Free Republic

Austria will extend its border controls if Turkey does not take back refugees picked up at sea on their way to Greece, Chancellor Werner Faymann said in an interview with the daily Oesterreich, being published on Sunday. He had earlier said that migrants picked up at the Greek external EU border should be sent back directly to Turkey because this was the only measure that would make a radical enough impact. Austria is set to introduce a new border management system at Spielfeld, a key crossing point on its south-eastern border with Slovenia, which aims at speeding up applications and...

The risk of a real estate bubble occurring in several regions of Switzerland reached its highest level at the end of 2015 since the late 1980s, according to a report from UBS. The bank on Thursday said its Swiss Real Estate Bubble Index reached 1.41 points in the fourth quarter of last year, up from 1.34 in the third quarter and the highest rate in around 15 years. The Lake Geneva and Greater Zurich areas remain the most exposed regions in the country with the highest risk potential for a residential real estate bubble. Other exposed cities include Zug, Lucerne,...

A group of 184 Cubans, who had traveled through Guatemala to reach Mexican territory at Ciudad Hidalgo in the southern state of Chiapas, received from Mexican authorities a provisional visitor's document which, for humanitarian reasons, allows them to travel the length of this country to the United States. The 39 families, which include a number of pregnant women, left Costa Rica last Thursday on a flight to El Salvador, from where they traveled in four buses through Guatemala to the Mexican border. The National Migration Institute, or INM, provided the 184 Cubans with a provisional visitor's document granting them up...

TEHRAN (FNA) - Informed sources revealed that Riyadh is holding training courses for 150,000 Saudi, Sudanese, Egyptian and Jordanian forces to prepare them for war in Syria. The Saudi sources told the CNN channel that the 150,000-strong army is now stationed in Saudi Arabia and will soon be dispatched to Syria. They also said that Morocco, Turkey, Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar will also deploy their forces to Syria through the Turkish borders, and Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei will dispatch mercenaries to Saudi Arabia too. On Thursday, the Saudi Defense Ministry said it stood ready to deploy ground troops to...

European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini says she is preparing to visit Iran following the implementation of a landmark nuclear deal between Tehran with world powers. Mogherini said Saturday there was no set date had been set, but that preparations with Tehran were well underway. She insisted all 28 EU nations were backing the opening with Iran. ...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin referred to Madeline Albright's somewhat well-known saying, found on a Starbucks coffee cup, that "There's a special place in Hell for women who don't help other women." At the time, Albright, who served as Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, huffed: "Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen to cite me as a source of wisdom, what I said had nothing to do with politics." She naturally followed that statement with an intense political attack on Palin and GOP presidential nominee John McCain. Now that Democrat Hillary...

DRESDEN, Germany (AP) -- Thousands of people are taking part in protests against Islam and immigration in several European cities. Police in Dresden say they expect about 15,000 protesters at a rally organized by the group Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West. Known by its German acronym PEGIDA, the group emerged in Dresden two years ago and has become a magnet for far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment. About 10,000 people are expected to take part in a counter-demonstration Saturday on the other side of the river Elbe, which divides the city.

The Japanese government says North Korea launched what's widely believed to be a long-range ballistic missile on Sunday. The government said the missile was launched at 9:31 AM Japan time from the western coast of North Korea toward the direction of Okinawa Prefecture.

That President Obama told a series of brazen lies about Islam in his December 3 Baltimore speech is being well documented by experts on Islam. Obama bizarrely invented a new translation of the word “Islam” itself, saying incorrectly that the word comes from the same root as the Muslim word for peace — salam, as in, peace be with you. In fact, in Arabic, the word Islam means submission, not peace, meaning submission to Allah and the teachings of his prophet, Mohammad. Obama also misquoted Islamic scripture in parts of his speech, even going so far as to suggest that...

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-06/merkel-says-eu-must-take-in-refugees-directly-from-turkey

Jeb Bush said on Saturday that people who have a problem voting for him because of his last name "need to get therapy." The former Florida governor has struggled to gain traction in the Republican presidential race in part because many voters are leery of electing three presidents from the same family. "The Bush thing, people are just going to have to get over it, alright?" a defiant Bush said at a townhall gathering at the McKelvie Intermediate School gym here ahead of tonight's GOP debate. -snip- "I got no problems with this, and people that do, they either need...

Establishment, globalist advocates published what will go down as the most disingenuous, deceitful and outright dishonest promotional piece on behalf of the so-called fast-track trade authority that could have been written. Authored by establishment GOP Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and heretofore "conservative" Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the op-ed in The Wall Street Journal is a compilation of talking points and slick dodges. It is textbook propaganda that would make the disinformation experts of the KGB blush. The dynamic duo start by asserting that the U.S. must "strengthen the country's bargaining position" by giving President Obama fast track powers. Really? The...

The European Union on Saturday called on Israel to halt the demolition of illegal Palestinian buildings, some of which are EU-funded, and reiterated its opposition to building Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria. "In the past weeks there have been a number of developments in Area C of the West Bank, which risk undermining the viability of a future Palestinian state and driving the parties yet further apart," the EU diplomatic service said in a statement. It referred to Israel's decision on January 25 to declare 154 hectares (380 acres) of land near Jericho in Judea as state land, with...

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., charged the Obama administration with quietly signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement in New Zealand, and said the White House tried to minimize it because it knows the public isn't pleased with the deal.

The German Catholic Church called for a reduction in the influx of refugees arriving in Germany, saying the country cannot take in "all the world's needy," according to an interview published on Saturday. Germany has been struggling to cope with 1.1 million asylum seekers that arrived in 2015 and Berlin has not yet given an official estimate for how many it expects this year. "As a church, we say that we need a reduction in the number of refugees," Cardinal Reinhard Marx, chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, told the Passauer Neue Presse daily. ...

By 2005, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had dismantled his WMD program and was lauded by the international community as a model for nuclear disarmament. Leaked cables showed improving relations between the Libya and the United States. But in 2011, hoping to brandish his foreign policy credentials for an eventual presidential run, Marco Rubio became one of the most vocal supporters of Hillary Clinton's War on Libya... If we believe that the rise of this new attitude among young people and others seeking a new life and a new way in the Middle East is a positive thing, and I believe...

Army and Marine Corps leaders swapped pledges with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday not to cave to political pressure and relax ground combat skill requirements so that more women will qualify to serve in infantry, armor and special forces units. Certainty that such pressure will come, and the need to resist to protect combat effectiveness, was expressed both by senators and witnesses during the first congressional hearing held to review how Army and Marine Corps plan to open all ground combat jobs to women. No senator on the committee suggested Congress should block the Dec. 3...

By BI: Video has emerged from a subway train in Cologne showing a huge pig grunting at potential attackers. Dressed in its own bright pink cape, the portly pig is seen having a good sniff around the subway car…looking for potential threats. As you know, Muslims hate pigs, in any form...

The German Catholic Church called for a reduction in the influx of refugees arriving in Germany, saying the country cannot take in "all the world's needy," according to an interview published Saturday.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could make his biggest gains in the country’s long civil war—and potentially tip its outcome in his favor in a matter of weeks—by wresting control of the city of Aleppo from opposition forces, two U.S. military officials told The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity. If government forces are able to successfully encircle the city and hold it, and control the province around it, “the war is essentially over,” said one of the senior defense officials.