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Officers moved in before dawn to seal off the squatter camp, where the local authorities had installed water standpipes and chemical lavatories near the central city of Saint Etienne. The operation took several hours. Shortly after launching his measures aimed at gipsies, Mr Sarkozy announced plans to target members of other minority groups, promising to strip French nationality from certain categories of foreign-born criminals. Opinion polls this week showed that 79 per cent of voters approved of measures to dismantle the camps. Similar majorities backed other aspects of his law and order policy. Mr Sarkozy has pledged that those foreign...

Speaking for the European Union presidency, Swedish migration minister Tobias Billström said on Wednesday that the EU supported requiring visas for Canadians travelling to the EU in response to Canada’s decision to impose visa restrictions on Czech nationals. "As the presidency of the EU, we are in favour of this reciprocity," Swedish Migration and Asylum Policy Minister Tobias Billström told AFP. "But it's up to the Commission to handle the proposal, because the Commission is responsible for the reciprocity mechanism," he added. Canada imposed visas on Czechs to stave off what it said was a steady influx of Roma asylum...

Gipsies and travellers should be given priority in NHS hospitals and GP surgeries, doctors have been told. They will be fast-tracked for doctors, nurses and even some dentist appointments above all other patients. GPs have also been told to see any travellers who simply walk in without an appointment, even if all consultation times for the day are full.

First he encircled them with an 8ft metal fence. And when that failed to move the gipsy camp off his land, he dug a moat. Builder Francis Shiner resorted to the measures when two gipsy families set up home on the disused car park of a building site in Bedford.He asked them to move but they didn't. So he went on the offensive and managed to evict them within 48 hours. Mr Shiner said the gipsies were hindering work on the site owned by Bedford construction company SDC construction and action had to be taken. He said: 'We went...

Romany Gypsies came out of India Anna Salleh ABC Science Online Monday, 6 September 2004 A Romany woman dances in downtown Prague during the third annual Khamoro Festival of Roma music and culture (Image: Reuters/Petr Josek) Legend has it that European Gypsies came from Egypt but a new genetic study has shown they came from a small population that emerged from ancestors in India around 1000 years ago. The research, by Professor Luba Kalaydjieva of the University of Western Australia and team, looked at the origins of eight to 10 million people in Europe commonly known as Gypsies. Roma, Romani...