Only days after Patrick Moore, the disillusioned co-founder of Greenpeace, said the green movement has become a “combination of extreme political ideology and religious fundamentalism rolled into one,” Greenpeace seems determined to prove Moore was right. The group has launched
Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson has won damages in a French court from a novelist for his “hurtful and demeaning” depiction of a character who resembled her. French author Grégoire Delacourt was ordered on Wednesday to pay €2,500 (£2,000) to Johansson
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is resisting NATO calls for permanent deployment of allied troops in former Soviet bloc countries, amid fears of retaliation by Russia. During a visit to Berlin yesterday by NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Merkel acknowledged
Four police officers and two drugs-sniffer dogs, accompanied by a state prosecutor, yesterday searched the Berlin apartment of a leading Social Democrat politician suspected of buying hard drugs. This is the second police investigation of a leading Social Democrat spokesman
Americans frustrated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s reluctance to meet demands for stronger sanctions against Russia have now begun to ask if there is a good reason the German leader has been targeted by US spies. Questions are being raised
France’s conservative family-values campaigners have forced the Socialist government to scrap plans to force all schools to introduce a gender-equality programme. Parents fear the programme is an attempt by the government to teach primary school children that “they aren’t born
In what El País newspaper has called Spain’s “demographic blood drain without precedents,” tens of thousands of Spaniards are fleeing their own country to escape the eurozone economic disaster which has left total unemployment rate at over 25 per cent
The European Union must stop giving money to Italy because it ends up in the hands of the Mafia, according to Beppe Grillo, leader of the eurosceptic Five Star Movement which won 21 per cent of the vote and 17
The attempt by Conservative MEP Sajjad Karim to gain support in his unlikely bid to be president of the European Parliament – the German socialist Martin Schultz was re-elected today by MEPs with 409 votes of the 723 cast –
In a grotesque parody of a ceremony of a nation state, yesterday the European Parliament opened the new session of the assembly with a flag-raising carried out by soldiers of the Eurocorps – sometimes known as the Eurokorps – a
Four hundred Russian sailors have arrived at the port of Saint-Nazaire in northwest France to begin training for two Mistral-class helicopter carriers, part of a €1.2bn (£9,600m/$1.6bn) military contract the French government intends to complete with Moscow despite pressure from
Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, in what looks like a slippery manoeuvre to draw attention away from his failures in Brussels, is now pretending he secured concessions from the same EU leaders who voted him down 26-2 in his opposition
As Breitbart London reported just hours after Jean-Claude Juncker was nominated to be the next president of the European Commission, the (allegedly) wine-sodden and certainly triumphant Juncker is now in line for a €321,000 (£257,000) a year salary, a private
An Irish Muslim teenager has been kept in prison without charge for nearly a year in Cairo because “he is not Irish-looking enough” for the world to take notice, according to his family in Dublin. Ibrahim Halawa, the 18-year-old son
The rate of marriage in Italy, especially among young people, has dropped to a level of 3.3 per thousand of population, one of the lowest in Europe, according to Reuters. Reluctance to marry is being blamed on Italy’s struggling economy,
European Union leaders gathered in Brussels have nominated Jean-Claude Juncker to be the next president of the European Commission, dismissing Prime Minister David Cameron’s warnings that putting the euro-zealot Juncker in the top job in Brussels would push Britain further
The Irish health minister, frustrated by delays in his anti-smoking plans to force tobacco companies to use plain unbranded packaging on cigarettes, has now announced plans to push the price of a single packet of cigarettes up to €20 (£16/$27).
A Norwegian Islamist extremist with links to Anjem Choudary, the London-based hate preacher who wants to establish an Islamic state in Britain, has launched a Facebook campaign against the Europride festival in Oslo this week. The Local reports that Ubaydullah Hussain
European Union leaders this morning signed association agreements with three former Soviet bloc countries, Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine, leaving Moscow in no doubt that the EU is determined to continue its expansion eastward despite upheavals in Ukraine triggered by the
David Lidington, Britain’s minister for Europe, went to Berlin yesterday “to tackle head-on some of the misconceptions about the UK’s approach to the European Union.” In a speech to an EU organisation called Europe Network Germany he insisted that “Britain
A Spanish law designed to attract foreign sports stars such as David Beckham with tax privileges has been done away with in the conservative People’s Party government’s latest tax reforms. A 2005 tax decree was known as the “Beckham Law” after
The mayor of the northern Italian city of Padua announced on Wednesday that all public buildings must display a crucifix. Massimo Bitonci, a member of the anti-EU, anti-immigration Lega Nord, made the announcement on his Facebook page: “Now every office
More than 12,000 pornographic books and pictures have been discovered in “an erotic hell” acquired by the Russian state library during the Soviet era. According to a report in Le Figaro. Japanese erotic prints, “sensual” photographs, pornographic drawings of women
Police from Austria, Germany and the Netherlands have arrested an international gang of tractor thieves, the latest move in a campaign against a Europe-wide countryside crime wave which costs farmers and agricultural equipment dealers millions every year. The gang arrested have
Nigel Farage has rejected accusations by Marine Le Pen, leader of the French anti-EU Front National, of using “dirty tricks” and pulling “political stunts” that left her unable to form an official group at the European Parliament, as as reported in Le
Cigarette vending machines will be banned in Ireland as part of the government’s attempt to create “a tobacco-free Ireland” by 2015, according to the Irish Times. The legislation was agreed by cabinet yesterday. It follows news earlier this month that
Organisations such as Greenpeace have “no culture of accountability,” and have now “become the establishment,” according to Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, which seeks to make non-governmental organisations such as Greenpeace more accountable. Steinberg was speaking after the disclosure that
The “stupid” British prime minister “f**ked up” in the EU, according to the same Polish minister who was caught on a secret recording saying Poland’s ties with the US are “worthless bulls**t.” After comments by Radoslaw Sikorsky on US-Polish ties
Number 10 is claiming that British Prime Minister David Cameron has “won agreement” on a vote on the future president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch. The claim follows a meeting in London today between Cameron and Herman
The German defence ministry has stopped further orders of the army’s standard automatic rifle, the Heckler & Koch G36, after a secret report questioned its accuracy and said tests had to be carried out to make sure the ministry is
Spain’s justice minister had decided to allow abortion in the case of an unborn child being “malformed,” despite the government’s 2011 election promise to reform abortion laws so that a child may be killed in the womb only in case
Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski has been caught in a secret recording saying that Poland’s relationship with the United States was worthless, and that any feeling of security it gave was “complete bullshit.” Wprost, a Polish news magazine, said on
British officials have told the French not to display the European Union flag or other symbols of the EU during ceremonies marking the 1914-18 war, and warned them not to use the centenary of the Great War to promote the
Some call them renegade academics, others call them euro contrarians, Chancellor Angela Merkel calls them a headache. The new Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) is upsetting German political dogma, and EU politics. The party is led by a small band
After Marine Le Pen’s Front National topped the poll in last month’s elections to the European Parliament, France’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party – the centre-right party once led by ex-President Nicholas Sarkozy and Le Pen’s only rival
David Cameron’s over-confidence in his own powers of persuasion appear to have made veteran Brussels insider Jean-Claude Juncker the near-certain choice as next president of the European Commission. EU leaders whom Cameron thought he could persuade to join him in an
The Pope has refused to meet immigrants who have taken shelter in one of the ancient Papal Basilicas in Rome in case it is seen as a political gesture. Around 110 men, women and children from Eastern Europe and Africa
School health services in the small Swedish city of Norrköping have found 60 cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) among schoolgirls since March, with evidence of mutilation found in all 30 girls in one class, 28 of the most severe
