Free Republic

Paris protests spread to Switzerland and Belgium but streets of France are eerily quiet: Emmanuel Macron holds crisis talks to assess the situation after teen's 'execution' during traffic stop fuels five days of widespread unrest

Riots sparked by the death of a teenager in Paris who was shot dead by police during a traffic stop has spread to cities in Switzerland and Belgium - but the streets of France were eerily quiet on Sunday evening. The alleged 'execution' of Nahel Merzouk, 17, who was of Algerian and Moroccan descent, has fuelled days of arrest and forced President Emmanuel Macron to hold crisis talks on Sunday night. Some regions have banned the sale of fireworks and restricted street access in a bid to curb the ongoing unrest - and there are 45,000 extra police have been...

Hundreds of Amazon employees briefly walked off the job Wednesday, calling on the company to reconsider its return-to-office mandate and curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Outside Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, standing underneath a banner that urged the company to stop its “short-term thinking,” Pamela Hayter told her colleagues she wasn’t nervous about speaking out anymore. “We’re here today because it’s the right thing to do,” the Seattle-based program manager said. “I’ve not been nervous. I’ve been fired up.” On Wednesday, nearly 2,000 Amazon employees joined the walkout, according to organizers who gathered pledges before action took place. Of those pledges, roughly...

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo on Monday (22 May) criticized the idea of not growing the economy for environmental reasons, joining calls to stop environmental and health-related regulation to prevent overburdening companies. As EU industry transforms towards net-zero emissions, it should not be burdened with additional regulation, De Croo (Open VLD/Renew) told a conference hosted by the Wirtschaftsrat der CDU, a business group with close ties to the German conservative CDU party (EPP affiliated). “Let’s not try to do everything at the same time. Let us focus on what is the most important,” De Croo said, calling for a...

The Netherlands is working "intensively" with other European countries to supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets. However, there are no concrete commitments yet, as it turned out today at the joint press conference of Ukrainian President Zelensky, Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Belgian Prime Minister De Croo in the Catshuis in The Hague. "There are no taboos and we are working intensively on it," said Rutte. "But we're not there yet". The three other countries are Belgium, the United Kingdom and Denmark...

Euthanasia is to be extended to primary school-age children in the Netherlands, the Dutch government has announced. Health Minister Ernst Kuipers said that children aged five to 12 years can obtain lethal injections if “life termination is the only viable option to end the child’s hopeless and unbearable suffering”. The country already allows the euthanasia of gravely ill newborn children under the infamous Groningen Protocol. According to the NLTimes, Mr Kuipers said he expects the regulations to be implemented within the year. He said he also expected up to 10 primary school-age children a year to die by lethal injection...

The Netherlands were the first country in the world to allow euthanasia in 2002 but is the second country to widen to children under 12. The Netherlands will now allow euthanasia of terminally ill children between the ages of one and 12, according to a report by the Guardian earlier this week. The Dutch government said that this would only apply to up to 10 children a year and only for children who have no hope of recovery and who aren't helped by palliative care. “The end of life for this group is the only reasonable alternative to the child’s...

AB InBev, the brewer behind the Corona, Budweiser and Stella Artois beer brands, has hailed record full year volumes in 2022, as well as the strong performance of its premium portfolio. The business claimed this success was “driven by the investment in [its] marketing capabilities”. While sales and marketing investment fell in 2022 compared to the year prior, CEO Michel Doukeris told investors today (2 March) the company will continue to invest behind its brands as they “deserve” because their “power” drives growth at the business. Across the full year, volumes grew by 2.3% to reach an “all-time high”, the...

Country music legend Travis Tritt announced Wednesday that he is dropping all Anheuser-Busch products from his tour. "I will be deleting all Anheuser-Busch products from my tour hospitality rider. I know many other artists who are doing the same," Tritt revealed on Twitter. According to Tritt, other country music artists are taking the same action as he is, but they aren't announcing it publicly "for fear of being ridiculed and cancelled." But Tritt declared, "I have no such fear." Tritt even offered a suggestion as to why Anheuser-Busch felt it was a good idea to sponsor Mulvaney: because the company...

A man has killed himself following a six-week-long conversation with artificial intelligence about the so-called climate crisis. He apparently committed suicide in his effort to try to save the planet. The report comes from Off the Press, where the case of the Belgian man was detailed. His widow, who wanted to remain anonymous, said her husband "became extremely eco-anxious when he found refuge in Eliza, an AI chatbot on an app called Chai." Thomas Rianlan, in an interview with Vice, explained, "It wouldn’t be accurate to blame EleutherAI’s model for this tragic story, as all the optimisation towards being more...

This is an article that originally appeared in 2010 in Brussels. It is a clear indication of the origins of the sexual abuse crisis in the ecclesiastical world fostered by the Council. It is always difficult to judge the degree of abuse before the Council as the culprits would be long dead. However, the penitential and disciplinary rigours of pre-conciliar manuals on seminary training indicate that the culprits would never have had much diminished chances of making it through seminary before the Council. The Devil in the Church From the desk of Alexandra Colen 2010. Were you surprised when it...

Hundreds of tractors driven by angry farmers protesting a plan to cut nitrate levels converged on Brussels on Friday, creating major traffic disruption in Belgium's capital city. The BB farmers union and several others combined efforts to gather more than 2,700 farm vehicles, according to Brussels police. Several major roads in Brussels were closed and police warned that disruptions could last until the end of the day, recommending that people use public transportation instead of personal cars. The Flemish regional government is struggling to find a deal to cut nitrate pollution over farmers’ objections that it would put many out...

Late for their flight to Belgium on Tuesday (Jan 31), one couple realised they needed to buy an additional ticket for their baby only after they arrived at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. The pair elected not to fork out money for the extra ticket. They left their child at the check-in counter’s baggage conveyor belt and made a dash to clear security in an attempt to board their Ryanair flight to Brussels. The pair, who hold Belgian passports, were informed by staff at the closed check-in counter that they had to buy an extra seat for...

Eva Kaili is the name on everyone's lips in Brussels.The Greek MEP was considered, until her arrest on 9 December, a rising star among the ranks of the socialist group (S&D). Known as media-friendly and approachable, Kaili was first elected to the European Parliament in 2014, running with the centre-left PASOK party, and was re-elected in 2019.In January 2022, the 44-year-old was named one of the parliament's 14 vice presidents, a culmination of her legislative work in digital topics such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and blockchain.Since her shocking detainment, Kaili has been expelled from PASOK, suspended from the S&D group...

A recent report reveals that the number of people killed by euthanasia has dramatically increased since it was legalized in Belgium in 2002. Since then, euthanasia has killed more than 27,000 people in the nation. Euthanasia became legal in 2002 due to the introduction of an exception to the law prohibiting the killing of others. The exception offered a “solution” to adult patients who had a “serious and incurable” disease that was causing them great suffering. It was hoped that this exception would put an end to the covert euthanasia that was being practiced. Since its legalization, euthanasia has killed...

On the same day that the Netherlands officially apologised for 250 years of slavery, MPs in neighbouring Belgium failed to agree on how to seek atonement for colonial-era abuses. The Belgian parliament set up a commission in 2020 in the wake of protests triggered by the Black Lives Matter movement to examine their country's record in its former central African colonies. But the panel admitted they had failed to reach a consensus on how to formulate an apology for the notoriously bloody excesses of Belgian rule in what is now DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. They had been due to...

'European democracy is under attack': Roberta Metsola addresses EU Parliament corruption scandal By Euronews • Updated: 13/12/2022 - 11:31 Roberta Metsola address the European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg, France. Roberta Metsola address the European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg, France. - Copyright Philippe BUISSIN/ European Union 2022 - Source : EP Roberta Metsola, the President of the European Parliament, warned on Monday that there would be "no impunity" for those found guilty of corruption as she addressed what is perhaps the gravest graft scandal to hit the hemicycle in recent years. "Make no mistake, the European Parliament, dear colleague, is under...

Walk through this part of central Brussels on a sunny morning and you could just as well be in Rabat or Tangiers. In this Moroccan neighbourhood in the heart of the Belgian capital...The atmosphere is undoubtedly Moroccan as you head down the main street towards Midi train station. Five million Moroccans live abroad, most of them in Europe. They make up large minorities in France, Spain, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands. Here in Brussels and surrounding regions, they number 400,000. Morocco's victories showed celebrations turning ugly in several European cities. In places, celebrations turned to street battles involving young Morocco...

NATO allies the UK and Belgium are at loggerheads as Belgium's green party coalition is using Brexit rules to block the export of critical nuclear arms technology to the UK. The technology at the centre of the row plays a vital role in the maintenance of the UK's nuclear deterrent, with Belgium insisting the UK needs an 'export licence' to obtain it post-Brexit. However, though both nations are NATO allies, Belgium's deputy prime minister Georges Gilkinet, member of the green coalition-member Ecolo party has blocked the licence due to 'opposition to nuclear weapons and the arms industry,' ...

https://www.espn.com/soccer/fifa-club-world-cup/story/4816778/riots-in-brussels-after-morocco-beat-belgium-at-world-cup?platform=amp Protests against strict Covid measures in China have spilled into a second night and spread to the biggest cities. Demonstrators gathered in the capital Beijing and the financial hub Shanghai. Many held up blank pieces of paper to express their discontent and acknowledge the censorship. Some have, however, gone as far as calling for President Xi Jinping to step down. Millions have been affected by nearly three years of mass testing, quarantines and snap lockdowns.