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Nicholas Winton, a Briton who said nothing for a half-century about his role in organizing the escape of 669 mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, a righteous deed like those of Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, died on Wednesday in Maidenhead, England. He was 106. The Rotary Club of Maidenhead, of which Mr. Winton was a former president, announced his death on its website. He lived in Maidenhead, west of London. It was only after Mr. Winton’s wife found a scrapbook in the attic of their home in 1988 — a dusty record of...

More than 260,000 people in Austria have signed a petition urging the Austrian government to leave the European Union (EU). According to reports on Thursday, as many as 261,159 Austrians signed the petition. The number in total represents 4.12 percent of the country's electorate. Since under the country's regulations the threshold for calling a debate on a potential referendum is 100,000 people, the Austrian parliament must discuss a referendum on leaving the EU. The call for leaving the EU was most popular in the regions of Lower Austria and in Carinthia where 5.18 percent and 4.85 percent of potential voters,...

'A WAR hero dubbed the ‘British Schindler’ who saved hundreds of children from the Nazis during the Second World War has died aged 106. Nicholas Winton saved the lives of 669 Jewish children from the Holocaust by smuggling them out of Germany on trains on the eve of the war - saving them from almost certain death. His son-in-law Stephen Watson said he died peacefully in his sleep at Wexham Hospital in Slough. Sir Nicholas was a 29-year-old stock exchange clerk in 1938 when he began to fear that Jewish residents of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia would be sent to concentration camps....

Sir Nicholas Winton, who organised the rescue of Jewish children from the Holocaust in 1939, has died aged 106, his family said. Winton earned himself the label "Britain's Schindler" for saving the lives of 669 children by sending them from Prague to London by train. His son-in-law Stephen Watson said Sir Nicholas died peacefully in his sleep at Wexham Hospital in Slough. Sir Nicholas rarely spoke of his achievements in the decades after the Second World War, believing his actions to be unremarkable. But he kept a scrapbook with details and photographs of the children he saved.

Nicholas Winton, a humanitarian who almost single-handedly saved more than 650 Jewish children from the Holocaust, earning himself the label "Britain's Schindler," has died. He was 106. Son-in-law Stephen Watson said Winton died on Wednesday. The Rotary Club of Maidenhead, of which Winton was a former president, said his daughter Barbara and two grandchildren were at his side. Winton arranged trains to carry children from Nazi-occupied Prague to Britain, battling bureaucracy at both ends and saving them from almost certain death — and then kept quiet about his exploits for a half-century.

On June 18th, 1815, 400 Hanoverian soldiers were the only thing standing between defeat and victory for the alliance against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.In 1811, Napoleon's empire and its allies had over 44 million subjects and covered most of Europe. But after being defeated in 1813 and 1814 by the Sixth Coalition, which included Austria, Prussia, Russia, Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and other German states, Napoleon was forced to abdicate and exiled to the island of Elba. The First French Empire was dissolved, and the Bourbon monarchy restored, but in February 1815 Napoleon escaped from his exile and...

The National Assembly of Austria has taken a strong stance against equal marriage yesterday (18 June).

End austerity: it’s cheating us all; Jobs not Trident; No cuts; Defy Tory rule; Cut war not welfare; Stop fracking; a Living Wage for mothers; and, The Pope gets it, why can’t you? With the slogans emblazoned on banners, posters and flags, anti-austerity marchers shouted slogans, sang, and beat drums, as they walked through London in what is being called the biggest protest march that the city has seen. The ‘End Austerity Now’ demonstration saw participation by an estimated crowd of between 70,000 and 250,000, all coming together to protest against cuts imposed due to austerity, the threats to the...

Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler's new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese government had redrawn the map of Asia and the Pacific. Japan had occupied or annexed Indochina, Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in addition to swaths of coastal China. Attacking Hawaii, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia was merely the logical 1941 follow-up...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned European Union leaders that violence from Islamic extremists could escalate if the EU rejects Turkey as a member... Turkey signed the association agreement for EU membership in 1963 and it is expected that a two-day EU summit this week will finally decide to begin formal membership talks, probably in the second half of next year... Taking Turkey’s 69 million, mainly Muslim, population into the Union is widely disputed... In Germany, leader of the Christian Social Union Edmund Stoiber told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that his party in government would do what it...

Turkey’s president has lashed out at country leaders who have recognized the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide on the centenary of the massacres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday accused France, Germany, Russia and Austria—whose leaders or parliaments recently described the killings as genocide—of supporting “claims constructed on Armenian lies.” He accused the United States of siding with Armenia, although President Barack Obama stopped short of using the term in his annual message. …

https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/609341858045497344 https://twitter.com/TraderStef/status/609355146842275840 https://twitter.com/JAFF3/status/609343992803774464 https://twitter.com/russian_market/status/609341880623591424 The bank runs (and capital controls) begin. Macedonia Central Bank Governor Bogov states: *GREEK BANKS IN MACEDONIA CAN’T WITHDRAW CASH: BOGOV*MACEDONIAN BANKS PROTECTED IN CASE OF GREXIT: BOGOV How long before the rest of Europe follows suit and a bank holiday is declared Monday to "Cyprus" depositors? He further added: *MACEDONIAN CENTRAL BANK SEES MAJOR RISKS FROM POLITICAL CRISIS http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-12/macedonia-central-bank-blocks-greek-bank-withdrawals-case-grexit Macedonia Central Bank blocks Greek bank withdrawals FXStreet (Córdoba) - Macedonian Central Bank's Governor Dimitar Bogov has stated that Greek banks are not able to withdraw cash. According to Bogov, this withdrawal halt is protection against...

A study of DNA from ancient farmers in Europe shows sharp differences from that of modern Europeans — results that are likely to add fuel to the debate over European origins. Researchers led by Wolfgang Haak of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, argue that their finding supports the belief that modern residents of central Europe descended from Stone Age hunter-gatherers who were present 40,000 years ago, and not the early farmers who arrived thousands of years later. But other anthropologists questioned that conclusion, arguing that the available information isn't sufficient to support it. Haak's team used DNA from 24...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Gay-themed traffic lights are getting Vienna into the mood for the annual Eurovision Song Contest, one of the world's most popular kitsch cultural events which this year is being hosted by the Austrian capital. Dozens of traffic lights in central Vienna have been programmed to show male or female gay couples with hearts -- in red for stop and green for go -- replacing the usual single, gender-neutral figure.

The right-wing Freedom party (FPÖ) has announced it is lodging a criminal complaint against Vienna council member Maria Vassilakou, after new pedestrian crossing lights which depict straight, gay and lesbian couples have been introduced around the city.

The most extraordinary things about this truly incredible tale of World War II are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief...

VIENNA (AP) — Members of a nationalistic Russian bikers club were greeted by cheering supporters as they laid a wreath Saturday at a monument to the Soviet soldiers who liberated Vienna from the Nazis. The pro-Kremlin Night Wolves are commemorating the Russian and Allied defeat of Nazi Germany 70 years ago in World War II with a ride from Moscow that is meant to end in Berlin May 9. Some EU officials have expressed criticism of their plans and Poland denied them entry, reflecting strains between Warsaw and Moscow over Russia's role in the Ukraine conflict. In contrast, their reception...

A large international conference of Holocaust deniers recently took place in the heart of London, Britain's Daily Mail reported on Saturday. "This is the biggest and most significant meeting of Holocaust deniers that Britain has ever seen. It is a very worrying development," the paper quoted Gerry Gable, an expert on the extreme Right who aided the news outlet's undercover investigation of the event, as saying. The event was held under a veil of secrecy at London's Grosvenor Hotel in a room draped with the Union Flag. A spokesman for the hotel said the room booking was made online and...

Maria Altmann, an octogenarian Jewish refugee, takes on the Austrian government to recover artwork she believes rightfully belongs to her family. We saw this movie tonight and just loved it. The Austrian interiors were sumptuous, and Helen Mirren was outstanding -- approaching her role with tenacity and good humor. We give it 4 thumbs up and 5 stars. It's the best movie we've seen this year. Comments?

Federal Police announced on Wednesday that they had arrested record numbers of people entering Germany illegally in 2014, a 75 percent increase on the year before. Federal police chief Dieter Romann told journalists in Potsdam that his officers had stopped 57,000 people without permission to be in the country. Of these, 27,000 were detained in Germany, while a further 30,000 were stopped before they reached the Federal Republic. Most of those people came over the borders from Austria and France. …