The uproar over the Rotherham sex abuse scandal shows no sign of abating, with public outrage in the UK still at full throttle. Home Secretary Theresa May has called on Shaun Wright, the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire, to step down.
In other news, the United Nations has called on other European countries to help Italy with its struggle against the flood of illegal migrants crossing the Mediterranean to land on its shores.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, Phyllis Chesler, Steen, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
Former Fed Chairman Says 2008 Worse Than Great Depression
Bernanke says financial crisis ‘worst in global history’
(ANSA) — New York, August 27 — Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called the 2008 economic crisis the “worst financial crisis in global history”, surpassing even the Great Depression, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
In a document deposited in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims as part of a lawsuit linked to the 2008 government bailout of insurance giant AIG, Bernanke said that out of 13 of the “most important financial institutions in the United States, 12 were at risk of failure within a period of a week or two.”
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Mortgages ‘Dearest in Europe’ Say Consumer Groups
‘Italian banks don’t apply ECB interest rates’ watchdogs say
(ANSA) — Rome, August 26 — Italian home buyers pay as much as 25,000 euros more than they would in other EU countries for a 30-year property mortgage of 100,000 euros, Adusbef and Federconsumatori consumer groups said Tuesday.
Italian home buyers face average mortgage interest rates of 4.47%, against an average of 3.18% in the EU as a whole, the consumer watchdog groups said citing data from the latest European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Italy bulletins.
Loans are also more expensive in Italy, with interest rates averaging 7.18% against 5.5% in the eurozone.
This means Italian banks are not applying ECB interest rate decisions, making Italy the country with the dearest money in Europe, the consumer groups said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Gaza in Manhattan: Individual Jews Held Guilty and Attacked
by Phyllis Chesler
Monday night, on the upper east side of New York City, a gang of anti-Semitic “thugs” attacked a peaceful but visibly Jewish man — he was wearing a skullcap (a yarmulke or kippa). They also attacked his wife.
Two cars “flying Palestinian flags and multiple motorcycles” pulled up to the couple at 8:00 p.m. while it was still daylight. They began yelling “anti-Jewish statements.” Then, they threw a water bottle that hit his wife, and, when her husband came to her defense, they “punched him in the head.”
The suspects fled. No arrests have been made. The 27-year-old man refused medical attention at the scene.
This is my neighborhood, my home town. This incident took place about a mile away from where I live and work. So far, I have found only one brief article about this in the New York Post…
| — Hat tip: Phyllis Chesler | [Return to headlines] |
Lady Al Qaeda: The World’s Most Wanted Woman
The Taliban wanted to trade Bergdahl for her. The Islamic State offered to swap Foley. Why does every jihadi group want the U.S. to free Aafia Siddiqui?
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Seeks to Bypass Congress for U.N. Climate Change Deal: Report
The Obama administration is looking to reach “a sweeping international climate change agreement” that would not be a formal treaty that would require a two-thirds Senate approval — which almost certainly would never happen, The New York Times reported.
Diplomats are trying to reach a deal in time for a 2015 meeting in Paris, and U.S. negotiators are pushing for an approach that would commit every signatory nation to certain goals on reducing carbon dioxide emissions and on sending money to poorer countries to help them handle the effects of global warming.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
300 Oil Companies Hacked in Norway
Around 300 oil and energy in Norway companies has been affected by one of the biggest computer hacking attacks ever to happen in the country, a government source said on Wednesday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Danish Company Eager to Produce Date-Rape Nail Polish
The Danish cosmetics firm Gosh Cosmetics is eager to purchase and produce the date-rape nail polish that has been developed by some students at North Caroline State University in the US recently.
The nail polish — dubbed Undercover Colors — has yet to be produced, but Gosh is very interested in producing it for the Danish market, according to Rikke Skaarup Hansen, the research and development manager at Gosh…
The Undercover Colors nail polish works by changing colour when it is dipped into a drink spiked with a date rape drug. It means users can see right away that their drinks have been tampered with just by stirring their drinks with their fingers….
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France: IMF’s Christine Lagarde ‘Under Investigation’
French authorities have formally opened a negligence investigation into Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
She has been questioned about her role in awarding 400m euro (£318m; $527m) in compensation to businessman Bernard Tapie in 2008. She denies wrongdoing.
Ms Lagarde, 58, was finance minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government at the time of the award.
Mr Tapie supported Mr Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential election.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
France Sees Steep Rise in Deaths of Street Children
New figures released this week laid bare the problem of homelessness in France with 454 people living on the streets having died last year. That total included 15 children, which was a steep rise on the previous year.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Marines’ Supporters Protest Indian Heiress Wedding in Pugli
But relatives, loved ones declined to take a stance
(ANSA) — Bari, August 27 — Supporters of two Italian marines being held in India protested as preparations for the lavish wedding of an Indian heiress got underway in the southern Puglia region, where both marines hail from.
Salvatore Girone and Massimiliano Latorre are being held in India on possible murder charges in the 2012 shooting deaths of two Indian fishermen, whom they allegedly mistook for pirates.
Indian iron magnate Pramod Agarwal has chosen to throw his third daughter, Ritika Agarwal, a lavish three-day wedding in the Puglia town of Fasano, irking some of the marines’ supporters.
They have created a Facebook page and inundated local Mayor Lello Di Bari’s inbox with demands he not attend the nuptials.
“I can’t avoid this wedding,” replied the mayor.
Those closest to the marines declined to take up the cudgel.
“No comment,” Paola Moschetti, girlfriend of marine Massimiliano Latorre, told ANSA. “This has nothing to do with the marines’ situation,” Salvatore Girone’s brother, Alessandro, told ANSA. “Making a fuss is pointless. All we care about is for their case to be resolved soon”.
Local law enforcement is holding a meeting Thursday to come up with a plan in case of protests at the wedding, set to take place September 3-6.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Five Probed for Jihad in Veneto
Investigators say some of the five may have sought recruits
(ANSA) — Venice, August 27 — Five people resident in Veneto have been placed under investigation on suspicion of terrorism, police said Wednesday. Venice police think they are close to organisations fighting for Islamist jihad, Corriere del Veneto newspaper said.
Italy, like other Western countries, is concerned about domestic jihadis going to fight in Syria and Iraq.
Investigators believe that at least some of the five were working to recruit both immigrants and others as jihadists to go to Syria or Iraq. Following the interior ministry’s recent terrorist alert, intelligence investigations were stepped up in the Veneto region, both at Islamic centers and on individuals considered dangerously close to fundamentalist ideas.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Modern Britain’s Apathetic, Inadequate Response to Child Sexual Abuse
by Douglas Murray
The customs developing around how modern British officialdom reacts to the gang-rape of children is very interesting.
I’ve just watched an interview (above) with Shaun Wright, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for South Yorkshire, a man who has to struggle along on a tax-payer funded salary of £85,000…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Norway Prospers as Wealth Fund Value Soars
Public spending could get a boost in Norway after it was revealed the country’s sovereign wealth fund could reach six trillion kroner ($973 billion), the Norwegian government said on Monday.
The Norwegian oil fortune by the end of 2014 is estimated to grow several hundred billion kroner larger than the government predicted in May this year. Dagens Næringsliv reported on Monday the extra revenue is around 500 billion kroner above earlier estimates.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Senegalese Who Doctor With Ebola Arrives for Treatment in Germany
(Reuters) — A Senegalese doctor who contracted Ebola while working for the World Health Organisation (WHO)in Sierra Leone arrived in Hamburg on Wednesday for treatment at a tropical medicine unit, becoming Germany’s first patient with the disease.
At a news conference on Wednesday the clinic’s tropical medicine specialist said the man would not be given new experimental drugs such as ZMapp but that his treatment would at first focus on managing his symptoms.
The Senegalese doctor arrived in Germany on a specialist plane and was transferred to the university clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf in a special isolation ambulance, accompanied by a police guard.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Roma Advocate Scoops Wallenberg Prize
A Roma man has been hailed as “inspirational” after scooping this year’s Raoul Wallenberg Prize for setting up an organization to help stamp out racism against the community.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘They Like us Naive’: How Teenage Girls Are Groomed for a Life of Prostitution by UK Gangs
Thirteen-year-old Emma was a happy child from a loving family when a gang of boys she met at a shopping centre introduced her to a charismatic older man. He plied her with gifts and drinks… then raped her and forced her into prostitution. Now aged 20 and in hiding from the gang, Emma talks candidly about how she was groomed — and how she is trying to help the growing number of others being picked out for a similar fate
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Former Rotherham MP admits he could have done more to “burrow into” the problem in his constituency, but insists no victims ever approached him
Denis MacShane, the former Labour MP for Rotherham, has admitted that as a “Guardian reading liberal leftie” he shied away from the issue of the oppression of women in the Muslim community.
Mr MacShane, who resigned in 2012 over an expenses fraud for which he was later jailed, insisted no-one came to him with child abuse allegations during his 18 years in Parliament, but admitted he should have “burrowed into” the issue…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rotherham: Fear of All the Wrong Things Failed 1,400 Children
‘By 2005 few members or senior officers could say “we didn’t know”.’ It was ‘extraordinary’ that no-one on the lead Labour group on the council could remember discussing these matters. ‘The scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers’. ‘The police gave no priority to child sexual exploitation, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime’. In Rotherham, no-one seemed to care. And when they did care, it was more about what others would think of them than about children as young as 11 being raped…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rotherham Child Abuse: Cases in Other Towns
Child sexual exploitation is happening in a “number of towns” in different parts of the country, according to the author of a damning report into abuse in Rotherham.
Professor Alexis Jay led the inquiry that found at least 1,400 children in the South Yorkshire town were sexually exploited by criminal gangs of men who were predominantly of Pakistani origin between 1997 and 2013…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rotherham Abuse Scandal: Theresa May Calls for Crime Commissioner to Resign
Home secretary joins Labour in calling for Shaun Wright to quit after 15 victims announced plans to sue over abuse
Theresa May joined calls for embattled police and crime commissioner Shaun Wright to quit after a shocking report into child abuse in Rotherham, where he was a councillor responsible for children’s services for five years.
The home secretary said that Wright, a cabinet member for children and young people’s services at Rotherham council from 2005 to 2010, had “real questions to answer” about his position hours after it emerged that his own party, Labour, had asked him to quit…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rotherham Abuse Scandal: Timeline of Key Dates
An independent report has found that at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham by gangs of men who were predominantly of Pakistani origin between 1997 and 2013.
Report author Professor Alexis Jay said that girls as young as 11 were raped by “large numbers of male perpetrators”…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt’s Plan for Stability in Libya to Go Before UN
Neighbors to oversee transition, disarmament
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, AUGUST 27 — President Abdel-Fatah Al-Sisi is to propose a plan to the UN Security Council to restore stability to Libya after a summit of border nations was held in Egypt on Monday. Libyan media quoted sources from the parliamentary delegation holding sessions in the eastern city of Tobruk, who met with Sisi on Tuesday in the Egyptian capital. The Libyan House of Representatives is a parliamentary body elected in June but not recognized by Islamist militias, who want the General National Congress (GNC) reinstated. Sisi will also address the UN General Assembly, the African Union, and the Spanish government, which will hold a Friends of Libya summit on September 17 in Madrid after a previous meeting in March in Rome. The ten-point plan drawn up by Cairo calls for a series of measures ranging from a ceasefire to disarmament of all militias. However, the Libya Herald reports that the most controversial is a committee of neighboring countries tasked with overseeing the transition. Border nations that met on Monday in Cairo — Egypt, Chad, Tunisia, Algeria, and Sudan, all of which are concerned that the instability will spread beyond Libyan borders — have reportedly agreed to the plan and recognized the full legitimacy of the parliament elected in June, which was forced to meet in Tobruk after the Islamist Ansar Al-Sharia and the local ‘caliphate’ took control of Benghazi, where it was originally to have been headquartered. The Libya Herald reports that the delegates meeting in Cairo are willing to support foreign intervention if the situation degenerates further and are preparing a meeting with the Tobruk parliament. Egypt’s plan calls for an immediate ceasefire and an end to all military operations to make national reconciliation talks possible. All groups are called on to lay down their arms and recognize the legitimate institutions, beginning with the Torbuk parliament. The transport of weaponry is also to be tightly controlled, with only deliveries authorized by the government or the UN to be allowed. While rejecting interference into Libyan domestic affairs, the border nations decided that sanctions should be placed on groups and individuals that interfere with the democratic process or that smuggle arms in.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia: Govt Says 25 Mosques Remain in Hands of Extremists
Campaign to’recapture’ of places of worship by religion ministry
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, AUGUST 27 — Twenty-five mosques in Tunisia are still in the hands of extremist religious groups, the country’s ministry of religious affairs said Wednesday.
The ministry has launched a campaign for the ‘recapture’ of places of worship, noting that the number of mosques under extremist control was 149 at the beginning of the year out of a total of 5000 mosques in the country. Many imams contest the figures, saying the number of mosques still in the hands of radicals is much greater, while others are against state interference in places of worship. The government campaign will end before political elections are held on October 26, said Religious Affairs Minister Mounir Tlili said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Caroline Glick: Embracing the Obvious Truth
It isn’t hard to understand the truth about Israel and Hamas.
Four-year-old Daniel Tragerman was murdered on Friday afternoon in his home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz by Hamas terrorists.
They shot him with a mortar launched from a school in Gaza’s Zeitoun neighborhood. At the time of the launch, the school was filled with civilians who had fled to the school for shelter.
They fled to the school for shelter because they were forced to vacate their homes.
They were forced to vacate their homes because Hamas terrorists were launching mortars and rockets at Israeli civilian sites, like Daniel Tragerman’s home, from their apartment buildings.
The moral and ideological divide between Israel and Hamas is so self-evident that the only way to ignore it is by embracing and cultivating ignorance.
This week Richard Behar published an in-depth investigative report in Forbes documenting how the US media is doing just that. As Behar demonstrated, the media is collaborating with Hamas in its war against Israel…
| — Hat tip: Caroline Glick | [Return to headlines] |
World’s Oldest Wine Cellar Fueled Palatial Parties
Israel isn’t particularly famous for its wine today, but four thousand years ago, during the Bronze Age, vineyards in the region produced vintages that were prized throughout the Mediterranean and imported by the Egyptian elite.
Last summer, archaeologists discovered a rare time capsule of this ancient drinking culture: the world’s oldest known wine cellar, found in the ruins of a sprawling palatial compound in Upper Galilee.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Experts: ISIS Makes Up to $3 Million Daily in Oil Sales
Militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are making an estimated $3 million a day by selling crude oil captured from Iraq and Syria in black markets, experts say.
ISIS militants have seized a number of oilfields in Iraq and Syria over the past few months, and are now selling crude oil to finance their self-declared “caliphate.”
Analysts suggest that oil from areas under ISIS control is being sold at less than half of its international prices.
Iraqi oil industry officials estimate that ISIS raises more than $2 million a day form crude oil sails.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
West Point Report Describes Islamic State Threat as Crisis 4 Years in the Making
A new report from the West Point counterterrorism center challenges the notion that the Islamic State only recently became a major terror threat, describing the network’s gains in Iraq as a crisis four years in the making.
Meanwhile, Fox News has learned that top aides to President Obama expect the threat from the organization, also known as ISIS or ISIL, to outlast Obama’s time in office.
“ISIL did not suddenly become effective in early June 2014: it had been steadily strengthening and actively shaping the future operating environment for four years,” the report from the West Point center said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
McDonalds to Appeal Closure of Moscow Restaurants
Four outlets shut August 21
(ANSA) — Rome, August 27 — McDonalds said Wednesday it would appeal the recent closure of four Moscow restaurants.
On August 21 Russian courts ordered the outlets to close for 90 days, citing breaches of sanitary rules.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Rebels Regain Ground in Eastern Ukraine Amid Incursion Allegations
Rebels have taken territory from government forces in eastern Ukraine, as Western intelligence claims Russian army units are operating in the country. Kyiv said Russian military trucks crossed the border on Wednesday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Russia Opens 3rd Front With a New Offensive, Ukrainian and Western Officials Say
Tanks, artillery and infantry have crossed from Russia into an unbreached part of eastern Ukraine in recent days, attacking Ukrainian forces and causing panic and wholesale retreat not only in the small border town of Novoazovsk but a wide swath of territory, in what Ukrainian and Western military officials are calling a stealth invasion.
The attacks outside Novoazovsk and in an area to the north essentially have opened a new, third front in the war in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists, along with the fighting outside the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
| [Return to headlines] |
Ebola: Air France Stops Flights to Sierra Leone
France’s flagship airline Air France announced on Wednesday it was suspending flights to Sierra Leone from Thursday because of an Ebola outbreak that has killed at least 1,400 people in West Africa.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Colombia Frees Drugs Lord’s Hired Killer ‘Popeye’
One of Colombia’s most notorious hired killers has been released from prison after serving 22 years of a 30-year sentence.
John Jairo Velasquez, nicknamed Popeye, was the top hit man of late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar.
He confessed to killing 300 people and also claimed a hand in up to 3,000 killings in the 1980s and 1990s.
But he also gave evidence against an ex-justice minister convicted of ordering the killing of a rival.
Velasquez, 52, walked free from the Combita high-security prison on Tuesday to start a probation period of four years.
He left under heavy police escort, a sign of the risks he believes he will face outside jail.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
According to the Mexican Embassy in Denmark, there are currently 50 Mexicans living in Iceland. That’s enough people to fill a decent party. Maybe. Indeed, those 50 Mexicans only amount to roughly .00004% of Mexico’s population, and a mere .01% of the admittedly sparser Icelandic populace. However, considering how far removed Iceland is from Mexico—geographically and culturally—that number becomes a little more impressive. 50 Mexicans. In Iceland. Who are they? How did they get here?
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Child Immigrants to Italy Tripled in Last Four Years
More children in first seven months of 2014 than all of 2011
(ANSA) — Rome, August 27 — More child immigrants have arrived on Italian shores between January and July 2014 than in the entire course of 2011, Viviana Valastro, Save the Children Italy’s Director of Child Immigrant Protection, told ANSA on Wednesday.
Valastro said that 8,600 of the 14,000 child immigrants who have arrived on Italian shores in the first seven months of 2014 were unaccompanied by an adult, and that nearly one-third, or 2,737 of those children, were from Eritrea, where they are fleeing a dictatorship.
The remaining 5,400 children immigrants so far in 2014 were accompanied by one or both parents, and since 2013, the fastest-growing group of children in this category has come from Syria, said Valastro.
“With respect to 2011, the proportion of minors who have arrived with their family has gone up 18 times, while the proportion of unaccompanied minor immigrants has ‘only’ doubled,” Valastro said.
In 2011, the year of the Arab Spring, 4,500 child immigrants arrived in Italy over the course of the entire year.
Valastro said that most immigrants see Italy as a transition point before being taken by smugglers to reach relatives in northern European countries like Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Family Reunification Permits on the Rise
2013 saw the highest number of family reunification approvals since 2002 and this year is on pace to top it. The rules for bringing a foreign spouse to Denmark have “gone from really bad to bad,” says Marriage Without Borders.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Rescue Mission Unveiled as Boat Migrant Numbers Soar
(BRUSSELS) — The European Commission on Wednesday pledged to launch a new migrant rescue operation in the Mediterranean, as Italy struggles with a surge of migrants trying to reach the continent by boat.
The new operation — dubbed Frontex plus after Europe’s border agency — will replace the “Mare Nostrum” naval deployment launched by Italy after two deadly shipwrecks in 2013, which Rome has threatened to wind up without more help.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem announced the new initiative after meeting Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, who said recently that “responsibility for the Mediterranean’s borders must belong to Europe”.
Rome has issued a series of warnings to its European allies over the migrant crisis, which it says has seen more than 100,000 people arrive in the country after making the perilous journey by boat since the start of the year.
European borders agency Frontex earlier this month said the number of migrants arriving in Italy in the first half of the year had already topped the record set in 2011 during the Arab Spring uprisings.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Fury Over Britain’s 2m Illegal Migrants
BRITAIN is now home to two million illegal migrants, with soaring numbers still trying to get here, it emerged last night.
Experts say it means about one in 30 of the UK’s population has no right to be living here.
The rush to start a new life in “soft-touch” Britain sees 52 migrants trying to sneak in every day, according to research by MigrationWatch UK. Last year 19,003 stowaways were seized trying to smuggle themselves in — nearly double the 11,731 caught in 2012.
But the figures show that for every person stopped at the border a further 105 may already be living here illegally. This underground population includes people working in the black economy, those who overstay visas and would-be migrants claiming political asylum.
It comes as 2,000 migrants from dozens of war-ravaged nations continue to congregate at a squalid camp in Calais. Rather than claim asylum in France they have their eyes firmly set on the UK…
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
‘Italy Must Not Face Migrant Crisis Alone’ Says UN
After UNHCR reports 1,889 migrants died in Med in 2014 alone
(ANSA) — New York, August 26 — Italy must not be left to deal with the ongoing Mediterranean migrant crisis on its own, the United Nations said Tuesday.
“The task of facing the massive flow of migrants (fleeing war in Africa and the Middle East) should not be left up to one country alone,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said. “An international effort must be made”.
Dujarric’s comments followed on reports by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that since the beginning of the year 1,889 migrants have died in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe. Of those, 1,600 lost their lives since the beginning of June.
“There must be urgent, joint European action,” said UNHCR.
Italy’s southernmost islands are the first landfall for those departing from north African countries such as Libya.
It set up a migrant search-and-rescue operation called Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) last October, after 366 migrants perished in two boat disasters off the coast of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.
Italy has repeatedly called on the European Union to share in the mission, which Navy officials said costs nine million euros a month.
It will present a package of measures to spread the burden of Mediterranean migrant rescue operations to EU interior ministers in October, government sources said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy Seeks Exit Strategy to Unilateral Migrant Protection
Interior minister to discuss Mare Nostrum rebus with Malmstrom
(ANSA) Brussels, August 26 — Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano will seek Wednesday to define with EU Interior Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom an exit strategy for Italy from its costly unilateral “Mare Nostrum” operation rescuing Mediterranean refugees, diplomatic sources say.
Alfano hopes to get a sympathetic hearing from Malmstrom during their meeting to be held in Brussels Wednesday during a lightning visit to the Belgian capital by the Italian interior minister who wants the EU’s Frontex border protection agency and other EU countries to share responsibility with Italy for saving the thousands of refugees who seek to reach Italy from north Africa each year aboard desperately dangerous rafts and dinghies.
Operation Mare Nostrum organised by the Italian Navy, Coast Guard and merchant vessels is costing the Navy as much as 4 million euros a month in fuel and maintenance costs, putting a hefty strain on the Italian navy budget.
Frontex officials had a meeting in Rome Tuesday with Italian officials to discuss technical logistics of bringing more countries’ navies into the operation on the model of the EU’s anti-piracy operation in the Horn of Africa.
Italy hopes to present a package of measures along those lines to the EU interior ministers’ council meeting due to be held in Luxembourg Oct. 9-10 so as to obtain endorsement from the 28 EU member states so as to share the burden of Operation Mare Nostrum by the end of this year.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Nearly 2,000 Europe-Bound Migrants Have Drowned This Year, UN Says
Nearly 2,000 people fleeing Africa and the Middle East have drowned in the Mediterranean this year, most of them in the past three months as they tried to reach Europe from Libya, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Scientists and Cheesemakers Gather for (Microbial) Culture
Microbiologists are on a quest to catalogue and control the bacteria that make each raw-milk cheese unique.
When Rachel Dutton looks at a wheel of cheese, she sees a menagerie. “I fall in love every time I look at a cheese rind. They’re wonderful microbial ecosystems,” she says.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Vibrations in Rings Reveal Saturn’s Inner Secrets
EAVESDROPPING on Saturn’s rings is revealing secrets of the gas giant’s vast interior.
Even though the rings are thousands of kilometres from Saturn’s surface, vibrations in them correspond to the way the planet squishes and contracts.
This is the first time a seismological investigation has been conducted on another planet. Future work should reveal more about the structure and evolution of gas giants.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Is there something to note in that this scandal has not done many (even 2?) days on BBC front page? BBC does have several reports on it, but they are not on the front page. Maybe that is just some editorial policy (and I hope it is), but is there some attempt to relegate the news because the “religion of peace” is involved?
I think this is a case very deserving of community meted out justice. The fathers need to stand up for their daughters and do the right thing, which is to [intemperate suggestion redacted] those who raped them. Of course, I don’t advocate such a response for every rape, but this is rape on industrial scale, and endemic to some small place, and being done in a systematic manner by Muslim gangs.
It is time for the fathers to do what fathers have been doing for ever—protect their daughters from evil like this! I am sure everyone knows where the pakis are hiding. Find them, and [intemperate suggestion redacted].
Unfortunately Yog, most of those children systematically abused have no fathers, or at the very least know who their father is, but have lost contact with them. You see, Western civilization has been systematically white-anted from within by those who wish to systematically destroy it.
The family unit has been under consistent attack ever since the end of the Second World War and the problem of one parent families (usually the mother) is having the effect those intended for families, a systematic breakdown within the family structure that places more emphasis on the mother than the father as the ‘head’ of the house. Families without fathers struggle just to maintain the minimum of discipline required to keep the family together.
And what we have now become aware of in yet another English town would have been inconceivable just 60 years ago because the majority of parents remained within the family unit as head of the house and would, I have no doubt, have taken matters into their own hands to protect their daughters from the sons of Satan.
@Nemesis:
This makes me doubly sad. Because not only must these poor girls be in pain for not having a father in their life, but then to see muslims take advantage of that fact and brutalize their lives on such a scale.
Something needs to be done. Maybe their own biological fathers are not in their lives anymore, but there are other fathers out there, and they should do what needs to be done. With these muslims around, NO daughter seems to be safe.
I was once talking to a Hindu father who had worked very very hard indeed to educate his daughter in spite of his own poverty, only to see her being kidnapped by a muslim, violated, and forcibly converted. The pain in him was so much I could not stop my own tears. These girls in Britain are the same to me. I am a much older man, and they are like daughters to me.
Would fathers please step forward and do the needful? I swear I would join them if I were there, my poor health notwithstanding.
We need to police our communities ourselves when muslim predators are around. We cannot leave it to the police, who are always under some form of political pressure to look the other way. Muslims always prey on girls—it is in their religion, starting with their perverted prophet who had his eyes on his best friend’s 6-year old daughter (when he himself was 54). This cult is perverted and sick.
I believe it is inevitable that in most lands the Muslim has taken hold in, it will become necessary to turn to vigilantism in order to protect one’s own community from the ravages of Islam that governments seem unable to comprehend.
I think that in time, unless something drastic occurs to reverse the process we now find ourselves in, we can all look forward to a scenario that the movie, ‘Children of Men’ so graphically portrays in the urban scenes.
I hope I am wrong!
Andrew Norfolk ,a journalist for the Times who is credited for “breaking” the story in the MSM in 2011 about industrial scale rape of English children, admitted that he knew about the story for years before he wrote about it but decided to keep quiet because “he didn’t want to help the BNP”. This is the same journalist who in 2004 covered the story of and sat in the trial of Nick Griffin on charges relating to a speech he gave revealing the mass grooming of English girls by the Muslim community but kept quiet for 7 years whilst thousands of Children were being abused and raped. Now all the media, politicians and “care” professionals are all clamoring to find scapegoats in order to deflect any blame on themselves. All a bunch of traitors and hypocrites.
Very similar to the situation in India, where no promising English language journo/reporter will cover the numerous cases of “Love Jihad” though he/she could very easily do so. Because there is a explicit ban on writing anything that could help the Hindu organizations by vindicating what they have been saying for years now.
These journos/reporters are simply political propagandists, they don’t care for the truth.
If they would, for 10 minutes, speak to a Hindu father who has spend his last 2 years crying over a daughter he will never see again, and who by now has been gang-raped many times and been forced into being a courier for Jihadis, they might change their mind. But they simply won’t go there.