Tuesday, January 08, 2013
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Every year, thousands of people in Italy hang a fresh calendar of images depicting Benito Mussolini on their wall, just one of many indications that the cult of "Il Duce" is alive and well in the country. Many still consider the fascist dictator to have been an honorable man, and it is a weakness that politicians such as Silvio Berlusconi have been able to exploit.
Decked out in army fatigues, his hand raised in fascist salute, he emblazons newsstands, lies ready in bookshops and is splashed across countless websites: Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator and founder of fascism known simply as "Il Duce", enjoys massive popularity in Italy as a calendar pin-up. One month he's in a steel helmet, his chin jutting sharply forward, the next he's clutching a Roman short sword, the famous chin still at attention. His valiant, steel-helmeted soldiers also march on annually, in color or black and white, accompanied by fascist symbols like the swastika.
Foreign tourists, especially Germans, are shocked when they see these openly flaunted calendars. Yet even in 2013, the former Italian dictator has a loyal fan base at home. And they're not just buying calendars. » | Hans-Jürgen Schlamp in Rome | Tuesday, January 08, 2013
MAIL ONLINE: Piers' explosive showdown with the man who wants to deport him: Sparks fly as CNN host discusses gun control with Alex Jones: Jones, a radio host and prominent conspiracy theorist, called British CNN host a 'foreigner and a redcoat' / Jones is leading a drive to petition the White House to deport Morgan for advocating tougher gun control laws / The libertarian commentator threatened '1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms' » | Daily Mail Reporter | Tuesday, January 08, 2013
Monday, January 07, 2013
Berlin - Das Klatschblatt "Bunte" hatte es vorausgeahnt. "Sie werden uns überraschen", titelte die Zeitschrift in der letzten Dezemberausgabe samt einem Bild der strahlenden Wulffs aus besseren Tagen. Im Innenteil raunte das Blatt über den Zustand der Ehe. "Traurig-optimistisch", lautete die Prognose.
Knapp zwei Wochen später ist es raus: Bettina und Christian Wulff leben nicht mehr zusammen. Eine entsprechende Trennungsvereinbarung wurde anwaltlich hinterlegt, der frühere Bundespräsident soll aus dem gemeinsamen Haus in Großburgwedel aus- und in eine Mietwohnung in Hannover umgezogen sein. » | Von Severin Weiland | Montag, 07. Januar 2013
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Germany's Former First Couple Splits Up: Christian and Bettina Wulff have separated less than a year after he resigned from the largely ceremonial post of German president in disgrace. The former first lady had written an autobiography last year revealing they had marital problems. » | cro -- with wire reports | Monday, January 07, 2013
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A 15-year old Saudi Arabian bride married off to a 90-year old groom escaped the martial home after she barricaded herself in a room on the wedding night.
The unnamed husband is now suing her parents for recovery of the £10,750 dowry he paid to secure marriage to his child bride.
Newspaper reports in the conservative Islamic state said the girl had managed to secure herself in the marital bedroom before escaping two days later to her parents' home.
The groom told Al-Hayat newspaper that he suspected the groom and her parents had set out to swindle him of the 65,000 Saudi Riyals dowry.
"I feel that there is a conspiracy by her mother against me," he said. "I will go to court tomorrow and demand that her parents give me back my money."
However campaigners in Saudi Arabia have called on the authorities to intervene to ensure the girl in Jizan, a southern town near the border with Yemen, is not returned to the man. » | Damien McElroy | Monday, January 07, 2013
Stephen Lennon, 30, pleaded guilty to possession of a false identity document with improper intention, contrary to the Identity Documents Act 2010, at Southwark Crown Court.
Lennon used a passport in the name of Andrew McMaster to board a Virgin Atlantic Flight from Heathrow to New York, but was caught out after his fingerprints were taken by customs officials.
He left the airport and entered the US illegally but left the country the following day, using his own passport to return to the UK.
The court heard that Lennon, who had previously been refused entry to the US, used his friend's passport to travel to the country in September.
He used a self check-in kiosk to board the Virgin Atlantic flight at Heathrow, and was allowed through when the document was checked in the bag drop area.
But when he arrived at New York's JFK Airport, customs officials who took his fingerprints realised he was not Mr McMaster.
Lennon was asked to attend a second interview but left the airport, entering the US illegally.
He stayed just one night and travelled back to the UK the following day using his own legitimate passport - which bears the name Paul Harris.
The court heard that is the name that appears on the EDL leader's passport, although he uses aliases.
Lennon, who was arrested in October, was jailed for 10 months today. » | Monday, January 07, 2013
BBC: Syria crisis: US decries Assad 'Western puppets' speech – The US has condemned a speech by Syria's President Assad that denounced his opponents as "puppets of the West". » | Monday, January 07, 2013
Related »
BBC: A mother who beat her seven-year-old son when he failed to memorise passages from the Koran has been given a life sentence for his murder.
Sara Ege, 33, killed Yaseen Ege at their home in Pontcanna, Cardiff, in July 2010 and set fire to his body.
She was convicted in December after a five-week trial. The judge has set a minimum tariff of 17 years.
Her husband Yousuf Ege, a taxi driver, was cleared of allowing the death of a child by failing to protect him.
Sara Ege was also found guilty of perverting the course of justice. » | Monday, January 07, 2013
Sunday, January 06, 2013
THE GUARDIAN: Several arrests made after latest protest against changes to voting laws enacted in December
Security forces used stun grenades to disperse hundreds of opposition activists trying to stage a march in Kuwait on Sunday and made several arrests.
Protest marches have grown more frequent in the US-allied oil producer since the opposition boycotted a parliamentary election on 1 December over changes to voting laws that they saw as an attempt to favour pro-government candidates.
Witnesses said between 200 and 300 people had barely gathered in an affluent suburb of Kuwait City late on Sunday when security forces ordered them to disperse because their rally was not licensed.
One witness said that when the men and women moved to the middle of the road and began chanting, security forces attacked them with smoke bombs and stun grenades. » | Reuters in Kuwait | Sunday, January 06, 2013
David Cameron has been accused of "economic insanity" in trying to put a gun to the head of his European partners after he warned on Sunday that he would block treaty changes to make the euro more effective unless he is allowed to repatriate powers to the UK.
Cameron made his thinly veiled threat on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, when he said he was "entitled" and "enabled" to seek a repatriation of powers when other EU countries sought treaty change to make the single currency work more effectively. Cameron is due to set out his definitive position on Europe, including a referendum, later this month.
Writing in the Guardian, the former European commissioner Lord Mandelson warns Cameron that he "will be disappointed if he thinks he can put a gun to their heads to begin renegotiating Britain's EU membership and then dictate when it will end, especially when, in their view, he is arguing not in Europe's interests as a whole but for British exceptionalism".
Faced by a choice between protecting the euro and British demands, he says Europe will choose the euro.
Claiming the Tory party is now gripped by a madness on Europe, he says it is "an act of economic insanity to begin 2013 by placing this large and indefinite question mark over our membership of the EU, and all the trade and investment privileges it brings us. » | Patrick Wintour, political editor | Sunday, January 06, 2013
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Syrian president Bashar al-Assad denounces opposition as 'armed, murderous criminals' as he makes first speech for six months: President Bashar al-Assad has made his first speech for six months, confirming he is still in his capital Damascus but taking a hardline stance offering no new concessions to the rebel opposition which has seized swathes of Syria. » | Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent | Sunday, January 06, 2013
Monday, December 31, 2012
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
The study warns that Christians suffer greater hostility across the world than any other religious group.
And it claims politicians have been “blind” to the extent of violence faced by Christians in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
The most common threat to Christians abroad is militant Islam, it says, claiming that oppression in Muslim countries is often ignored because of a fear that criticism will be seen as “racism”.
It warns that converts from Islam face being killed in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Iran and risk severe legal penalties in other countries across the Middle East.
The report, by the think tank Civitas, says: “It is generally accepted that many faith-based groups face discrimination or persecution to some degree.
"A far less widely grasped fact is that Christians are targeted more than any other body of believers.”
It cites estimates that 200 million Christians, or 10 per cent of Christians worldwide, are “socially disadvantaged, harassed or actively oppressed for their beliefs.” » | Edward Malnick | Sunday, December 23, 2012
Friday, December 21, 2012
"In the fight for the family, the very notion of being – of what being human really means – is being called into question," the Pope said in Italian during an end-of-year speech.
"The question of the family ... is the question of what it means to be a man, and what it is necessary to do to be true men," he said.
The Pope spoke of the "falseness" of gender theories and cited at length France's chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, who has spoken out against gay marriage.
"Bernheim has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper," he said.
He cited feminist gender theorist Simone de Beauvoir's view to the effect that one is not born a woman, but one becomes so – that sex was no longer an element of nature but a social role people chose for themselves. » | Source: AFP | Friday, December 21, 2012
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Sunday, December 16, 2012
The future will be another country. They will do things differently there.
The Census is not just a description of the state of things on a day in 2011, it is a prophetic document telling us where we are going, whether we like it or not. I don’t.
For the past 60 years or so, we have lived in a nation that was more or less familiar to anyone who had grown up in the pre-war Britain of 1939.
Even the devastation of conflict had not transformed it out of recognition.
People behaved, thought, worked, laughed and enjoyed themselves much as they had done for decades.
They lived in the same sorts of families in the same kind of houses. Their children went to the same kinds of schools. And they had grown up in a land that was still identifiably the same as their grandparents had known.
And so it went back for centuries.
As recently as 1949, the prices of most goods were roughly the same, and expressed in the same money, as the prices of 1649.
A short-distance time-traveller between 1912 and 2012 might be perplexed and astonished, but he would not be lost.
That period is now coming to an end. I suspect that anyone in Britain, travelling between 2012 and 2112 would be unable to believe that he was in the same place.
What is the most significant single fact in the Census? I do not think there is one. Several are shocking or disturbing, if you are not fond of change, and delightful if you are. Read on and comment » | Peter Hitchens | Saturday, December 15, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
With her face on every banknote and coin in circulation, it is only natural that the Queen takes a sharp interest in the nation's finances, as she showed on a visit to the Bank of England today.
Her Majesty suggested the financial crisis of 2008 had happened because the Financial Services Authority “didn’t have the teeth” to rein in the biggest risk-takers.
The Duke of Edinburgh, meanwhile, had a typically blunt piece of advice for the Bank’s executives: “Don’t do it again!”
The Queen and the Duke grilled Bank of England staff during a visit which included a tour of a vault stacked with £27 billion worth of bullion.
Suit Kapadia, one of the Bank’s financial policy experts, said he wanted to answer a question the Queen asked academics at the London School of Economics in 2008 about why no one saw the financial crisis coming.
“Oh!” said the Queen, looking slightly taken aback.
Mr Kapadia said the City had got “complacent” because it thought risk was being managed better than it was, and the financial system had become too interconnected.
The Queen agreed: “People got a bit lax … perhaps it was difficult to foresee.”
She asked if the financial system was less interconnected now and concurred with a suggestion that part of the problem had been the lack of powers given to the Financial Services Authority. “They didn't have the teeth,” she said. » | Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter | Thursday, December 13, 2012
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Mr Berlusconi, 76, is in a steady relationship with Francesca Pascale, who at 27 is nearly a third his age, supporters of the former premier said.
There had been rumours of the relationship for months, and the pair was photographed together recently while watching Mr Berlusconi's football team, AC Milan.
But the romance was confirmed by one of the media tycoon's most vocal cheerleaders, Daniela Santanche, an MP in his People of Freedom party, as well as the Italian press, with one newspaper describing the young woman as Italy's new "first lady".
"Berlusconi introduces her as his girlfriend, and for me it is a beautiful thing. I know her as his girlfriend," said Miss Santanche.
"Let's say she is a person who is very close to him," said Licia Ronzulli, a Euro MP in his party. "She's more than a friend." » | Nick Squires, Rome | Wednesday, December 12, 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Up to a quarter of households in parts of London have no one who speaks English as their main language, according to figures contained in the census.
In a string of boroughs across the capital, between 20 and 25 per cent of all families do not have anyone who regularly speaks the language and in thousands of others only children do so.
Findings released by the Office for National Statistics earlier this week showed a transformation in the make-up of British society over the last decade, with the number of foreign-born residents rising by 50 per cent.
In London itself less than half the population described themselves as white in the national headcount conducted last year.
Headline figures showed that there are around a million households in which no one speaks English as a “main language” – just over four per cent of the total.
But a detailed breakdown of the figures published with alongside the main census data show that in some areas the proportion is more than five times this level. » | John Bingham, Social Affairs Editor | Wednesday, December 12, 2012
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