Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/24/2013

The news feed is light tonight due to the necessity of compiling it early. I’ll catch up on the rest later.

The most interesting story concerns the fact that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, like his brother mujahideen in Europe, was on welfare until at least 2012. Nice work if you can get it.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to DS, Fjordman, Insubria, 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.

Financial Crisis
» Cyprus’ Deficit at 6.3%, Government Debt at 85.8% in 2012
» Euro May Only Last Five Years, Says Senior German Government Advisor
» Grillo Says Italy Faces Bankruptcy, Wants ‘German Invasion’
» Italy: Spread Drops to 269 Amid Govt-Formation Hopes
» More Italians Shopping at Discount Stores as Crisis Deepens
 
USA
» Axelrod to Join Romney at Summer Retreat
» Tamerlan Tsarnaev Got Mass. Welfare Benefits
 
Europe and the EU
» Bacteria Churn Out First Ever Petrol-Like Biofuel
» Italy: Business Lobby Says Taxes Have Hit ‘Intolerable’ Level
» Italy: Parmalat Forced to Give Rome Milk Firm Back
» Italy: Support Swells for Renzi to be Premier
» U.S. ‘Very Happy’ About Napolitano Says Kerry
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Secular State or No Peace, Says MP Haneen Zoabi
 
Middle East
» Turkey: Insufficient Progress on Rights, Council of Europe
 
Culture Wars
» Italy: Constitutional Court to Hear Petition on Fertility Bill
 

Cyprus’ Deficit at 6.3%, Government Debt at 85.8% in 2012

(ANSAmed) — NICOSIA, APRIL 23 — Cyprus’ ratio of government debt to GDP stood at the end of 2012 at 85.8%, recording a significant increase from 2011, as Famagusta Gazette reports citing the first deficit and debt data published by Eurostat.

According to the first results, which will be finalized next October, Cyprus government debt was 15,350 billion euros in 2012. A year earlier, in 2011, the government debt ratio was 71.1% or 12,778 billion. This is the second biggest annual increase of debt in the Eurozone, following Spain. Government deficit stood in 2012 at 1.127 billion euros or -6.3% of GDP.

Cyprus GDP was 17,887 billion in 2012, compared to 17,979 billion in 2011. Government revenue in 2012 increased slightly at 40% of GDP, from 39.7% in 2011. The same trend was observed in government expenditure in 2012, reaching 46.3% of GDP, up from 46% of GDP in 2011. Only 6 out of 17 Eurozone countries had deficits lower than the acceptable threshold, 3% of GDP. These include Luxembourg, Finland, Estonia, Malta, Austria and Germany. In 2012 the government deficit to GDP ratio in the Eurozone decreased to 3.7%, from 4.2% in 2011. The government debt to GDP ratio increased to 90.6%, from 87.3% in 2011.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Euro May Only Last Five Years, Says Senior German Government Advisor

The euro has a “limited chance of survival” and may only endure another five years, Kai Konrad, one of the German government’s closest economic advisers, has claimed.

In notably outspoken remarks for a senior German figure, Dr Konrad, chairman of a scientific council that advises the finance ministry, said: “Europe is important to me. Not the euro. And I would only give the euro a limited chance of survival.”

Asked whether he thought the single currency would last five years, the economist said: “A concrete period is hard to identify as it depends on so many factors. But five years sounds realistic.”

This pessimistic judgment by a senior adviser runs counter to the official German government view that the euro must be held together for the sake of unity in Europe. Dr Konrad’s remarks came in an interview with the newspaper Welt am Sonntag, on the debt crisis in Europe.

The economic adviser warned that: “No country can pile up debt without running the risk that their investors will pull the plug. It’s in each [country’s] interests to keep their own debts as small as possible.

“Where the limit lies has to be individually decided. That depends among other things on economic growth and the growth of population.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Grillo Says Italy Faces Bankruptcy, Wants ‘German Invasion’

Anti-establishment 5-Star leader sounds off to Bild

(Updates related, previous stories).

(ANSA) — Berlin, April 23 — Beppe Grillo, the leader of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement that won around a quarter of the vote in February’s general election, gave an incendiary interview to German daily Bild Tuesday, saying that the Italian State faces bankruptcy in the autumn and quipping that he would welcome an invasion from Germany. “Between September and October the State will run out of money and it will be difficult to pay pensions and salaries,” Grillo said.

“In Italy 30 lawmakers convicted of serious crimes sit in parliament,” Grillo continued.

“I’d like to have honest, competent, professional people in the right positions too. In this situation, I’d be happy with a German invasion of Italy,” said Grillo.

“The re-election of Giorgio Napolitano is the equivalent of a sneaky coup d’etat,” Grillo declared, making reference to the 87-year-old Italian president, who was reinstated on Monday.

Grillo attributed political support for Napolitano, who M5S opposed, to “the parties fighting for their survival”.

“The situation is not funny. In Italy, there is enormous anger. We keep this anger in check,” Grillo said.

Grillo called centre-right leader and ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi “finished” and complained that Italian small and medium businesses are “going bankrupt”.

When asked whether politics wasn’t an art of compromise, Grillo responded, “Oh no, not compromise”.

“In Italy, new compromises have always been made for too long”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Spread Drops to 269 Amid Govt-Formation Hopes

Yield 3.92% as Napolitano winds up talks with parties

(ANSA) — Rome, April 23 — Pressure on Italian bonds eased further Tuesday amid hopes Italy is heading towards a new government.

The spread between the 10-year Italian bond and the German benchmark, a key measure of Italy’s borrowing costs and of investor confidence, dropped to 269 basis points with a yield of 3.92% after falling to 288 Monday, down from 297 at Friday’s close.

Giorgio Napolitano’s re-election as president Saturday has boosted hopes Italy will soon have a government after two months of political deadlock following February’s inconclusive general election.

Napolitano is winding up talks with parties and is expected to hand out a mandate to try to form a left-right coalition government late Tuesday.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

More Italians Shopping at Discount Stores as Crisis Deepens

Buyer numbers have ‘almost doubled’, statistics agency head says

(ANSA) — Rome, April 23 — As more and more Italians grapple with the ongoing economic crisis, food shopping habits are changing, according to national statistics agency Istat.

Between 2007 and 2013 “the share of families which has made purchases at hard discount stores has almost doubled, reaching more than 21% in 2011,” Enrico Giovannini, the president of the statistics agency, said Tuesday.

The trend is unlikely to change much even if incomes were to increase. “Even if we had the opportunity to increase families’ incomes, a part of this increase would go to savings — for those who can afford it,” Giovannini said, pointing out that there would be little left for more consumption.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Axelrod to Join Romney at Summer Retreat

by Daniel Halper

Mitt Romney will join forces with a former top adviser to President Obama, David Axelrod, this summer.

“Mitt Romney this morning announced a series of high-profile speakers who will address a retreat that the former Republican presidential nominee is putting together in June,” the Boston Globe reports.

“The list of speakers includes some surprising names, including David Axelrod, one the masterminds behind President Obama’s campaign to defeat Romney last year. At various points during the campaign, Axelrod accused Romney of being secretive, dishonest, and ‘living on a different planet.’“

It is widely believed that Axelrod was intrumental in defeating Romney’s bid to be president of the United States.

           — Hat tip: DS [Return to headlines]
 

Tamerlan Tsarnaev Got Mass. Welfare Benefits

Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned.

State officials confirmed last night that Tsarnaev, slain in a raging gun battle with police last Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter. The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012 when the couple stopped meeting income eligibility limits. Russell Tsarnaev’s attorney has claimed Katherine — who had converted to Islam — was working up to 80 hours a week as a home health aide while Tsarnaev stayed at home.

In addition, both of Tsarnaev’s parents received benefits, and accused brother bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were recipients through their parents when they were younger, according to the state.

.The news raises questions over whether Tsarnaev financed his radicalization on taxpayer money.

Relatives and news reports have indicated that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s descent into extremist Islam began around 2008 or 2009, when the ethnic Chechen met a convert identified only as “Misha,” began to become more devout, and sought out jihadist and conspiracy theorist websites, and the rabidly anti-Semitic propaganda tract, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

In 2009, he was quoted in a photo essay as saying, “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them,” adding that he believed Americans had lost their “values.”

His uncle Ruslan Tsarnaev said it was around that time his nephew gave up drinking and was devoting himself to “God’s business,” while Tamerlan’s mother, now wearing a hijab — an Islamic headscarf — began relating conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to her cosmetology clients that she said her son had told her…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]
 

Bacteria Churn Out First Ever Petrol-Like Biofuel

Unleaded, diesel or biofuel? This could become the choice at the pump now we can make biofuels that are identical to the petrol we put in our cars, planes and trucks.

Until now, biofuels have been made up of hydrocarbon chains of the wrong size and shape to be truly compatible with most modern engines — they’ll work, but only inefficiently, and over time they will corrode the engine.

To be used as a mainstream alternative to fossil fuels — desirable because biofuels are carbon-neutral over their lifetime — engines would have to be redesigned, or an extra processing step employed to convert the fuel into a more usable form.

To try to bypass that, John Love from the University of Exeter in the UK and colleagues took genes from the camphor tree, soil bacteria and blue-green algae and spliced them into DNA from Escherichia coli bacteria. When the modified E. coli were fed glucose, the enzymes they produced converted the sugar into fatty acids and then turned these into hydrocarbons that were chemically and structurally identical to those found in commercial fuel.

“We are biologically producing the fuel that the oil industry makes and sells,” says Love.

The team now needs to work out how to scale-up the project to mass-produce hydrocarbons.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Business Lobby Says Taxes Have Hit ‘Intolerable’ Level

Confindustria warns current 53% rate to increase further

(ANSA) — Rome, April 23 — Italian taxes have reached “intolerable” levels, according to business lobby Confindustria.

In a hearing before Italy’s senate, Fabio Minoli, the head of communications for the business lobby, said that the “effective fiscal pressure in Italy has reached 53% and will rise by another point of GDP in 2013”.

“These are intolerable levels. New taxes cannot be considered,” Minoli said.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Parmalat Forced to Give Rome Milk Firm Back

Dairy group will appeal verdict

(ANSA) — Rome, April 22 — Troubled Italian dairy group Parmalat was forced to give a milk company back to the city of Rome in the latest flap to hit the former giant that crashed in Europe’s largest-ever fraudulent bankruptcy in 2003.

As a result of the latest judicial move, the board decided to pull its 2012 balance sheet, although the head of the group said it would appeal.

A court in the Italian capital decided to assign Parmalat’s controlling stake in the Centrale del Latte di Roma milk company back to the city of Rome.

“The shares in question must be immediately returned,” the court said.

Parmalat Chairman Franco Tato’ responded by saying: “This is the 14th sentence on the municipal dairy company, that’s what Italy is like.

“Of course we’re going to appeal,” he added.

“Italy is the country of appeals,” he said.

In the 1990s the capital’s local government sold its stake in the Centrale del Latte to food conglomerate Cirio, which sold it on to Parmalat, but before the end of a five-year ban on a resale.

Parmalat said in a statement that it considered the court ruling “mistaken” and was confident it would be reversed on appeal.

The company said the 75% stake it held in the Centrale del Latte di Roma was given a value of 95.1 million euros as an asset in its 2012 balance sheet.

The Parmalat collapse 10 years ago, dubbed Europe’s Enron, led to an 18-year jail term for founder Callisto Tanzi.

Last month a Bologna court ruled to release an ailing Tanzi, 74, to house arrest where he will continue to serve his sentence.

The seriously ill Tanzi had appealed an 18-year sentence handed down in December 2010.

Tanzi has been hospitalized in Parma’s Maggiore hospital since February 18.

Four major international banks and their managers were recently cleared of market-rigging in the fraudulent bankruptcy.

Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Citibank were found not guilty of charges of share-price manipulation and organizing bond issues to cover their own potential losses.

Prosecutors had asked the court to seize assets worth almost 120 million euros and impose a penalty of 900,000 euros on each bank.

For the six managers implicated, prosecutors requested jail terms ranging from a year to 16 months.

The sentence was greeted with groans from plaintiffs and hugs from defence lawyers.

The trial was one of several stemming from the Parmalat scandal, the biggest financial collapse in European history.

In a separate trial where disgraced founder Tanzi was handed his 18-year prison sentence, 16 other people received shorter terms.

Tanzi had already been sentenced to 10 years in Milan for market-rigging and feeding false information to stock market regulator Consob.

In Parma, Tanzi and over 50 ex-members of Parmalat management are at the center of two other trials: one focusing on Parmalat’s acquisition of the mineral water company Ciapazzi and the bankruptcy of Parmalat’s tourism division Parmatour; and the second dealing with Parmalat’s 1999 purchase of milk company Eurolat from Cirio, another food giant which went bankrupt.

Tanzi’s defence in both Parma and Milan has always been that he was manipulated by banks which, while aware of the group’s dire finances, forced him to make acquisitions and issue more bonds so they could recover their loans to the multinational.

Parmalat was declared bankrupt in December 2003 after it emerged that four billion euros it supposedly held in an offshore Bank of America account did not in fact exist.

The case then snowballed, eventually leading to Parmalat’s collapse amid debts of some 14.5 billion euros and a fraud scandal which rocked the Italian financial world.

Investigators found that from 1990 until 2002 Parmalat lost money every year except one but nonetheless reported uninterrupted profits and routinely forged documents in order to deceive banks and regulators.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission called the case “one of the largest and most brazen corporate financial frauds in history”.

Parmalat’s bankruptcy left more than 150,000 investors with virtually worthless bonds.

Parmalat has since been put back on its feet by corporate turnaround expert Enrico Bondi who, first as government-appointed administrator and later as official CEO, shed the group’s non-core activities, cut foreign activities and reduced staff.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Support Swells for Renzi to be Premier

Centre right seems more enthusiastic than Florence mayor’s party

(see related stories on political situation) (ANSA) — Rome, April 23 — Support was swelling on Tuesday for Florence Mayor Matteo Renzi, the rising star of the crisis-hit centre-left Democratic Party (PD), to be given a mandate by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano to form a new government.

But many of the calls came from the centre right rather than the PD itself, which is without a leader after Pier Luigi Bersani quit as secretary at the weekend after two candidates he proposed to be president were scuppered by internal rebellions.

Napolitano, who reluctantly agreed to serve a second term after the parties failed to elect a successor, is likely to ask a PD member to try to lead a new government, as it is the biggest party in parliament after February’s inconclusive general election. Renzi, a telegenic 38-year-old who has been compared to the young Tony Blair and came second in the centre-left’s premier-candidate primary in December, is currently the country’s most popular politician, according to opinion polls.

But Renzi, who has said he wants to become premier by winning elections and not by agreement among the powers-that-be, is viewed with suspicion by many in the PD itself after a long campaign for the old guard of Italian politics to be “scrapped”.

Lawmakers close to him led the rebellion against the first presidential candidate Bersani proposed, former Senate Speaker Franco Marini. He also publicly criticised Bersani’s handling of Italy’s post-election impasse many times. Furthermore, Renzi also refused to join in the vilification of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, whom he met in private recently.

This may be part of the reason why many in the centre left look on him favourably to lead a broad coalition government Napolitano wants to see to end two months of political paralysis amid a social and economic crisis caused by Italy’s longest recession in 20 years. “My personal opinion is that giving a mandate to Matteo Renzi to form a new government would be in line with the demand for change that is rising in the country,” said former culture minister Sandro Bondi, a senior member of Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PdL) party.

Renzi’s attacks on Bersani have led some in the PD to say he is putting his personal ambitions above the good of the party.

But he also has supporters who say he is a voice of change and argue it is laudable that his outspoken nature shows he is transparent about his views. Renzi announced before the the first vote to elect the head of State that lawmakers and regional representatives close to him would not back Marini.

The second candidate Bersani proposed, ex-premier Romano Prodi, was sunk by rebels who gave no indication before the ballot that they would not support the party line. “I think Renzi is the right name (to be premier) and I don’t understand why he shouldn’t,” said Debora Serracchiani, who gave the PD some respite from its internal woes on Monday by winning regional elections in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

“I said this a month and a half ago and was blasted by my party,” added the 42-year-old new governor of the north-eastern region. “At the moment he is the person who is capable of capturing the greatest level of support, as he manages to speak beyond the boundaries of the PD and he can probably best represent the demands of an electorate that is now mixed.

“They don’t have deep-rooted ideologies any more and they don’t just vote left any more, they simply vote for the people”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

U.S. ‘Very Happy’ About Napolitano Says Kerry

‘I’m enthusiastic’ says Secretary of State

(ANSA) — Brussels, April 23 — The United States is “very happy” that Giorgio Napolitano has been re-elected Italian president to usher in a new government after two months of post-election stalemate, Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday.

“We are very happy,” Kerry told journalists about Napolitano, the first president to be re-elected.

“I’m enthusiastic, he’s an extraordinary leader,” he said.

Napolitano is expected to grant a fresh government-formation mandate late Friday after reading the riot act to parties during his second inaugural address to parliament Monday, scolding them for failing to form a government to pass much-needed reforms. The 87-year-old Naples-born Napolitano became Italy’s first ex-Communist president when he was elected as the country’s 11th head of State in 2006.

At first his election was met with skepticism from the centre right, but his measured, balanced style and incisive action in periods of crisis earned him the respect of politicians of all stripes, and increasing acclaim outside Italy too.

He won international praise for the way he used his limited powers to good effect to help give life to outgoing Premier Mario Monti’s emergency government of unelected technocrats in November 2011 after Silvio Berlusconi was forced to resign as prime minister because of the country’s financial crisis.

Napolitano’s early transatlantic ties were forged during his years as the once-powerful Italian Communist Party’s (PCI) leading moderate, when he pushed an increasingly pro-US and pro-European line.

In 1978 Napolitano became the first PCI representative to receive a visa to the United States, where he toured the country’s most prestigious universities and won a sympathetic hearing also by virtue of his excellent English.

He later became the shadow foreign minister of the PCI and its post-communist heir the Left Democrat Party.

In 1943 his English was already good enough for him to act as an interpreter when Allied forces entered Naples.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Secular State or No Peace, Says MP Haneen Zoabi

Arab-Israeli MP says she is an exile in her own home

(ANSAmed) — ROME — “We need a secular state, a citizens’ state” free from discrimination against Palestinians and from the “racist” tendencies of the current administration, said Haneen Zoabi, Israel’s first Arab MP, who was was first elected in 2009 and reconfirmed in the the January elections that brought to power an “even more dangerous” government than the last. In Italy recently, Zoabi is a secular, single, feminist woman who is not afraid to state that “there is no support of the Palestinian people without recognizing our right to resist”. Born in Nazareth, the first Arab-Israel citizen to obtain a degree in communications, Zoabi is one of three MPs from the Balad party, which fights for the full recognition of Palestinian rights. Such recognition appears remote today, she said. “Israel expropriated 85% of our territories. I am a member of the Knesset but I do not feel at home”, the MP told Ansamed on the sidelines of a conference titled “For a just Middle Eastern peace”, organized in Cerveteri. “Israel does not consider us as its citizens and it is the sole country in the Western world that decides who you may or may not marry”, Zoabi went on, adding that she “cannot enter into a civil union” with a Palestinian within Israel. The political life of this energetic MP has not been easy. Beloved by her Arab-Palestinian minority (20% of the Israeli population), Zoabi is up against the main Israeli parties since she boarded the Mavi Marmara ship in 2010 as part of the Freedom Flotilla, during which an Israeli commando raid killed nine Turkish activists. “They stripped me of parliamentary immunity and of my diplomatic passport”, then “tried to pass a law to prevent me from running in the elections”, said Zoabi, whose appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court was successful. “I am not in the Knesset to lose my dignity. Israel is a spoiled child and if the world continues treating it this way, the Palestinians will go on paying”, she explained, accusing the current government of “not having a political agenda on the occupation” of the Territories. The entire Israel social and political elite “is devoid of feeling that the problem of the occupation even exists”. The solution, she said, is the formation of a secular, egalitarian state, whether or not the two-state solution is enacted. “Today I feel like an exile in my own homeland. Israel’s project is a criminal one” with a “repressive military policy towards us, limiting our rightsm expropriating our land”, is Zoabi’s cry. “If the occupation exists, automatically there are occupiers and occupied, who fight among themselves. And there will never be peace”.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Turkey: Insufficient Progress on Rights, Council of Europe

Council votes to prolong post-monitoring procedures

(ANSAmed) — STRASBOURG, APRIL 23 — The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe on Tuesday voted to prolong post-monitoring procedures on Turkey, which still has a long way to go to meet European standards.

The resolution passed with 142 votes in favor, 35 against and 6 abstentions. A stricter monitoring period ended nine years ago. As per a report voted on by the EP last week, the assembly reiterated that Turkey must review its definition of terrorism and make a clear distinction between freedom of expression and terrorist propaganda.

It must also reduce its use of preventive custody, as measures introduced have not had the hoped-for effect. Turkey must also try to implement decentralization policies as possible way to solve the Kurdish question, and respect religious minorities, the assembly said.

Like the EP, the assembly also recommended the European Union open two new negotiation chapters: number 23 on fundamental rights and the justice system, and number 24 on justice, freedom, and security.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

Italy: Constitutional Court to Hear Petition on Fertility Bill

Italian ban on egg and sperm donors one of EU’s most restrictive

(ANSA) — Rome, April 23 — A Florence court on Tuesday petitioned Italy’s supreme Constitutional Court to rule on Italy’s 2003 law on assisted fertility, one of the most restrictive in Europe.

The Italian “Law 40” on procreation that refuses access to sperm and egg donors in the country “remains a house of cards,” President of Cecos fertility clinic association in Italy, Maria Elisabetta Coccia, said. “Thousands of couples who cannot have children due to sterility problems need answers,” she said. “Many are turning to assisted fertility centers outside of Italy for access to alternatives available in almost all European countries…prohibited by Italian law,” Coccia said.

Although Catholic lawmakers have joined hands across the political divide to warn against easing the law, polls say most Italians think it is too harsh and forces too many people, at least the ones who can afford it, to resort to foreign clinics.

The bill was originally passed by a bipartisan alliance of Catholics in a battle which also pitted male MPs against female MPs.

At the time, liberal parliamentarians and most female lawmakers accused Catholic politicians of bowing to the Church by adopting a highly restrictive bill which they said placed women’s health at risk and would deny sterile couples many of the options that are standard treatment in other European countries.

Supporters of the bill said it respected the rights of the human embryo, preserved the family as the fundamental social unit and ended decades of unregulated practices which had led to notorious cases of ‘granny births’.

Under the 2003 law, single parents, same-sex couples and women beyond child-bearing age are banned from using assisted fertility techniques, which are now limited to sterile heterosexual couples who are married or live together.

The law bans the use of donor sperm or eggs and forbids embryos from being frozen or used for scientific research.

It allows a maximum of three eggs to be fertilised at one time and would require them all to be transferred to the womb simultaneously.

It also forbids the screening of embryos for abnormalities or genetic disorders, even for couples with a history of genetic disease, and women are denied the right to refuse implantation once their eggs have been fertilised.

The law mandates heavy fines for doctors and patients caught breaking it.

Doctors caught using donated sperms or eggs face fines of up to 600,000 euros and those found treating same-sex couples or singles can be fined up to 400,000 euros.

Stiffer fines and jail terms of up to 20 years are envisaged for human cloning and manipulation of human embryos.

           — Hat tip: Insubria [Return to headlines]
 

0 thoughts on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/24/2013

  1. “The most interesting story concerns the fact that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, like his brother mujahideen in Europe, was on welfare until at least 2012. ” Yet he drove a Mercedes – the car of choice for Muslims in the West.