, the newly-elected president they’ve been meeting with?
MP: That’s a good question. Because we are at the culmination of a Cold War that has been fought against Russia by the United States, to which the European capitals have completely submitted on an international level. It’s as simple as that, and a shame as well. And I would like to seize this opportunity to express my compassion and my sadness and my disgust to see these civil victims in the East of Ukraine, who are dying surrounded by the general indifference of the European political world and media. It is a real scandal which is happening on our doorstep, and you are right to say that from the moment Ukraine has a legitimate government, it is the government which must take responsibility. But for this, we would need to demand that the Ukrainian government dismantle and disarm the reigning militia, which would most likely embarrass a number of people.
SS: The elections in Ukraine were quick to be accepted by the major powers in the West – despite the civil war that’s going on in the country and the fact that there was no vote in the country’s rebellious East. At the same time, the elections in Syria, were branded illegitimate even before they were held. Why?
MP: Yes, but this has been happening for years! I mean, such and such decides who is on the good side and who is on the bad side. And this can change at any moment. The good guys of today will be the bad guys of tomorrow, and maybe the bad guys of today will become good tomorrow, if Washington decides that it is to their advantage to make them good. It is a shame, since there is a substantial amount of mistakes that have been made at an international level under Washington’s influence, especially in Syria. We were the only ones among the French political parties to oppose intervention in Syria, the first and only ones who, from the beginning, said that we were arming Islamic fundamentalists, who would, if they did win, implement a reign of terror like they did in Libya. This was, once again, because of us. We helped them come to power. This is the American method, the international American method: they defend their interests, or they think that they are defending them, since sometimes they make serious mistakes. What is terrible is that European countries no longer have a say in things. There are no more sovereign nations in Europe that can be the voice of reason for peaceful settlement of conflicts, the voice of balance between different interests of different nations.
SS: You’ve said the EU is responsible for the situation in Ukraine – did it ever know what it was getting into?
MP: By definition, it is not up to me to defend the competency of these bodies. To not know this would be tragic – such geopolitical ignorance seems astounding to me. Nevertheless, the result is there – the European Union did not play the role that it could have played, and it contributed to aggravating the situation. What is really a shame is that countries like France no longer have a diplomatic voice – because here is a conflict in which France, if it had kept a strong political voice, a balancing voice like the one I want it to recover, it could totally manage to overcome these difficulties. The diplomacy of the European Union is a catastrophe, and not only in Ukraine – each time the European Union participates on the global stage, it is usually either to create a problem or to aggravate it.
SS: A little while back there was talk about the new rising superpower – the European Union. These elections showed that the bloc is far from being a universally approved, superstate. Will Europe never unite now?
MP: Europe is not at stake; it is the European Union that is at stake. Europe exists, and it consists of nations whose wealth lies in their uniqueness, their sovereignty, their freedom, their democracy. So, I am for a Europe of nations – I wish that tomorrow we can constitute a Europe that could expand, but to countries that have preserved their sovereignty and that would work together on cooperative projects. This is what works, and this is what I want to implement, but in order to do this, we have to deconstruct this European Union.
The European Central Bank cut interest rates to record lows on Thursday, imposing negative rates on its overnight depositors to cajole banks into lending more and to fight off the risk of Japan-like deflation.
The cut, the first time the ECB has deployed a negative deposit rate which effectively charges banks to deposit overnight, was a response to a slowdown in inflation far below the ECB’s target and to weak euro zone lending.
That is a combination that risks dragging the bloc into an economic quagmire.
The ECB lowered the deposit rate to -0.1 percent, meaning it will effectively charge banks for holding their money overnight. It cut its main refinancing rate to 0.15 percent, and the marginal lending rate – or emergency borrowing rate – to 0.40 percent.
Markets sent the euro EUR= to a four-month low of $1.3575 after the news.
“Further monetary policy measures to enhance the functioning of the monetary policy transmission mechanism will be communicated in a press release to be published at 3.30 p.m. CET today,” the ECB said in a statement.
Investors first turn their attention to ECB President Mario Draghi’s 1230 GMT news conference at which he is widely expected to present other measures to complement the rate move.
“This is a baby rate cut – a tweak to the policy stance,” said RBS economist Richard Barwell, adding that Draghi needed to announce a bundle of measures to avoid disappointing markets.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected the ECB to cut the refinancing rate to 0.10 percent from 0.25 percent and the deposit rate to -0.10 percent from zero, as well as launching a refinancing operation aimed at funding firms.
Reuters reported last month that the ECB was preparing a package of policy options for this week’s meeting, including the rate cuts and targeted measures with a view to boosting lending to small- and mid-sized firms (SMEs).
“I think expectations are very high,” Barwell added. “To exceed them, I think he (Draghi) is going to have to talk up the prospect of asset purchases in the near future.”
Just hours before the ECB policy decision, a Bank of Japan policymaker sounded a warning, saying the euro zone should not take lightly the potential danger of slipping into a Japan-style deflationary period.
In an April 24 speech, Draghi set out three broad scenarios for ECB policy action and included the possibility of a broad-based asset-purchase program in the event of a worsening of the medium-term inflation outlook.
Such a program is unlikely for now, however, even though euro zone annual inflation unexpectedly slowed to 0.5 percent last month, figures published earlier this week showed. The ECB targets inflation of close to but below 2 percent.
Draghi will present updated inflation and growth projections from ECB staff at his news conference. In March, the forecasts showed it would take 2-1/2 years for inflation to get near the ECB’s target. A weaker outlook will support robust ECB action.
QE ON THE SHELF
The ECB is widely expected to accompany the rate cuts with other measures such as offering banks cheap, long-term funding – a so-called LTRO – on condition that they use this financing to further lending to companies.
Euro zone inflation has been stuck in what Draghi has called “the danger zone” below 1 percent since October, mainly because of weaker commodity and food prices, but also because of wage and other adjustments in euro zone crisis countries.
The stronger euro exchange rate exacerbates these dynamics.
At the same time, record low interest rates are still not feeding through evenly to companies across the currency bloc. Companies in Portugal, for example, are paying on average 5.4 percent on loans compared with 2.2 percent in Finland or France.
This particularly affects smaller companies, which rely strongly on bank funding and make up the bulk of the economy.
Another possibility is the for ECB to extend its provision of unlimited access to central bank funding beyond July 2015.
U.S.-style quantitative easing (QE) – money printing to buy assets – is likely to remain someway off, however, as it is the last weapon at the ECB’s disposal and the barriers to using it are high for the hawkish contingent on the Governing Council.
“We expect the big QE-bazooka to remain in the closet,” said ING economist Carsten Brzeski. – Reuters
The idea of a single European body that would be in charge of purchasing gas for the whole union is simply foolish and irrational, Gazprom Deputy Chairman Alexander Medvedev said, suggesting the Polish PM must’ve been out of his mind proposing it.
Speaking at the “Export and reliability of gas supplies to Europe” conference in Moscow, Gazprom Deputy CEO Aleksander Medvedev said that earlier calls by the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to create a type of EU Gas Union for centralization of purchases of gas in Europe is irrational.
“Mr. Tusk is a politician who did quite a lot for the development of our relations,” Medvedev said. “And suddenly, as they say, he just falls out of an oak tree and says: ‘Why don’t we introduce the purchase of gas based on the example of some kind of atomic agency, where Europe at some point purchased enriched uranium?’”
Even the EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger believes that Tusk’s approach has no economic rationale behind it, Medvedev added.
“Gas is a special essence,” he said. “And even Mr. Oettinger agreed that the idea is far from being economically rational. I can say a lot about why this idea is foolish,” Gazprom executive added.
In the Financial Times editorial dated April 21, Tusk called for measures to tackle Russia’s monopoly in gas supplies to EU.
“Europe should confront Russia’s monopolistic position with a single European body charged with buying its gas,” Tusk wrote, adding, “I therefore propose an energy union.”
Russia is set to provide roughly 30 percent of growing European natural-gas demand by 2020. Even by conservative estimates, Europe by 2025 will require an additional 170 billion cubic meters of gas, and by 2035, Medvedev said that figure might constitute 225 billion cubic meters, creating an urgency for the investors to address the growing European demand for Russian gas.
Medvedev said Gazprom is willing to expand its supplies to Europe, but the process is being hindered by European partners.
“The problem with OPAL is still not solved, which, of course, is very, very strange,” said Medvedev, noting that agreements have already been signed. Under EU regulations Gazprom is only allowed to use 50 percent of capacity of the pipelines connecting the Nord Stream pipeline with the pipeline grid in Middle and Western Europe. Yet despite this, the European partners have repeatedly postponed a decision on the allocation of the remaining 50 percent capacity load.
“Calling this a policy would be a compliment to the politicians. This politicking, I can openly say,” said Medvedev .
Gas giant’s executive said that the same is true for the ‘Yamal – Europe-2’ gas pipeline which will allow increasing transit capacities of gas to central Europe.
“There is no doubt that the project is economically efficient. But then again, based on some political issues, we have not moved forward. They do not know what they are doing. But we’ll find another way to provide for our needs. You can’t win love by force,” he told reporters.
As far as the EU calls for the South Stream project to be halted, Gazprom says it is ready for the worst case scenario and can complete the project without outside investment.
“If you ask me if I’m ready for the worst case scenario, I’d say ‘Yes, we are ready,” Medvedev told journalists in Moscow.
Medvedev also said that US efforts to stop Russian energy supplies to Europe to increase American market share in the region are “impossible.”
“We understand that the US, sitting high on a hill and independent of economic cooperation with us, is pushing Europe to take wild steps,” Medvedev said. “I think that logic of European business cooperation won’t allow dementia to set in. Russian export restrictions are impossible.”
The humanitarian situation in Ukraine needs to be addressed immediately, without the usual “theoretical exercises” from the UN Security Council’s “usual suspects,” ambassador Vitaly Churkin said after a closed-door meeting on a Russian draft resolution.
“The draft is not politicized and is of a purely humanitarian nature,” Churkin told reporters in New York, stressing that the document is aimed at “alleviating human suffering.”
“Every day civilians get killed, among them women and children,” Churkin said. “Ukrainian military and paramilitary forces impede the peaceful population, leaving besieged cities or sending their children to safe places. Buses of children are turned back.”
A swift reaction is absolutely necessary, Churkin said, as Kiev continues its full scale military operation in southeastern Ukraine with “heavy and indiscriminate shelling of residential areas” using both artillery and aviation.
Just on Tuesday alone, at least eight civilians were killed in a Ukrainian air raid on a local administrative building in Lugansk, the aftermath of which was shown in numerous horrific videos posted online.
Yet authorities and pro-Kiev media deny the incident, even claiming that self-defense forces were behind the attack on their own headquarters.
Churkin said the new draft demands “an immediate cessation of hostilities, urges parties to commit themselves to sustainable ceasefire, and calls for the establishment by the parties of humanitarian corridors in order to allow the civilian population to leave safely and to ensure humanitarian assistance.”
British Ambassador to the UN Mark Lyall Grant and his French counterpart, Gerard Araud, dismissed the call.
“We must be clear that the crisis in Ukraine is a political security crisis. It’s not a humanitarian crisis,” Lyall Grant told reporters.
Belgian police investigating the shooting spree at a Jewish heritage center in Brussels do not rule out the possibility that the attack may have been part of an intelligence operation.
The incident occurred on Saturday at the Musee Juif de Belgique, located in the heart of the Belgian capital.
A man wearing a dark-colored jacket, baseball cap and sunglasses walked in the museum in broad daylight, pulled a Kalashnikov rifle out of a bag, and opened fire, killing three people.
A fourth person remains in critical condition.
Observers initially classified the shooting as an anti-Semitic attack. There is speculation, however, that the bloody assault may have been a targeted assassination that was part of a wider intelligence war between Israel, Iran, and Hezbollah.
Several counterterrorism experts, including Claude Moniquet, Co-Director of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, have expressed the view that the shooter appeared to be a trained professional.
Referring to publicly available surveillance footage of the shooting, Moniquet said that the perpetrator of the attack, who remains at large, behaved as “an unemotional murderer, someone who had already witnessed death and perhaps killed before”.
Moniquet’s comments came shortly after an article by Amir Oren, military affairs correspondent for Israeli daily Ha’aretz, in which he suggested that the attack may have been an act of retaliation by Iranian or Hezbollah operatives, who have been engaged in a lengthy tit-for-tat war with Israeli intelligence since at least 2009.
Oren noted that two of the victims of the attack, Emmanuel and Mira Riva , were civil service accountants who had spent years in government service.
The couple, who were in their 50s, had previously served at Israel’s embassy in Berlin, Germany, while Mira was a member of staff at the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel, which, as British newspaper The Guardian notes, “is often a euphemism for the Mossad and Shin Bet secret services”.
Oren’s article, which is the main source of the speculation about the attack, reads somewhat abstract and hypothetical. But some have suggested that the veteran military affairs analyst appears to be trying to hint at an important clue while being mindful of strict Israeli military censorship rules, which apply to nearly all intelligence-related news stories in the country.
Illegal immigration into Europe is being fuelled by airlines that sell budget tickets from North Africa for as little as £120, a senior European border control official has warned.
Migrants buy low-cost, one-way tickets from Morocco and Algeria to Turkey and then slip into Europe via Turkey’s porous land borders with Greece and Bulgaria, according to Gil Arias, the deputy executive director of Frontex.
They are able to take advantage of a recent policy of so-called “visa diplomacy” on the part of Turkey, which has sought to expand its influence in the Middle East by relaxing visa restrictions for citizens from other Muslim nations.
The route is quicker and safer than taking a people-smuggling boat across the Mediterranean. Two such vessels sank earlier this month in the waters between Libya and Lampedusa in Italy, with the loss of more than 500 lives.
“Due to this visa policy by Turkey to the North African nations, people are flying to Istanbul on cheap flights and then on to Greece and more recently, Bulgaria,” said Mr Arias, who previously served as a police inspector and border control official in Spain. “When they get there they discard their travel documents, and will sometimes pretend to be either Palestinians or Syrians in order to try to claim refugee status.”
There is no suggestion that airlines are complicit in illegal immigration, but Mr Arias said Frontex was powerless to stop them carrying such passengers – mainly Moroccan and Algerian passport holders. He said there was no evidence in advance that the passengers were planning to cross into the European Union.
His comments come at a time of growing tensions between European Union nations over how to tackle illegal immigration and who should share the burden. In Greece, public anxiety over the influx has helped in the rise of the Far-Right Golden Dawn party.
Last week, Bulgaria announced that it was planning to spend £2.2?million on a fence to limit the number of Syrian migrants fleeing the country’s civil war.
The 20-mile long fence will go around the mountainous region of Elhovo, one of the most difficult areas to police, after the arrival of 6,800 migrants – 70 per cent of them Syrian – since the start of the year. Bulgaria, which the EU’s poorest member, has demanded extra Brussels aid to deal with the problem. – telegraph.co.uk
While Alex Salmond encourages his compatriots to vote “Yes” for Scottish independence, painting a picture of the bright prospects of “sustainable prosperity” across the whole country, skeptics have several questions for the First Minister. They want to know about the future nation’s currency, pensions, and funding for schools and hospitals if Scotland was to leave the UK.
According to Alex Salmond, Scotland will become independent “in more promising circumstances than virtually any nation in history,” the Scotsman reports. “We would be among the wealthiest nations in the OECD. Scotland would be 14th on the list, with the UK at 18th. Seven out of the ten wealthiest countries in the developed world have populations similar to, or smaller than, Scotland,” says the First Minister.
“Scotland has contributed more in taxes, per person, than the rest of the UK for every single one of the last 33 years. Over the past five years our public finances have been healthier than the UK’s by £8.3 billion ($13,96 billion), that’s nearly £1,600 ($2,690) per person,” Alex Salmond explains. He believes that Scotland possesses an “extraordinary potential” in such spheres as engineering, life sciences and energy, stressing that independence will help Scotland create a competitive and fair modern economy.
There are skeptics, however, who do not share Mr. Salmond’s optimistic position. Scottish Labour MSP, Jackie Baillie claims that the First Minister’s independence project lacks realism and pragmatism:
“Maybe if the First Minister had credible answers about what would replace the pound, how our pensions would be paid and what would happen to the funding for our schools and hospitals if we left the UK, his campaign wouldn’t be trailing so badly in the polls,” she said, cited by the Scotsman.
“As part of the UK we can have the best of both worlds; a strong Scottish Parliament, with the guarantee of more powers, backed up by the strength, security, and stability of being part of the larger UK. Only separation puts that at risk,” Jackie Baillie added.
The Danish People’s party won nearly 27% of the vote and has doubled its number of MEPs.
The far-right Danish People’s party (DPP) triumphed in the European elections, winning Denmark’s biggest share of the vote as EU-sceptic parties from across the Nordic countries gained further ground in the European parliament.
The DPP, which had campaigned to reclaim border controls and curb benefits to other EU citizens living in Denmark, won nearly 27% of the vote and doubled its number of MEPs from two to four.
Denmark’s centre-right opposition party Venstre, its leader dogged by an expenses scandal in recent weeks, was one of the big losers, dropping one of its seats and heading for its worst EU election result in 25 years.
“I see it as a clear indication that the Danes want the EU back on track,” said Morten Messerschmidt, the DPP’s leading candidate. “Around Europe we are some democratic, civilised but EU critical parties – such as the Danish People’s Party, such as the British Conservatives and others – who now try to steer back EU to what it is all about, to find a solution to trade, environment and energy challenges we have across borders, but not an EU that’s going to interfere in everything.”
In Sweden, the governing Moderate party suffered a disastrous night and was overtaken by the Greens, now Sweden’s second-biggest party in the European parliament. The populist far-right Sweden Democrats gained their first seat, as did the Feminist Initiative whose MEP will be the first member of the European parliament to be represented by a feminist party.
“The Feminist Initiative party is a real sensation,” wrote political commentator Ewa Stenberg from the the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. “The party has shot up like a rocket in public opinion since the beginning of the year. They have been carried both by a feminist wave and an anti-racist one.”
The leader of the Moderates, Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, said it had been hard being a governing party. “It has been an evening where the voters haven’t rewarded parties which believe in European co-operation,” Reinfeldt told Swedish TV.
Finland’s anti-immigration Finns party – previously known as the True Finns – increased its number of MEPs to two, but its share of the vote (13%) didn’t match its success in the last national election when it won 19%. The prime minister’s conservative National Coalition remained Finland’s largest party in Europe with 22.6% and kept its three seats.
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