Free Republic

French authorities are looking at shutting down a far-right extremist group that has staged several attempts to forcibly block migrants from entering the country by crossing the Alps or the Pyrénées mountains, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Tuesday. Darmanin, who has also led a recent crackdown on extremist Muslim organizations, said he was “outraged by the efforts by Génération Identitaire activists to undermine the republic.” Last week, around 30 members of Génération Identitaire (Generation Identity) gathered at the Col de Portillion pass on the border of France and Spain in what they termed a surveillance operation to “defend Europe.” It...

Processed goods like jelly or gravy could be unavailable in NI at the end of the protocol grace period, according to Stormont's agriculture minister. Edwin Poots acknowledged Northern Ireland has plenty of homegrown produce, such as beef or potatoes. But he warned trimmings like Bisto or trifle could be missing from traditional Sunday dinners. He also stood by his claim that action was needed to avert "a major crisis" over food supplies. However, political opponents have accused him of scaremongering. Mr Poots said the official minute of a meeting he held with suppliers - at which he was told of...

Germany is set to put COVID dissidents who repeatedly fail to properly follow the rules in what is being described as a ‘detention camp’ located in Dresden.Yes really.In order to try to increase compliance, violators are told that if they receive both a warning and then a fine, a court will decide whether they should be punished with a stint in the camp.“We don’t assume that there will be very many, but in the event that a court decides that way, there will be a facility to accommodate them,” a spokesperson told RT.Camps. For dissidents. In Germany.What could possibly go...

Deutsche Bank AG has reportedly decided to cut ties with President Donald Trump as well as his private companies following the unrest at Capitol Hill last week. The German lender has been joined by the New York-based Signature Bank, which also announced that it would be ending its business relationship with the President.

European companies are expected to hunt for assets in China, mainly in insurance, healthcare and automobile sectors, after the world’s second-largest economy and the European Union agreed to an investment deal last month, lawyers and bankers say.

A Norwegian firm that was meant to have provided technical and safety certificates for Russia’s gas pipeline to Germany has abandoned the project due to US sanctions. “DNV GL will cease all verification activities for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline system in line with sanctions and while sanctions are in place,” it said in a statement sent to EUobserver on Monday (4 January). “We are implementing a plan to wind down our verification support to the project. As the situation currently stands, DNV GL cannot issue a certificate upon the completion of the pipeline,” it added. A spokesman for the...

Europe must be an autonomous global actor and it would be “a terrible sign” if the EU blocked a recently concluded investment agreement with China in order to coordinate with Washington, Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa told EurActiv’s partner Lusa in an exclusive interview.The EU and China reached last Wednesday (30 December) an agreement in principle on investment, which has been under negotiation for seven years. However, the deal could cause tension with the new US administration weeks after President-elect Joe Biden proposed a transatlantic dialogue on “the strategic challenge posed by China’s growing international assertiveness”. […] According to the...

HUNDREDS of birds found dead on a street in Rome on New Year's Eve were scared to death by fireworks, animal rights campaigners have claimed. It comes after a ban on fireworks in the city, introduced to protect people, animals, and heritage sites, went largely ignored.... ...The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says that there is "little evidence to suggest that fireworks harm wild birds or affect their conservation status".

Under no scenario would a unified European Union aligned with China be in the interest of America. Indeed, a united EU might not be a friend but a foe.Joseph Borrell, a former Spanish socialist and current High Representative of the European Union, recently argued the EU needs to be strategically independent. “It is foreseen that in 20 years, we [the EU] will not represent more than 11 percent of world GNP, far behind China, which will represent double it, below 14 percent for the United States and at par with India,” Borrell wrote, adding the next two decades would be...

Britain’s trade agreement with the European Union removes a 4-1/2-year old fear of crashing out of the bloc without trading arrangements in place, but it will take UK financial markets years to lose their Brexit-inflicted scars.

In a major win for the LGBTQ community, Switzerland lawmakers approved the legalization of same-sex marriage last week. At the same time, the law also allowed transgender people to alter their legal gender at civil registry offices in the country and allows lesbian couples to conceive children using donated sperm, Reuters reports. Despite passing parliament, the same-sex marriage law may have to pass a national referendum in the coming year. However, activists expect a potential referendum to succeed, after a recent survey found support for marriage exceeding 80% in Switzerland. Campaign group Marriage For All posted a statement on their...

A German geneticist says that people who refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine should be denied emergency medical treatment. Wolfram Henn, a member of Germany’s Ethics Council, told Bild newspaper that vaccine refusniks should not be able to access ventilators and other emergency measures. “Whoever wants to refuse the vaccination outright, he should, please also always carry a document with the inscription: ‘I don’t want to be vaccinated!'” said Henn. “I want to leave the protection against the disease to others! I want, if I get sick, to leave my intensive care bed and ventilator to others,” he added. Henn...

The German chancellor has said stores, schools, and day care centers are to close in the run-up to Christmas until January 10. The new rules, agreed with Germany's 16 state leaders, will come into effect from Wednesday. On Sunday, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that most stores would shut from Wednesday, along with schools and day care centers. The new restrictions will be in effect until at least January 10 to help tackle the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, which threatens to overwhelm the country's health system. In a news conference that followed a meeting of federal and state leaders,...

China intends to “deepen” its partnership with Russia as a bulwark against the United States over the next year, according to a top diplomat in Beijing.

European Union leaders have a wish list and a message to pass along to Joe Biden — and in an apparent dig at President Trump, hijacked his best-known slogan in doing so: “We want to Make Multilateralism Great Again.” The 27-member bloc’s executive European Commission on Wednesday unveiled proposals aimed at strengthening the transatlantic partnership under a projected Biden administration, underlining its priorities including combating climate change and a U.S. return to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Iran nuclear deal. The proposals touch on the strains recent years have seen in the relationship, although without mentioning Trump by...

Paris (AFP) - Last month was the hottest November on record as Europe basked in its highest Autumn temperatures in history, the European Union's satellite monitoring service said Monday. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) analysis of surface and air temperatures found that November 2020 was 0.8C warmer than the 30-year average of 1981-2010 -- more than 0.1C hotter than the previous record. "These records are consistent with the long-term warming trend of the global climate," said C3S director Carlo Buontempo. "All policy-makers who prioritise mitigating climate risks should see these records as alarm bells and consider more seriously than...

NEW YORK, November 27 (C-Fam) The European Commission intends to unleash a barrage of policies to impose LGBT uniformity across the European Union, including through the threat of sanctions. The powerful European Commission announced that it wants to make “hate speech” and “hate crimes” EU crimes by 2021 and to impose mutual recognition of “rainbow families” across the European Union by 2022. The EU Commission made the announcement in its first-ever EU-wide strategy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) equality on November 12. Alongside the pledge to legislate “hate crimes” and “rainbow families” the strategy sets...

Berlin — Six former European diplomats are calling on European governments to coordinate efforts to urge an incoming Biden administration to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, from which President Trump withdrew in 2018, and to agree with the regime in Tehran on steps for mutual compliance. The call comes amid fears that Friday’s assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh could complicate attempts to restore the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). “In response to reimposed U.S. sanction [sic] since 2018, Iran has increased its nuclear activities and continues to step away from its commitments under the...

(Origianl language is German. I used Google translate and did some editing for readability) The Bremen district court has convicted the pastor of the St. Martini Protestant congregation in the Hanseatic city, Olaf Latzel, of sedition. The presiding judge Ellen Best said on Wednesday that the 53-year-old theologian had incited hatred against homosexuals in a "marriage seminar" posted on YouTube. She joined the public prosecutor's request and imposed a four-month prison sentence, converted to a fine of 90 euros a day for 90 days. The defense had pleaded for acquittal. (AZ: 96 Ds 225 Js 26577/20) The punishment is in...

US President-elect Joe Biden’s first Cabinet appointments have been seen as welcome news for many leading politicians in Europe. The fact that so many Obama administration alumni, including Biden himself, are set to return to the White House indicates a departure from the often-fraught ties between the US and European Union during the era of Donald Trump. Portugal’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, told DW that it was important the EU rebuild what he called the “trans-Atlantic bond.” Brussels must “seize the momentum to restore the relationship between the Europeans and the Americans as a relationship of allies,” he said....