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Three major German Muslim organizations have come together to establish a new umbrella organization to better coordinate and expand assistance to refugees. More than a million asylum seekers arrived in Germany last year. The Central Council of Muslims in Germany (ZMD), Islamic Council of Germany and Islamic Society of Shiite Communities announced the formation of the refugee aid umbrella group in an effort to coordinate and expand services to refugees. “The refugee situation presents all of us Muslims with great challenges. It is important and necessary to pool our forces in order to support newly arriving people in the best...

Well, not sold out — they were giving the stuff away for free. The politicians distributing the pepper spray in downtown Vienna were labeled “far right” because they wanted to give Austrian women the opportunity to defend themselves against the predatory migrants that are now so numerous in the capital. There was so much demand that they ran out, and had to issue rain checks.

South-eastern Europe’s “Balkan route”, the main passage for migrants to reach more affluent countries to the north, will remain closed permanently, Austria’s Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner told German newspaper “Die Welt” on Thursday. On Wednesday, Macedonia sealed its border with Greece to illegal migrants after Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, which are on the way to Austria, announced tight new restrictions on migrant entry. “My position is clear: the Balkan route remains closed and that permanently,” Mikl-Leitner told the newspaper.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has made it clear in budget negotiations with coalition partners that the 13 billion euro surplus will not be spent on anything except migrants.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Monday he understands French Jews' fear amid heightened religious tension in the country after last year's terrorists attacks in Paris by Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists. Valls' comments came in a speech at the annual dinner of the French Jewish council CRIF. He was quoted by The Associated Press. In his remarks, the French Prime Minister expressed his "solidarity" toward French Jews and strongly condemned anti-Semitism whether it comes from the "far-left" or the "far-right". "Yes, Jews of France are afraid to wear the kippa , to go to the synagogue, to do shopping...

GERMANY has been rocked by another string of migrant sex attacks amid heightened tensions over the refugee crisis. In Hamburg, Serbian migrants allegedly gang-raped a girl of 14 before throwing her semi-naked into the street where she nearly froze to death. Meanwhile, in Kiel, up to 30 Afghan men are said to have chased terrified teenage girls through a shopping mall after filming them on their phones. The men reportedly clashed with police when confronted, “insulting, threatening and sometimes injuring” the officers. The incidents come as a swimming pool in the town of Norderstedt took the radical step of segregating...

Turkey is under growing pressure to consider a major escalation in migrant deportations from Greece, a top European Union official said Thursday, amid preparations for a highly anticipated summit of EU and Turkish leaders next week. European Council President Donald Tusk ended a six-nation tour of migration crisis countries in Turkey, where 850,000 migrants and refugees left last year for Greek islands. [...] Tusk was careful to single out illegal economic migrants for possible deportation, not asylum-seekers. And he wasn't clear who would actually carry out the expulsions: Greece itself, EU border agency Frontex or even other organizations like NATO....

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, February 29, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) -- Last week the youth wing of Sweden’s Liberal Party voted to call for the decriminalization of sexual relations between siblings as well as sexual relations with a corpse, on the argument that laws should not be based on “morality” or on a societal consensus on what is “disgusting.”“We are a youth organization and one of our tasks is to think one step further,” said Liberal Youth leader Cecilia Johnsson to  Swedish news site Aftonbladet last week. “I understand that [incest and necrophilia] can be seen as unusual and disgusting but legislation can not be...

As tear gas rained down on rioting migrants in Greece and France bickering countries squabbled over who should take the blame for the spiralling crisis which shows no sign of slowing. Once again the cavernous divisions between different EU countries were laid bare for all to see, with Angela Merkel angrily defending Germany's role in the chaos amid sniping from other member states. In a day of unprecedented migrant violence thousands of refugees smashed down a border fence between Macedonia and Greece whilst inhabitants of the Calais Jungle camp set fires and hurled rocks at police as they attempted to...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has refused to back down over her open borders migration policy, saying in a televised interview that there is “no point in believing that I can solve the problem through the unilateral closure of borders.” “I have no plan B,” she added.

Minor Muslim girls in the UK as young as 11 are being forced to marry men living abroad via the internet notwithstanding a ban on forced marriage in the country. Imams in the UK and abroad have been conducting ceremonies using Skype -- so girls can be married remotely before "being put on a plane and consummating the marriage at the earliest opportunity", according to Freedom, a charity. The marriage is often conducted with the promise of a visa to the UK for their new husband, it said.

Teen locked up for gay man 'snake murder' A teenager who murdered a gay man and wrapped a snake around his neck has been sentenced. Gothenburg disctrict court on Wednesday sentenced the 16-year-old to four years in a detention centre for juvenile offenders and to pay damages to the relatives of the victim. After he has served his time the boy, who is understood to be of North African origin and had been sleeping rough in the streets of Sweden, will be deported from the Nordic country, said the court. The gruesome killing took place in June, with a trial...

She is blonde, a conservative hardliner and has forged ahead in a sphere dominated by men, The Local gives you ten reasons why Esperanza Aguirre is Spain's answer to the Iron Lady. Fresh allegations of corruption within the Madrid branch of the Popular Party has led to Aguirre tendering her resignation as regional head of the party. At The Local we don't believe for a minute that this is the last we will see of a woman who puts personality into politics. The Local gives you ten reasons why Esperanza Aguirre is Spain's answer to the Iron Lady. 1 -...

If we learned anything last September it's that Janet Yellen's reaction function now includes domestic and global financial markets. Well that, and we learned that Hungarian PM Viktor Orban isn't playing around when it comes to Europe's worsening refugee crisis. While everyone else in Europe was busy trying to figure out how to accommodate the millions of asylum seekers fleeing the war-torn Mid-East, Orban simply built a razor wire border fence. And then he built another one. And then, when migrants tried to breach his barriers, he met them with water cannons and tear gas. This was the scene: "Problem"...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday criticized an eastern European proposal to close the Balkans refugee route and vowed to push for a plan with Turkey to reduce the influx, at an EU summit. Merkel, under heavy pressure at home to reduce arrivals, supports a plan under which transit country Turkey would seal its borders and then fly refugees to Europe where they would be settled under an EU quota system. However, most countries in the European Union have shown little enthusiasm for the idea, and the so-called Visegrad Four - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary - have openly...

One of Poland’s most popular weekly magazines has splashed a graphic depiction of the rape of Europe’s women by migrants on its front cover. The image may be one of the most politically incorrect illustrations of the migrant crisis to date. While Poland is generally much more relaxed about expressing itself than the self censoring tendencies of western and northern Europe, the cover of the latest wSieci (The Network) conservative magazine has already prompted reaction just 24 hours after release, being beamed around the continent by social media. Featuring a personification of Europa being pawed at by dark hands —...

Thousands of anti-migration protesters took part in rallies in Britain, Ireland and other European countries over the weekend, including a retired general and head of the French Foreign Legion who was arrested during a demonstration in Calais. The anti-immigration group Pegida organised the protests against the wave of migrants arriving in Europe from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The movement, whose name is a German acronym meaning Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West, originated in Germany two years ago. British Pegida supporters marched near Birmingham, holding banners featuring the smiling face of US presidential hopeful Donald Trump...

The British government is to announce measures aimed at preventing local councils, unions and other public institutions from launching boycotts against the State of Israel this week. [...] The guidelines would enable the government itself to take action against organizations which boycott Israel, as well as empowering other bodies to take boycotters to court. They would prevent any public body from promoting a boycott of country signed up to the World Trade Organization's government procedural agreement, the paper (The Times) reported. ...

Lawmakers in France's lower house of parliament on Tuesday night narrowly voted to pass a highly controversial proposal to amend the constitution to strip people convicted of terrorist offenses of their French nationality, AFP reported. The measure, passed by 162 votes to 148 with 22 abstentions, followed weeks of debate after it was proposed as part of a set of measures by President Francois Hollande in the wake of the jihadist attacks in Paris in November that killed 130 people. The nationality measure has strong public support, but has deeply divided Hollande's ruling Socialist Party. ...

Anti-Semitism is a troubling phenomenon in many Dutch schools and especially among Muslim students, a new government-commissioned report has found, JTA reports. The 55-page report, entitled "Two Worlds, Two Realities - How Do You Deal with It as a Teacher" was published last week by Dutch-Jewish journalist Margalith Kleijwegt at the Dutch Ministry of Education's request. [...] One female high-school teacher in Amsterdam recounted to Kleijwegt an incident in which a female student of Moroccan descent stood up and pronounced: "If I had a Kalashnikov [assault rifle], I'd gun down all the Jews." ...