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France published an official notification Thursday urging businesses to use labels to identify goods produced in the Israeli settlements, prompting a swift condemnation from Israel. It was not immediately clear whether the notice published in the French Official Journal is binding for retailers or a recommendation. A press official with the trade ministry said late Thursday she was not aware of the notification and couldn’t immediately say whether it was mandatory or advisory. In Nov. 2015, the European Union recommended that its member states put special labels on exports from the West Bank, but said the technical guidelines on the...

Angela Merkel has said public opinion is being “manipulated” on the internet, claiming “fake news” websites and “trolls” could influence the approaching German elections. In her first major address since announcing her intention to seek a fourth term, the German chancellor was also heckled and labelled a “disgrace” as she claimed to be “fighting illegal immigration” in Germany. “Something has changed. As globalization has marched on, debate is taking place in a completely new media environment. Opinions aren’t formed the way they were 25 years ago,” she said, according to AFP. “Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls – things that...

US President-elect Donald Trump has now spoken with both the Danish and the Swedish prime ministers but Norwegian PM Erna Solberg is still waiting for a phone call from the incoming leader of the free world. […] Denmark’s prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, was the first Scandinavian leader to speak with Trump after his surprise victory earlier this month. Rasmussen said that the two men had “a friendly and constructive chat” of about ten minutes on November 16th. Swedish PM Stefan Löfven touched base with the incoming US president on Wednesday for a “brief” telephone conversation. …

Link only: http://www.thelocal.at/20161123/attacks-on-asylum-centres-increasing-in-austria

German mail service DHL said that it had not made certain personal deliveries through its express service to the Berlin district of Wedding due to fraud and attacks on their carriers, but tamped down reports of “no-go” areas. A DHL spokesman told news agency DPA on Wednesday that the company has asked certain people who live in the Wedding neighborhood to pick up their packages at a DHL Express station in Wilmersdorf instead, noting that this policy has only been applied in a few isolated cases. The spokesman further explained that DHL will ask recipients in the future to also...

The head of Germany’s second largest police union has harshly attacked the country’s justice system, after a court in Wuppertal ruled that so-called “sharia police” are legal. Rainer Wendt, head of the German Police Union (DpolG), told the Passauer Neue Presse (PNP) on Wednesday that the German judiciary are far too weak in dealing with known criminals. “These days the full force of the law often means we collect personal details from offenders and the judges let them go free,” said Wendt. …

A German court on Monday ruled that a group of Islamists did not break the law in forming “sharia police” street patrols and telling people to stop drinking, gambling and listening to music. The ultra-conservative Muslim group around German Salafist convert Sven Lau sparked public outrage with their vigilante patrols in the western city of Wuppertal in 2014, but prosecutors have struggled to build a case against them. The city’s district court ruled that the seven accused members of the group did not breach a ban on political uniforms when they approached people while wearing orange vests bearing the words...

A new investigation by the Daily Express has found that the massive Rotherham child sex exploitation ring whose discovery rocked England two years ago is not only still in operation, but is as strong as ever. Reports from social workers, police, residents, and abuse victims all said the same thing: It’s still happening on an “industrial scale.” In 2014, an independent inquiry led by Alexis Jay, a former senior social worker, found that men of Pakistani origin had groomed at least 1,400 young girls for sexual exploitation over the previous 16 years. These girls, as young as 12, were...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday she would seek a fourth term in elections next year to defend democratic principles, but that she expected her toughest campaign to date. Merkel told reporters at a meeting of her Christian Democratic Union party that she would run again to “fight for our values and our way of life”, but added that she expected strong challenges from both the right and the left of the political spectrum. […] Citing the uncertainties created by the British vote to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as US president, she said she...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he’s “disillusioned” with the Obama administration for failing to address Middle Eastern refugees and extradite one of Erdogan’s political rivals. “They failed to rise to the occasion and handle these issues seriously,” Erdogan said of the refugee problem during an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Turkey has taken in roughly 3 million refugees from Syria and elsewhere, twice the number that have fled to Europe. …

A Swedish fighter for the terror group ISIS claimed over 50,000 Swedish kroner in benefits while living and working in its Raqqa stronghold. Michael Skråmo, 31, took his wife and four small children to Syria in August 2014, settling in Raqqa, from where he has appeared in a string of propaganda videos, sometimes with his children, posing with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. He now goes by the name of Abdul Samad al Swedi. According to Sweden’s Göteborgs Tidning (GT) newspaper, it took more than a year for Sweden’s welfare agency Försäkringskassan to sent a letter to Skråmo’s Gothenburg address informing...

Donald Trump has yet to arrange to speak with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, despite the Swedish leader sending him a congratulatory letter and the US President-elect already calling Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen. “We have sent a letter of congratulations of course, and then the Government Offices made contact with the (US) transition team,” Löfven explained in comments reported by Swedish news agency TT. Trump’s transition team has released a list of the heads of government and top politicians he has spoken with. The 29 names include European leaders like Italian PM Matteo Renzi, British PM Theresa May,...

European leaders head to Berlin Friday to seek assurances from US President Barack Obama on the course that Donald Trump might take, given the populist mogul’s pledges to shake up the world order. […] Ahead of the talks, Obama sounded a note of cautious optimism that Trump could change his position once he takes on the role as president. “There’s something about the solemn responsibilities of that office … that forces you to focus, that demands seriousness,” Obama said at a press conference following a meeting with his host Chancellor Angela Merkel. “And if you’re not serious about the job,...

In his second term, the outgoing US president has grown fond of fundamental considerations. Now, at press conferences, his responses are long and philosophical. His speech in Athens, perhaps the last he will make as US president on European soil, fit the pattern perfectly. All in all, it was about democracy and his steadfast belief in the democratic political order. The problem is that its present form is doomed to failure, as some of its most important traits, achievements and outgrowths are now attacking their own foundations. Almost like a schoolteacher, Barack Obama explained to his audience why free press...

Chancellor Angela Merkel intends to stand for a fourth term in next September’s elections, a close political ally said on Tuesday. “She will run for the post of chancellor,” Norbert Röttgen, a senior member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, told US television channel CNN. “She is absolutely determined, positioned and ready to contribute to reinforcing the international liberal order,” he said. …

Outgoing US President Barack Obama called Chancellor Angela Merkel his “closest partner” during a press conference ahead of his last trip abroad, which includes a two-day stop in Berlin. Speaking at the White House, Obama said “in Germany, I’ll visit with Chancellor Merkel, who’s probably been my closest international partner these last eight years.” […] In a pre-trip news conference, Obama told reporters he would “signal our solidarity with our closest allies and express our support for a strong, integrated and united Europe.” …

The German government announced Tuesday it had banned an Islamic group, “The true religion,” which is suspected of targeting teenagers to radicalize to fight in Syria and Iraq. At the same time, police raided about 190 offices, storehouses, mosques and apartments of members and supporters. In searches in 60 cities in western Germany and in Berlin, police seized documents, hard drives, smartphones and weapons, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said. Nobody was detained.The group — also known as “Read!” — has been distributing German-language copies of the Quran across the country. The interior minister said that more than 140...

A must see video from an I-Phone. An apparent refugee in Italy washing his rear end and drinking from what appears to be a fire hydrant.

Germany’s spy agency has warned that the “Islamic State” (IS) is infiltrating refugee groups to get into Europe. Officials and analysts are now looking into methods by which potential terrorists can be spotted early. On November 13 last year, three teams of militants from the so-called “Islamic State” (IS), armed with Kalashnikovs, stormed the Stade de France stadium, the Bataclan concert hall and several pubs in Paris. The rampage left 130 people dead, 85 of them in Bataclan, where the band, the Eagles of Death Metal, was playing. Meanwhile, investigations have revealed that all nine men involved in the attacks...

A Paris suicide bomber who was carrying a Syrian passport passed through Greece as a refugee in October, according to a Greek minister. The passport was retrieved from one of the suicide bombers who blew himself up outside the Stade de France stadium as part of last night's coordinated attacks, which killed at least 127 people. The passport holder, who is understood to be 25, passed through the island of Leros of October 3 as a refugee, where he was identified ‘according to EU rules’. But Greece’s deputy minister in charge of police, Nikos Toscas, did not know if the...