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European Union officials on Tuesday approved the creation of a centralized banking supervisor, marking another step in the 28-country bloc’s long quest to stabilize its financial system. Finance ministers at a meeting in Luxembourg cleared the final legal hurdle to the establishment of the new banking supervisor, which will be operated by the European Central Bank and directly oversee the bloc’s 130 biggest banks.“Now we will start hiring supervisors, rent buildings and start the coming (bank) stress test,” ECB executive board member Joerg Asmussen said. The so-called single supervisory mechanism will be based with the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany, and...

<p>AFP - France's mainstream political parties were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the Front National (FN) after a breakthrough by-election win for the far-right party.</p> <p>The ruling Socialist party and the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, face humiliating reverses in municipal and European elections next year if the FN can sustain its current standing in the eyes of an electorate thoroughly fed-up with record unemployment, rising taxes and a perceived increase in crime and insecurity.</p>

AFP - France's mainstream political parties were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the Front National (FN) after a breakthrough by-election win for the far-right party. The ruling Socialist party and the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, face humiliating reverses in municipal and European elections next year if the FN can sustain its current standing in the eyes of an electorate thoroughly fed-up with record unemployment, rising taxes and a perceived increase in crime and insecurity. A poll published last week suggested the FN could...

We have a minor earthquake in France. A party committed to withdrawal from the euro, the restoration of French franc, and the complete destruction of monetary union has just defeated the establishment in the Brignoles run-off election. It is threatening Frexit as well, which rather alters the political chemistry of Britain's EU referendum. Marine Le Pen's Front National won 54pc of the vote. It was a bad defeat for the Gaulliste UMP, a party at risk of disintegration unless it can find a leader in short order. President Hollande's Socialists were knocked out in the first round, due to mass...

The findings of Graham Robb, a biographer and historian, bring into question two millennia of thinking about Iron Age Britain and Europe and the stereotyped image of Celts as barbarous, superstitious tribes... "They had their own road system on which the Romans later based theirs," Mr Robb said, adding that the roads were built in Britain from around the 1st Century BC. "It has often been wondered how the Romans managed to build the Fosse Way, which goes from Exeter to Lincoln. They must have known what the finishing point would be, but they didn't conquer that part of Britain...

(excerpt) "Until Iran dismantles its military nuclear program, sanctions must not be eased - on the contrary. Only the pressure brought Iran to this point, and only the continuation of pressure and its strengthening can bring them to dismantle their nuclear program," Netanyahu was quoted as saying.

… Brignoles surprised France last week by giving the far-right a 49.5 percent landslide in the first round of its local by-elections: 40.4% of votes went to National Front candidate Laurent Lopez and 9.1% to another far-right group, Parti de France. The anti-immigration National Front led by Marine Le Pen draws much of its support from the southeast, but this city of 17,000 people still claims a Communist mayor.The outcome of the ballot is relatively unimportant. It will decide one seat in the local council, or canton. The National Front is not even certain to win the run-off poll on...

Armstrong was open about his doping with Crow, never suspecting that she would tell anybody about it. "Rather than try to hide the transfusion from her, Armstrong was completely open about it," the authors write, according to the Daily News. "He trusted that Crow would have no desire to tell the press or anyone else about the team's doping program. He explained that it was simply part of the sport - that all cyclists were doing the same thing."

Britain is being sued, with France and the Netherlands, by 14 Caribbean countries, which are demanding what could be hundreds of billions of pounds in reparations for slavery. Around 175 years after Britain freed its last slaves in the West Indies, an alliance of Caribbean nations is demanding to be repaid for the “awful” lingering legacy of the Atlantic slave trade. Caricom, a group of 12 former British colonies together with the former French colony Haiti and the Dutch-held Suriname, believes the European governments should pay—and the UK in particular. It has hired the British law firm Leigh Day, which...

France’s National Front party has come out top in a poll on how French voters intend to cast their ballot in next year’s EU elections. A poll by IFOP for Le Nouvel Observateur, published Wednesday (9 October), found that 24 percent of those asked said they will vote for the anti-immigration, anti-Muslim National Front party. … The party won a record 18 percent of the vote in last year’s presidential election, with its leader Marine Le Pen credited with bringing in previously unwooed parts of the electorate. …

In a shock to mainstream parties ahead of the March 2014 local elections, the far-right on Sunday gained a stunning lead of just under 50 percent in the first round of a by-election in the Var region of southern France. The far-right achieved a massive 49.5 percent landslide in the first round of a by-election Sunday in the Brignoles constituency of the Var region of southern France. National Front (FN) candidate Laurent Lopez took 40.4 percent of the vote, with another far-right party, the “Parti de France”, taking 9.1 percent. The centre-right UMP, France’s main opposition parliamentary party, came second...

BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) - French magistrates abandoned a long-running party funding investigation against former president Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday, buoying his chances of a political comeback in 2017. Sarkozy, whom most conservatives want to see lead the centre-right in the 2017 presidential race, was targeted with others in a judicial inquiry into his UMP party's ties with France's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. At issue were allegations that Sarkozy, 58, took advantage of the mental frailty of billionaire Bettencourt to obtain money for his 2007 presidential campaign. He has denied wrongdoing.....

The leader of France’s anti-EU and anti-immigration National Front (FN) said Thursday that she wants to take media organizations who call her party “far right” to court. Marine Le Pen described the term as “defamatory” and “insulting”, and insisted that using it went “against the standards of journalistic impartiality”. The FN, she said, was “neither left wing nor right wing” and simply had radically different ideas from the mainstream parties such as the UMP (center-right opposition) and the ruling Socialists. …

"We've been looking at how we can bring back confidence in the European Union," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in Warsaw late on Monday as he arrived for a meeting of ministers in the Future of Europe Group, which he launched in March. The 11-nation group is poised to submit a raft of recommendations to Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso - heads, respectively, of the bloc's intergovernmental and executive branches, neither of whom are elected by the EU's 500 million people. "We have to understand that we are a community of values and we have to defend...

Last year, Germany went out on a limb by calling for political union in Europe. The idea was met with little enthusiasm elsewhere in the eurozone, but particularly in France. After the election of French President François Hollande in May, it seemed that views of the EU's foremost political duo could not be further apart. But the mood has since changed, and serious plans are underway to create—if not a full political union, then something close to it. … Meanwhile, EU council president Herman Van Rompuy and others are drawing up a paper to upgrade the eurozone, which will be...

Unidentified foreign forces have launched a night-time raid on a militant base in the south Somali town of Barawe from the sea, reports say. A spokesman for the al-Shabab Islamist group told Reuters news agency that one of its fighters had been killed during the raid....... Al-Shabab claimed responsibility last month for the deadly attack on a Kenyan shopping mall..... According to the Somali news website Midnimo, two helicopters were also involved in the raid..... "Westerners in boats attacked our base as Barawe beach and one was martyred from our side," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Masab, described as al-Shabab's spokesman for...

Schwerpunkt at Fismette, August 27, 1918 August 27, 2010 By Shane Reilly, Army Heritage Education Center The forest for the trees: Soldiers of the 28th Division are shown in hiding among trees during service in France in World War I(WWI Signal Corps Collection). Related Links A Working Bibliography of MHI Sources: 28th Infantry Division A Working Bibliography of MHI Sources: World War I- AEF Overview In the early morning hours of August 27, 1918, 230 Pennsylvanians of the 28th Division trudged across the Vesle River into their defensive positions in the rubble- strewn village of Fismette, France. Less than an...

A FRENCH ASSESSMENT OF THE PANTHER TANK Professional historians and military history buffs alike often describe the German Panther tank as the best German tank, and perhaps the best tank overall, of the second world war.  It had a powerful and accurate high-velocity 75mm gun, its frontal armor was almost invulnerable to most allied anti-tank weapons, and it had a powerful engine, broad tracks and a suspension system that gave it high speed, excellent cross-country capability and a smooth ride.  What more could a tanker want? In truth a tanker could ask for much more.  The Panther’s story is...

Terrorist planned attack on nuclear warhead stockpile By Philip Delves Broughton November 17 2002 The Sun-Herald An Al Qaeda terrorist has confessed that he planned to drive a giant explosive device into a United States air force bunker in Belgium believed to contain nuclear warheads. News of the plot came as the US warned that a broadcast thought to contain the words of Osama bin Laden foreshadowed a likely attack. The FBI said national landmarks and the aviation, oil and nuclear industries were all possible targets. In an interview with a Belgian radio station, Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, 31, a former...

France had Rafale jets armed with Scalp missiles ready for strike on Syria By Richard Clements According to to French weekly le Nouvel Observateur (LNO) France came within hours of striking Syrian Chemical weapons sites after thinking that the U.S had planned a huge attack on Sept. 1, 2013. The report states that French President Francois Hollande had convened a meeting early in the morning of August 31; the plan on how France was going to attack the chemical weapons sites was formed during this meeting. According to LNO the French planned to fly Rafale jets supported by French tankers...