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  • German politician took crystal meth to improve performance

    07/11/2014 4:57:05 PM PDT · by Olog-hai · 9 replies
    Daily Telegraph (UK) ^ | 9:26PM BST 11 Jul 2014 | David Millward
    Michael Hartmann, a leading member of the Germany’s left of center Social Democratic Party, has admitted to taking crystal meth. […] He had hoped the drug would improve his performance at work, (his) lawyer said. […] The 51-year-old politician had previously spoken out against cannabis. …
  • Britain seen empty-handed in EU top jobs carve-up

    07/11/2014 10:23:55 AM PDT · by Olog-hai
    Reuters ^ | Thu Jul 10, 2014 2:12pm BST | Jan Strupczewski
    Britain may come away empty-handed when European Union leaders carve up a package of top EU jobs next week, due to its fierce opposition to Jean-Claude Juncker’s appointment as the next European Commission president. Prime Minister David Cameron angered his peers in June by breaking with a tradition of taking decisions by consensus and forcing them to vote on whether Juncker should head the EU executive. Only Britain and Hungary voted “no”. Cameron publicly branded Juncker a “career insider of Brussels” and said his selection was a bad day for Europe. “After the mess at the last summit, many leaders...
  • EU Commission sues Denmark for not outlawing snus sales

    07/11/2014 10:19:06 AM PDT · by Olog-hai · 7 replies
    Reuters ^ | July 10 Thu Jul 10, 2014 5:50pm IST | Foo Yun Chee
    The European Commission took Denmark to court on Thursday for allowing the sale of snus, despite a European Union sales ban on the moist oral snuff. Sweden, a snus producer, is currently the only country in the 28-member bloc permitted to sell the powder tobacco, a privilege granted when it joined the club in the 1990s. …
  • German draft law clears path for EU to directly fund ailing banks

    07/11/2014 10:12:12 AM PDT · by Olog-hai
    EU Observer ^ | 07/10/14 @ 11:04 | Benjamin Fox
    The EU’s bailout fund has moved closer to being able to directly pump money into troubled banks after the German government introduced a bill allowing direct bank recapitalization. The draft law will now require approval in the Bundestag, but is planned to enter into force in November. “This is an important step to stabilize our financial sector … and to increase further the trust in our common European currency,” said finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Wednesday (9 July). He added that the law would help “rule out the risk that the taxpayer would have to accept liability, as in the...
  • Germany expels CIA official in US spy row

    07/10/2014 10:22:01 AM PDT · by Olog-hai · 4 replies
    BBC News ^ | 10 July 2014 | Last updated at 11:55 ET
    The German government has ordered the expulsion of a CIA official in Berlin in response to two cases of alleged spying by the US. The official is said to have acted as a CIA contact at the US embassy, reports say, in a scandal that has infuriated German politicians. A German intelligence official was arrested last week on suspicion of spying. An inquiry has also begun into a German defense ministry worker, reports said. “The representative of the US intelligence services at the embassy of the United States of America has been told to leave Germany,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert...
  • Leaked paper: EU wants ‘guaranteed’ access to US oil and gas

    07/09/2014 11:07:29 PM PDT · by Olog-hai · 20 replies
    EU Observer ^ | 07/09/14 @ 09:27 | Benjamin Fox
    The EU wants the US to lift its restrictions on exporting gas and crude oil as part of ongoing trade talks, according to a leaked European Commission document. The strategy paper by the EU executive, obtained by the Washington Post, calls for “a legally binding commitment … guaranteeing the free export of crude oil and gas resources”. EU and US trade officials will hold their sixth round of talks on an ambitious Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in Brussels next week, which officials argue could be worth €100 billion per year, equivalent to an additional 0.5 percent of EU...
  • Obama’s Foreign Policy Too European? (NYT)

    07/08/2014 8:04:06 PM PDT · by Brad from Tennessee · 5 replies
    New York Times ^ | July 7, 2014 | By Clemens Wergin
    BERLIN — I have long been a critic of the German foreign policy debate — of its freeloading on the American security umbrella, coupled with moral grandstanding whenever the Americans did things their way; of too much analysis of past events and not enough thinking about how to get things right in the future; of its tendency to take words as a substitute for deeds. That’s why I have usually given the Americans the benefit of the doubt: At least they took on problems nobody else was willing to tackle. But then, at the height of the Syria conflict and...
  • Europe’s attention finally shifts from bailouts to tax cuts

    07/08/2014 10:23:15 AM PDT · by Olog-hai · 4 replies
    EU Observer ^ | 07/08/14 @ 19:10 | Benjamin Fox
    It is a sign that the European economy is no longer in crisis territory that tax cuts rather than bailouts dominated Monday’s (7 July) meeting of eurozone finance ministers. Ministers at the monthly Eurogroup meeting agreed to sign off the next €1 billion tranche of Greece’s bailout program almost as an afterthought. Instead, the main item of discussion focused on how they can cut business costs and increase the pay packet of the average European. In its annual set of economic recommendations to the EU’s 28 countries last month, the European Commission urged 11 euro-area countries to reduce their so-called...
  • Juncker: Economics commissioner will be a Socialist (European Union)

    07/08/2014 10:04:23 AM PDT · by Olog-hai · 4 replies
    EU Observer ^ | 07/08/2014 @ 18:01 | Valentina Pop
    Future EU commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker on Tuesday (8 July) promised that the economic affairs commissioner post will go to a Socialist, as part of a grand coalition-type bargain between the center-right and center-left. He made the commitment before MEPs from the center-left S&D group, whose support he needs to secure his appointment as head of the EU executive in a parliament vote next week. In his opening speech, he emphasized several issues dear to the Socialists’ hearts. He said he favors “equal pay for equal work”, a minimum wage across Europe—if not harmonized, then at least as a “recommendation”—as...
  • Jewish leader: Europe should fight anti-Semitism

    07/08/2014 9:24:42 AM PDT · by Olog-hai · 7 replies
    Associated Press ^ | Jul 8, 2014 11:54 AM EDT | Lori Hinnant
    The head of the European Jewish Congress appealed Tuesday for European governments to take tougher action against anti-Semitism—and has made France his starting point. French citizens are suspected in the two deadliest attacks against European Jewish institutions in the past few years—a shooting at the Brussels Jewish Museum in May, and an attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse, southwestern France, in 2012. And French Jews are emigrating to Israel in record numbers, in part because of a fear of rising anti-Semitism from the far right and extremist Islam. …
  • Man Beaten, Chased in Malmo for Hanging Israeli Flag

    07/08/2014 7:44:58 AM PDT · by Dallas59 · 9 replies
    Israel National News ^ | 7/8/2014 | Israel National News
    A 38 year-old man was assaulted in Malmö, Sweden, on Sunday - for the sole crime of hanging an Israeli flag in his window. The assailants broke the man's window first, prompting him to seek the perpetrators, police said. "After that the man went out onto the street to see what was going on. Then he was attacked and it was on the basis of the flag. That is the information we have at present," police told the TT news agency Monday. They added that ten people chased the man from his building, wielding iron pipes. He managed to narrowly...
  • Merkel argues for sustainability, economic growth

    07/08/2014 2:31:51 AM PDT · by Olog-hai · 4 replies
    Associated Press ^ | Jul. 8, 2014 3:06 AM EDT
    German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Chinese youth on Tuesday to help protect the environment and conserve energy, telling a group of elite university students that sustainability does not have to come at the cost of economic growth and can ensure a better world. In a speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China’s top universities, Merkel said it does not make sense to separate economic performance, environmental protection and social responsibility. “Sustainable development does not sacrifice economic growth. This is a misunderstanding. Sustainable development gives us a new opportunity to create wealth,” Merkel said at the end of...
  • Growing Influx: Germany Caught Off Guard By Surge in Refugees

    07/07/2014 7:36:42 PM PDT · by Olog-hai · 13 replies
    Der Spiegel ^ | July 07, 2014 – 05:40 PM
    The German government is expecting around 175,000 people to file applications for asylum this year, the highest number in two decades. Regional politicians are acting surprised, but there have been signs of this development for years now. […] The refugees in Germany are fleeing many things: the civil war in Syria, the recent wave of terror in Iraq, torturous regimes but also, in many cases, a life of poverty and no prospects, be it in Africa or as a member of the Roma minority in Serbia. Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) estimates that as many as 175,000...
  • Hillary Clinton says Merkel is Europe’s ‘greatest leader’

    07/07/2014 2:58:48 PM PDT · by Olog-hai · 17 replies
    Reuters ^ | Sun Jul 6, 2014 1:47pm BST | Stephen Brown and Reuters TV
    Former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton called Chancellor Angela Merkel “the greatest leader in Europe” during a visit to Berlin on Sunday and said it was high time America had a woman leader too, though without confirming she would seek the job. Clinton also referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “tough customer with a pretty thin skin” in an appearance at a Berlin theater to promote her new book, “Hard Choices”. …
  • Pro-EU forces shut out euroskeptics from Parliament top jobs

    07/07/2014 2:53:05 PM PDT · by Olog-hai · 1 replies
    EU Observer ^ | 07.07.14 @ 23:43 | Benjamin Fox
    Euroskeptic deputies were denied several of the European Parliament’s top committee posts on Monday (7 July), as the assembly’s centrist groups joined forces to shut them out. The committees elected chairpersons and vice-chairpersons using the “D’Hondt method” on the relative sizes of the EU assembly’s seven political groups. Twenty one of the 22 committee chair posts, and the vast majority of the 88 vice-chair roles, were uncontested and elected by acclaim. However, the conservative EPP, center-left S&D and liberal ALDE groups on the petitions committee joined forces to reject Eleanora Evi, a member of the euroskeptic EFDD group from Italian...
  • Scientists criticize Europe’s $1.6B brain project

    07/07/2014 12:52:22 PM PDT · by Olog-hai · 10 replies
    Associated Press ^ | Jul 7, 2014 12:30 PM EDT
    Dozens of neuroscientists are protesting Europe’s $1.6 billion attempt to recreate the functioning of the human brain on supercomputers, fearing it will waste vast amounts of money and harm neuroscience in general. The 10-year Human Brain Project is largely funded by the European Union. In an open letter issued Monday, more than 190 neuroscience researchers called on the EU to put less money into the effort to “build” a brain, and to invest instead in existing projects. …
  • Europe Takes Rehab Approach to Islamic Extremists

    07/07/2014 4:35:42 AM PDT · by Oldeconomybuyer · 13 replies
    ABC News ^ | July 7, 2014 | By FRANK JORDANS and KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
    BERLIN - Chris Boudreau's son Damian told her over dinner on a November evening in 2012 that he was going to Egypt to study Arabic, the language of Islam. She never saw him again. "He flew to Seattle, then Amsterdam, then into Istanbul," said Boudreau. "There was a training camp just outside the city where radicals train prior to crossing the border into Syria." Fourteen months later, the 22-year-old Canadian convert to Islam was dead, apparently killed in fighting between rival groups of Islamic militants in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Boudreau was left to wonder what she could have...
  • Obama’s Economic Boycott Against Israel Adopted by 17 EU Nations

    07/06/2014 7:28:44 AM PDT · by FredDardick · 4 replies
    Political Kryptonite ^ | July 6, 2014 | Fred Dardick
    Since January of last year the European Union has been threatening to boycott any company or entity that does business with the West Bank of Israel. The sanctions, perversely designed by Secretary of State John Kerry, were meant to punish Israel for its settlements in the West Bank and encourage the Jewish nation to adopt Kerry’s peace process framework. The economic boycott threat was entirely one-sided against Israel. Because there were no consequences for the Palestinian Authority should they abandon the peace process, it gave the PA every reason to harden their position and wait for the EU to act...
  • What happened when we tested Google's 'right to be forgotten' tool

    07/04/2014 9:25:45 AM PDT · by Citizen Zed · 5 replies
    expert reviews ^ | 7-4-2014 | James Temperton
    Google's right to be forgotten system is woefully inadequate and censoring things it shouldn't. We decided to make a number of right to be forgotten claims to see what would happen. One request was to remove search listings for an automated online profile page that contained someone's name and Twitter handle. There are loads of websites that collate information about people and spew out automated profiles – 192.com and Peekyou.com being two examples. These websites might be annoying, but should they ever be censored from search results if all they are doing is collating publicly available information? None of the information...
  • NSA investigation: Germany arrests 'suspected US spy'

    07/04/2014 7:36:28 AM PDT · by Oldeconomybuyer · 23 replies
    BBC News ^ | July 4, 2014
    An employee of Germany's intelligence agency has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the US, reports say. The man is said to have been trying to gather details about a German parliamentary committee that is investigating claims of US espionage. German media say the man arrested this week is a 31-year-old employee of the federal intelligence agency, known as the BND. The German federal prosecutor's office confirmed the man's arrest, but gave no other details. A spokesman for Ms Merkel said she had been informed of the arrest, as had the members of the nine-strong parliamentary committee investigating the...