France’s right-wing, anti-immigration party, National Rally (RN), has passed a resolution in the National Assembly, marking the first time it has done so in the party’s history.
The subject is significant, as it denounces the 1968 Franco-Algerian Agreement, in the wake of several months of rising tensions between the two countries. Going forward, it will be much more difficult for Algerians to obtain visas into France.
The resolution passed with 185 votes in favor and 184 against.
LR and Horizons voted in favor of the text
Marine Le Pen, head of the RN parliamentary group, posted a video on X to mark the occasion: “I thank the groups—those of Édouard Philippe and Laurent Wauquiez—who voted in line with their opinions.
Je remercie les groupes – ceux d'Édouard Philippe et de Laurent Wauquiez – qui ont voté en cohérence avec leurs opinions.
En revanche, je suis extrêmement critique à l'égard de Gabriel Attal, qui a indiqué être contre cette convention, et qui a demandé à ses députés de voter… pic.twitter.com/M1eqKgXKFG
“On the other hand, I am extremely critical of Gabriel Attal, who indicated that he was against this convention, and who asked his deputies to vote against the denunciation of this convention.”
Attal is the general secretary of President Macron’s Renaissance party. Édouard Philippe, mayor of Le Havre, founded the center-right Horizons party, while Laurent Wauquiez is a member of (and previously headed up) The Republicans.
Just last week, Remix News wrote up a report from two Macron deputies, who concluded that the 1968 agreement, as well as the 1980 Social Security Convention and various legal interpretations of the agreements, must be tossed.
The report shockingly revealed that Algerian immigrants cost the state €2 billion per year.
Algeria, a former colony of France, has long benefited from French appeasements of its colonial past, including making for easy travel, residency, and family reunification for Algerians in French territory.
However, the Algerian community has long been a thorn in France’s side due to the existence of parallel communities, anti-French Islamist attitudes, and crime.
The past several months have proven to be a tipping point with a few key events, starting with outrage from Algiers at Macron’s backing of Morocco’s plan for Western Sahara. There was then the imprisonment of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal (who was also denied medical treatment for cancer), and France’s attempted expulsion of Algerian influencers for inciting violence against those opposed to the Algerian regime (with Algiers sending them directly back, claiming their rights had been violated), and otherwise hateful comments against France.
Now, with the passage of this resolution, France, under the leadership of Le Pen, takes the first step to reclaiming its dignity and demanding respect from a country that has long abused its welcome. Time for Algeria to play by new rules.
Posting on X, Le Pen stated: “This is a tremendous victory for us and for all French people; our resolution proposal aimed at denouncing the Franco-Algerian agreements of 1968 has just been adopted! This is a first step toward the repeal of this convention, which is contrary to the interests of our country, and which, more than ever today, is no longer justified. Today, we are thinking of our compatriots Boualem Sansal and Christophe Gleizes, who are still being arbitrarily detained by the Algerian regime,” she said.
A 20-year-old Iraqi migrant who had previously served prison sentences for drug offenses was discovered to have filmed and mocked elderly dementia patients while employed as a caregiver at a municipal care home in Ängelholm, southern Sweden.
The man, identified in court documents seen by the Samnytt news outlet as Azhi Mahmodi, is now charged with four counts of offensive photography and four counts of breach of confidentiality, alongside aggravated weapons and narcotics offenses.
Police uncovered the material earlier this year after stopping a car in Helsingborg that Mahmodi was traveling in. Officers seized drugs and a mobile phone, leading investigators to execute a search warrant a month later. A firearm and large sums of cash were found, prompting further searches.
When police examined Mahmodi’s seized phone, they discovered several clips filmed inside a dementia care home showing elderly residents being ridiculed and humiliated. Investigators later learned that the municipality had employed Mahmodi as a caregiver despite his criminal record.
The videos were also found to have been distributed by Mahmodi on Snapchat.
Helsingborgs Dagblad reports the care home in question was contacted in the summer to help identify the residents whose confidentiality had been breached in the humiliating videos.
Confronted with the evidence, Mahmodi admitted to filming and sharing the videos. “There is no good excuse for it. There isn’t. I am ashamed. So extremely. It is literally shameless what I have done. I cannot deny that,” he told police.
Municipal officials have refused to release documentation relating to his hiring. In a formal response to a request for disclosure, Ängelholm Municipality declined to provide the relevant records, citing confidentiality.
Mahmodi, born in Iraq but holding Iranian citizenship, cannot be deported under the current law as he is a dual national, having also been granted Swedish citizenship.
In recent months, several other migrant caregivers across Sweden have been convicted or charged for serious abuses against elderly patients. Earlier this month, a 26-year-old Syrian man named Mahamad Almousa was sentenced to one year in prison and issued a 10-year expulsion order after sexually assaulting a 67-year-old woman under his care in Vänersborg.
The victim, who managed to call her son during the assault, died weeks later under unclear circumstances. The Vänersborg District Court rejected Almousa’s claim that the encounter was consensual, ruling that his account was “completely inconsistent” with the woman’s frail condition.
In May 2025, a 33-year-old Iraqi man was arrested in Umeå for a series of rapes and sexual assaults against elderly women. Despite an earlier report of harassment, the municipality had allowed him to continue working in care homes, enabling further attacks. Prosecutors allege that he assaulted three elderly women between February and March of this year, with detention hearings conducted via an Arabic interpreter.
In January 2025, a Somali national, 28-year-old Baasim Yusuf, was sentenced to eight years in prison by the Uppsala District Court for multiple aggravated rapes and sexual assaults of women aged between 77 and 88, as well as for filming his victims. Yusuf, who obtained Swedish citizenship in 2018, cannot be deported despite the severity of his crimes.
There are once again efforts to ban the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Bundestag, with the far-left Social Democrats (SPD) leading the way. However, there is some difficult math facing the proponents of an AfD ban, which makes it unlikely — but not impossible — for the party to be banned.
In order to understand why a ban is unlikely, let us first look at what would actually happen if a ban of the AfD went forward.
The AfD is currently the most popular party in the country, according to multiple polls, scoring between 25 and 27 percent of the vote. This alone makes a ban unthinkable to many, but the German establishment does not especially care what the electorate thinks on a number of key issues, so why not just ban the party?
For starters, and most importantly, a ban of the AfD would radically reshape the German electorate in favor of the left. This would translate into the Christian Democrats (CDU) losing a massive amount of power, and potentially being relegated to the political dustbin. Due to this cold, hard reality, a ban could be suicidal for the CDU.
How one local elections tells us about the federal election
What happened in the local mayoral election in Ludwigshafen tells us what the likely outcome of an AfD ban would be for the country at the federal level. In Ludwigshafen, the AfD’s Joachim Paul was leading the polls to become mayor before he was banned from running through backroom bureaucratic channels, a move later confirmed by judges during a number of appeals. The judges all argued Paul would have to challenge the ban after the election. Paul is still filing legal actions against the decision, but the outcome of the appeal could take months or even years.
Regardless of the outcome of Paul’s appeal, the election had some interesting outcomes.
First, the voter participation rate crashed to a record low of just 29.3 percent. In 2017’s mayoral election in Ludwigshafen, the then-SPD candidate Jutta Steinruck won with 60.2 percent participation. That means voter turnout was cut in half from that election.
That is not all. For those who did vote, many of them appear to have submitted “spoiled” ballots. A record-high number of ballots were ruled invalid, at 9.2 percent. Eight years ago, that number was just 2.6 percent. The number of “spoiled ballots” jumped by nearly 400 percent.
If this same outcome occurred at the federal level, including a dramatic crash in the voter participation rate as AfD supporters boycott the election, it would be a disaster for the CDU’s electoral chances.
The way the German system works means that the pool of right-wing voters would shrink dramatically, leaving CDU voters and the left as the only remaining voting pool. However, this remaining, much smaller pool, would then feature a dramatically larger share of left-wing voters consisting of the SPD, the Greens, and the Left Party.
These three parties would be looking at a potential supermajority.
Even with a CDU scoring 30 to 35 percent of the vote, the party could be easily sidelined by this new far-left coalition.
This is what the CDU fears.
To understand this, it is important to understand that the German left does not need to increase the number of votes it receives; it just needs to increase its share of the vote. Let us consider an imaginary scenario where only 35 percent of the population votes in the next German federal election. It would be a disaster for democracy, but it could still be a huge win for the left. If the right drops out of the voting process. Suddenly, the remaining voting pie looks more left-wing, and the left can win a bigger share of this smaller voting pie.
Voilà, the left now have a super majority with just a small fraction of voters coming out to vote.
The trouble for the left is that it still needs the CDU to vote for an AfD ban in the Bundestag, otherwise they would not have the majority needed to pass such a motion. However, the CDU has no incentive to do this.
Death of democracy, rise of the left
On top of this electoral math problem for the CDU, it would not only make the electoral map vastly more favorable to the left, but it could also tear a giant hole in the CDU party itself.
A plurality of voters are against a ban on the AfD. A new Insa poll shows that 43 percent of respondents are against a ban, while 35 percent are in favor. Another 10 percent were indifferent, and 12 percent refused to comment.
However, for CDU voters, the issue was evenly split, with 42 percent supporting a ban, while 41 percent were against it.
Many CDU voters have already switched their voting intentions towards the AfD. A ban could further fuel an exodus towards the AfD party while the ban works its way through the system, all the way to the Constitutional Court, which is the final arbiter of the ban process. That could take well over a year, plenty of time to enact massive damage on the CDU.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz already said that a ban of the AfD “smacks to much of the elimination of political rivals.” CDU voters all heard this statement. For him and his party to backtrack now on this issue would not sit well with many voters, many who are already dissatisfied with the economy and migration.
The Insa poll also shows that while a majority of supporters of left-wing parties back a ban, they are by no means in full agreement. Many Germans, even those on the left, believe a ban on the AfD would be a stake in the heart of democracy.
If a ban goes through, and a national vote is held featuring an abysmal voter participation rate due to mass boycotts, it would likely send the German system into chaos, leaving a massive democratic hole in the country’s landscape. It could even shake the entire foundation of the German state, calling into question the legitimacy of any government that is elected into power with an extremely low voter share and a ban on the most popular party.
What is the most likely scenario?
The left is likely to continue with its full-court press to proceed with a ban on the AfD. It would only benefit them, after all. The CDU is also likely to continue to talk of a ban, demonize the AfD, and try to snipe at the party using all the tools of the state, but is unlikely to actually back a ban. Doing so would be very foolish from a purely strategic point of view.
Of course, that is not a foregone conclusion. There are potential political realities, power struggles, and wild cards that could lead Merz and much of the CDU leadership to reverse course. However, the current risks of such a move outnumber the potential benefits by a clear margin.
Geert Wilders’ right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV) has lost its commanding position in Dutch politics to finish tied with the liberal D66, the big winners in Thursday’s general election.
Both parties secured 26 seats, but arrived at that figure from very different starting points. The PVV reduced its parliamentary cohort by 11 seats, while D66 gained 17 seats from its last election result in 2023.
According to near-complete results, the Netherlands is facing another complex coalition process, with some form of centrist coalition the most likely.
The PVV’s support fell sharply from its previous high, dropping to around 16.8 percent of the vote. D66, led by Rob Jetten, surged by more than 10 percentage points to match Wilders’ total — the best result in the party’s history. “Millions of Dutch people today turned a page,” Jetten told supporters. “They have said goodbye to the politics of hate and division.”
De positieve krachten hebben gewonnen! Ik wil voor alle Nederlanders aan de slag, want dit is het land van ons allemaal! pic.twitter.com/Chs6T7XMcf
Jetten’s “Het kan wel” (“Yes, we can”) slogan, pinched from former U.S. president Barack Obama, appeared to resonate with an electorate that turned away from both the left and the right to favor the center ground.
Wilders had urged voters to make the PVV such a dominant force in parliament that it would be impossible to sideline, but fell well short of achieving that goal. With all other major parties refusing to work with him after his party’s resignation tanked the previous center-right coalition, hopes of forming a government have quickly evaporated.
De PVV wil het voortouw bij de formatie als we de grootste zouden worden. Zolang daar geen 100% helderheid over is kan er geen verkenner van D66 aan de slag. We zullen alles doen om dit te voorkomen. #PVVOP1
Still, he appeared undeterred. “The PVV wants to take the lead in forming a coalition if we become the largest party,” Wilders wrote on X on Friday morning. “As long as there’s no 100 percent clarity on this, no D66 scout can get started. We will do everything we can to prevent this.”
The Christian Democrats (CDA) also staged a comeback, gaining 13 seats to reach 18, while JA21 climbed to nine, up eight. The center-right VVD slipped slightly to 22 seats, maintaining its relevance but losing ground to both D66 and the CDA.
The left-wing GroenLinks–PvdA alliance also suffered a disappointing night, dropping to 20 seats. Its leader, former EU climate commissioner Frans Timmermans, resigned soon after the results were announced, admitting, “I have not been able to convince.”
With turnout at 78.5 percent, down only slightly from 2023, the Netherlands once again faces a fragmented parliament and protracted coalition negotiations.
Despite finishing level at the top, Wilders is isolated, while D66 now appears best placed to attempt to form a centrist coalition alongside the CDA, VVD, and possibly JA21.
Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken had some harsh words for Moscow in a recent interview.
“Putin knows that if he plays with nuclear weapons, Moscow will disappear from the map and the end of the world will be near,” he told De Morgen.
With talk of Vladimir Putin potentially attacking Western Europe with nuclear weapons, and Russia continuously making threats regarding its capabilities, Belgian daily De Morgen asked the minister if any fears regarding Putin launching any such missile attack on Brussels are justified, with Francken replying: “No, because then he will hit the heart of NATO, and then we will flatten Moscow,” as quoted by Mandiner.
Francken admitted Russia is a “geopolitical power” with a “strong army and a formidable fighting spirit,” and people would be mistaken not to fear it, but even Putin won’t push too far.
He also reassured readers that he has no doubt U.S. President Trump would respect Article 5.
As to any notion of a European Army, the Belgian minister slapped down the idea. “Anyone who believes in a European army is selling castles in the air,” he said. “Fortunately, we have NATO, which has once again demonstrated its effectiveness with the air defense in Poland and Estonia,” he told the paper.
Francken also had some harsh words for the Belgian capital of Brussels, struggling with rampant drug dealing. Regarding George-Louis Bouchez, leader of the Francophone Liberals (MR), stating that soldiers should be deployed to the streets, the minister agreed that this may be the only option.
“If we don’t address the drug war and the insecurity, the Brussels cancer will spread to Flemish Brabant,” he said. “Does that require khaki on the streets? Then we will,” he said.
Data presented by the German government shows that 63,977 women were victims of sexual violence in 2024 alone, and the perpetrators were disproportionately foreigners.
In fact, 35 percent of all perpetrators were foreign nationals, despite making up just 15 percent of the German population, according to government data released as a result of an inquiry from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the Bundestag.
In addition, the data shows that women were the victims of over 265,000 physical assaults and more than 155,000 crimes against their personal freedom.
Approximately 12,600 women with German citizenship were the victims of sexual violence perpetrated by those who were not German citizens. In 4,000 of those cases, the perpetrator was an asylum seeker, someone with protected status, or someone with tolerated status.
Syrians, Afghans, and Turks stuck out in the statistics, with 1,530 Syrian suspects recorded as committing sexual violence, 1,063 Afghans, and 1,059 Turks.
Data over 10 years
In addition to the AfD’s request for information above, another request also revealed other shocking figures.
The data, obtained by Freilich magazine, also shows large numbers of victims of crimes committed by suspects from other countries of origin, including 82,960 linked to Afghanistan, 69,946 to Iraq, 39,918 to Morocco, and 32,383 to Algeria. Altogether, more than 460,000 crimes were recorded in the 10-year period involving suspects from the 10 main countries of origin: Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Eritrea.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said in a press release that the figures show “the government’s failure in migration and security policy.” She stated, “More than half of all women in Germany no longer feel safe in public spaces. This alarming figure is further proof of the government’s failure. Between 2015 and 2024, 135,668 Germans were victims of crimes committed by suspected Syrian perpetrators. This development is not only extremely alarming but also the result of government mismanagement and uncorrected political misjudgments.”
Data does not include immigration background of suspects
However, this data does not tell the whole story. There are millions of Germans in the country with dual citizenship, and despite these citizens also committing crimes, they are only counted as German in the crime statistics at the federal level. Furthermore, there are millions of people with a migration background who only have German citizenship, and despite proposals from the AfD, their migration background is not recorded.
There is only one German state that is taking a different path. North Rhine-Westphalia started recording dual citizens in the crime statistics, a move harshly protested by the left. Neighboring Denmark goes a step further and records the migration background of all suspects, which the country argues can give a fuller picture of integration efforts.
One measure used to ascertain the foreign background of suspects is the request for first names, which the AfD has done in North Rhine-Westphalia. There, half of all gang rape suspects are foreign nationals, but when the names of suspects are revealed, it becomes clear that approximately 75 percent of all rape cases involve a foreign national or German citizen with a migrant background.
The Ukrainian armed forces are struggling with a sharp increase in desertions, local media report, citing data from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.
Local media is reporting a spike in Ukrainian soldiers leaving their unit, temporarily (abandonment) or permanently (desertion). Data shows 14,000-18,000 cases of unauthorized abandonment each month. Last May saw a record 18,000 cases, and 17,000 abandoned their unit without authorization in September.
Since the start of the full-scale war, 231,500 cases of abandonment of a unit and 53,200 cases of desertion have been initiated.
In light of the situation, Ukraine is considering tougher penalties for desertion and abandonment, reports Do Rzezcy.
This year alone, as MP Oleksiy Honcharenko points out, the number of criminal cases involving deserters has increased almost fivefold and may reach as many as 300,000.
Until Aug. 30, a special program was in effect, allowing soldiers to return voluntarily without consequences. Over 21,000 people took advantage of it.
Currently, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is considering reinstating full criminal liability for anyone who leaves the army. According to representatives of the Azov National Guard, the reasons for desertions include the incompetence of some officers and the lack of rotation and leave, which prevent soldiers from resting and contacting their families.
In turn, Ukrainian Military Intelligence (HUR) reports that the Russian army is also struggling with mass desertions. Over a nine-month period – from November 2024 to July 2025 – over 25,000 soldiers and officers abandoned units in the Central Military District.
Desertions are reportedly occurring both on the front lines and in rear bases, with some soldiers failing to return from medical treatment or leave. HUR also recorded over 30 cases of defections with weapons or all of their combat equipment.
The reasons cited include unbearable service conditions, including internal persecution, catastrophic supply shortages, and the sending of soldiers on so-called “meat grinder attacks,” frontal assaults that incur massive losses.
According to data from the Russian BBC and Mediazona, at least 133,000 Russian soldiers have died since the beginning of the war, with the average age of those killed just 35.
Media reports also indicate that released prisoners of war are forcibly sent directly to the front lines — often in handcuffs.
The German government has disclosed that a total of 135,668 crimes against German victims have been committed by Syrian suspects between 2015 and 2024, amounting to one every 39 minutes over the past 10 years.
The figures, released by the Federal Ministry of the Interior in response to a parliamentary inquiry from the AfD, have reignited the party’s demands for tougher migration controls and deportations.
The data, obtained by Freilich magazine, also shows large numbers of victims of crimes committed by suspects from other countries of origin, including 82,960 linked to Afghanistan, 69,946 to Iraq, 39,918 to Morocco, and 32,383 to Algeria. Altogether, more than 460,000 crimes were recorded in the 10-year period involving suspects from the 10 main countries of origin: Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Eritrea.
In respect to Afghan suspects, that’s one crime every 63 minutes; for Iraqis, one every 75 minutes; for Moroccans, one every 132 minutes; and for Algerians, one every 162 minutes.
According to police crime statistics cited by the German publication, the number of Syrian suspects has continued to rise. In 2024, there were 101,265 criminal cases involving Syrians, excluding immigration offenses — up from 94,158 the previous year. The federal interior ministry reported particularly sharp increases in violent and sexual offenses. In 2024, there were 12,512 violent crimes involving Syrian suspects, the highest in 10 years. Cases of rape, sexual coercion, and serious sexual assault rose to 648, more than 60 percent higher than in 2020.
Mehr als jede zweite Frau in Deutschland fühlt sich im öffentlichen Raum nicht mehr sicher. Diese alarmierende Zahl aus der repräsentativen Civey-Umfrage ist ein weiterer Beweis für das Regierungsversagen bei der Migrations- und Sicherheitspolitik: Wie das Bundesinnenministerium… pic.twitter.com/ccerdx7nXY
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said in a press release that the figures show “the government’s failure in migration and security policy.” She stated, “More than half of all women in Germany no longer feel safe in public spaces. This alarming figure is further proof of the government’s failure. Between 2015 and 2024, 135,668 Germans were victims of crimes committed by suspected Syrian perpetrators. This development is not only extremely alarming but also the result of government mismanagement and uncorrected political misjudgments.”
Weidel also criticized Chancellor Friedrich Merz directly, claiming that the governing coalition refuses to “honestly identify the causes of the problems” and instead engages in “ideological debates about racism.” She said the victims are “young women and children, who are often defenselessly exposed to violent attacks,” calling the situation “a declaration of bankruptcy by this federal government in terms of security policy.”
AfD Bundestag member Christopher Drößler, who initiated the parliamentary inquiry, said the figures demonstrate the need for a large-scale deportation campaign. “Numbers don’t lie. The statistics confirm once again: Germans are primarily victims of criminal foreigners from [Middle] Eastern countries,” Drößler toldFreilich. “We need a massive deportation offensive that focuses primarily on migrants from the main countries of origin, especially Syria, Afghanistan, Morocco, and Iraq.” He said deportations to all these countries “must finally be possible.”
The AfD argues that uncontrolled migration is worsening social tensions in Germany, including competition for housing, benefits, and public safety, and says it is the only party offering “clear solutions” such as border security, deportation of criminal foreigners, and increased police strength.
This month alone, Remix News has reported on several cases involving Syrian suspects across Germany, including the trial this week of a man accused of attempting to murder his former partner and their infant son by setting fire to her apartment while they were inside.
Last week, five Syrian men aged between 17 and 26 were arrested in connection with the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Heinsberg, near Aachen. The teenage victim was reportedly persuaded by her ex-boyfriend to meet him, but when he picked her up, three other men entered the car. He then drove them to an apartment in Heinsberg, where two additional men were waiting to rape her under threat of a Taser.
Earlier this month, a 14-year-old Syrian boy accused of committing around 200 crimes was arrested in northern Germany after years of violent offenses that terrorized towns in Schleswig-Holstein. Mohamad H. was charged with three counts of grievous bodily harm, but is accused of committing dozens of offenses, including knife possession, attacking police officers, and multiple thefts.
An attempt to ban a movie seen as in breach of France’s long-cherished separation of Church and State has turned the film into a box-office success.
“Sacre Coeur: Son regne n’aura pas de fin” (“Sacred Heart: His reign will have no end”) tells the story of the Sacred Heart devotion through the centuries, up until modern times. A devotion in Catholicism entails prayer, receiving communion, and making acts of reparation for sins. The Sacred Heart devotion revolves around such practices in the name of the heart of Jesus Christ, which serves as a symbol of his divine love, mercy, and compassion for humanity.
At first, the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan (Socialist Party), sought to ban any promotion of the film in spaces managed by the SNCF (French National Railway Company) and the RATP (Parisian public transport operator).
He then banned a screening of the film in a local municipal cinema — all in the name of secularism.
The issue was that Payan has always seemed far more open to anything related to Islam. In fact, the mayor has set aside land for the building of mosques, made sure Muslim celebrations have adequate venues, and even visited high schools with Muslim Brotherhood ties, reports France Catholique, citing a report out of Frontières magazine on “mayors complicit with Islamism.”
During Ramadan this year, he even openly stated: “Many of those who lecture Muslims […] should learn what is written in the surahs, which can enlighten us about the world.”
The movie has particular significance to the city, as the FC portal also notes that Bishop de Belsunce consecrated Marseille to the Sacred Heart during the Great Plague of 1720, which is said to have then ended right afterward.
Luckily, there were those who decided to push back against the mayor’s ban. Last week, the senator from Marseille, Stéphane Ravier, formerly of Le Pen’s National Rally party, filed an emergency appeal to overturn the municipal decision. Martine Vassal (The Republicans), president of the Bouches-du-Rhône department and the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolitan area, also came out publicly in support of the film and attended its screening that same evening.
On the morning of the 25th, the court overturned the previous decision, with a strong message for Mayor Payant: “The mayor of Marseille has committed a serious and manifestly illegal infringement of freedom of expression, freedom of creation, and freedom of artistic dissemination.”
At the end of the day, as noted by France Catholique, Payant’s attempt to squash this Christian film backfired terribly. More than 200,000 people have now seen the film directed by Steven J. and Sabrina Gunnel since its release on Oct. 1. While the film was initially in just 155 theaters across France, this was increased to nearly 350 in its third week.
The prosecutor’s office under Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has filed a motion to waive the immunity of former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro. It also seeks the temporary arrest of the vice president and PiS MP.
Ziobro gave an interview to Telewizja Republika, in which he said that members of the current team are afraid of him because he oversaw investigations linked to Donald Tusk’s close associates.
“There’s a bunch of thieves there. (…) We’re dealing with criminals who have repeatedly crossed the ‘Rubicon’ by violating the constitution and laws,” he continued, reports Do Rzeczy.
“The charges brought against me today are an expression of the utter desperation of Tusk’s criminal gang, who are embarrassing themselves by making allegations that, if not for the gravity of the situation, would be fit for a cabaret, not for serious consideration. (…) Today we are dealing with a government full of a thirst for revenge and retaliation,” Ziobro said.
“I’ve spent my entire professional life fighting crime; that was my goal, and I think I also contributed to making Poland a safer country. Among other things, I dismantled VAT mafias, which allowed the Polish state to obtain hundreds, and over the years, billions of złoty,” said the former head of the Ministry of Justice.
“They know that when we return, when I return in the future and have influence over the justice system, their fate will be bleak, hence their determination. They’ve staked everything on destroying us, but they won’t succeed,” Ziobro announced.
“They will lose and will be held accountable ruthlessly but fairly according to the rules of law,” he added.
According to the prosecutor’s office, Ziobro is suspected of committing 26 crimes, including establishing and leading an organized crime group within the Ministry of Justice that allegedly misappropriated over PLN 150 million (€35 million) from the Justice Fund.
Amid a deepening housing shortage in the German capital, Berlin authorities have confirmed that the first new construction at the site of a planned residential district in East Berlin will not be homes for locals, but a large temporary accommodation center for asylum seekers.
The State Office for Refugee Affairs (LAF) said a new container complex with 500 places will be built at Blankenburger Pflasterweg 101, where the future “Blankenburger Süden” neighborhood — eventually comprising 8,600 apartments, schools, and commercial buildings — is set to rise.
Construction of the asylum center is scheduled to begin in April 2026, with completion expected by early 2027. Authorities maintain the site will be in operation for three years before being dismantled in 2030, when work on the new urban district will, in theory, begin.
The €20 million project will form part of Berlin’s broader plan to create 6,000 new places for refugees across 16 container settlements at a total estimated cost of €200 million. “The accommodation will be operated by an experienced provider who will also employ qualified social workers,” LAF spokesperson Sascha Langenbach told Tagesspiegel.
Local officials in the Pankow district, which already houses around 6,000 asylum seekers in 18 facilities, have warned that the plan will place further strain on public services. Education Councilor Jörn Pasternack of the CDU said the shortage of school places is already severe, and that the district may need to establish classrooms directly within the new refugee accommodation.
The Blankenburger project follows another major decision by the Berlin Senate earlier this year to authorize construction of a 1,000-bed asylum facility on Tempelhofer Feld, overriding a 2014 law banning new development on the site, which once served as a Nazi labor camp and later as an airport.
Social Democrat Senator Cansel Kiziltepe defended the move, citing overcrowded shelters. “We cannot leave people without accommodation,” she said, adding that the facility would open in late 2028.
Meanwhile, plans to use Tempelhofer Feld for urgently needed housing for Berliners remain stalled, with six redevelopment proposals under review and a possible public referendum required. The asylum project will proceed regardless of the outcome.
Berlin’s prioritization of migrant housing has become a recurring point of contention. In 2023, a 128-apartment complex in Spandau built by the city-owned WBM housing association was reserved entirely for refugees, accommodating 570 asylum seekers while thousands of residents remain on waiting lists.
At the same time, Germany’s major cities face an estimated shortfall of 800,000 apartments, even as office vacancies reach record levels. Bureaucratic red tape, high construction costs, and rising interest rates have slowed the conversion of empty offices into housing.
Despite these pressures, Berlin’s government continues paying premium rents for migrant accommodation, with contracts including €165 million for 1,500 people in Kreuzberg, €143 million for 1,200 in Lichtenberg, and €118 million for 950 in Westend — in some cases nearly double normal market rates.
Portugal’s parliament has approved an amendment to the Penal Code that will allow courts to revoke Portuguese nationality from dual citizens convicted of serious crimes.
The amendment, approved on Tuesday with 157 votes in favor and 64 against, gives judges the power to impose the loss of citizenship as an additional penalty on those sentenced to at least four years in prison for grave offenses.
It applies only to individuals who acquired Portuguese nationality within the last 10 years and hold another nationality, ensuring that no one becomes stateless as a result.
The measure was backed by the center-right Social Democratic Party (PSD), the conservative CDS–People’s Party, the right-wing Chega, and the liberal party Iniciativa Liberal (IL). Left-wing parties, including the Socialist Party (PS), the Left Bloc, and the Communist Party (PCP), voted against it.
Chega assisted the center-right minority government in getting the bill over the line, but had pushed for even stricter terms, calling for an automatic 20-year loss of nationality rather than the optional 10-year limit now written into law.
The law also stipulates that anyone stripped of nationality may only reapply 10 years after their criminal record has been cleared, under the general rules of the nationality law.
The move follows another divisive parliamentary vote last week, when lawmakers approved a proposal to ban the wearing of burqas and niqabs in public spaces. The initiative, led by Chega, again passed its first reading with the support of PSD, CDS, and IL.
The bill would prohibit “the use of clothing designed to conceal or obstruct the display of the face in public spaces,” except for health reasons, religious sites, or diplomatic premises. Offenders could face fines ranging from €200 to €4,000.
Chega leader André Ventura said the measure was necessary to defend women’s rights and public security. “A woman forced to wear a burqa ceases to be free and independent and becomes an object,” he told parliament. He accused the left of hypocrisy, saying it “defends women’s rights while accepting a culture that oppresses them.”
"If you want to wear a burqa, there's a good solution. Catch a flight and go back to your country. It's easy to get to Portela Airport and buy a ticket back to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, wherever you want."
Speaking to reporters after the vote, Ventura addressed immigrants directly: “If you want to wear a burqa, there’s a good solution. Catch a flight and go back to your country. It’s easy to get to Portela Airport and buy a ticket back to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco — wherever you want. You’re not needed here, sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
Chega lawmaker Madalena Cordeiro echoed the sentiment, telling parliament, “This isn’t Bangladesh, where everything is done as they please. Enough of pretending that all cultures are equal.”
Both measures now head to the Constitutional Affairs Committee for further examination. The burqa ban will require presidential approval before becoming law, while the nationality penalty amendment is expected to face legal scrutiny amid warnings from pro-immigration advocacy groups that such a move is a violation of human rights.
A new Czech coalition government will be announced next week in what will be the latest administration in Europe that is skeptical of Brussels’ migration pact, Green Deal, and ongoing funding of the war in Ukraine.
ANO leader Andrej Babiš announced on Wednesday that his movement, along with the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and Motorists parties, has finalized a coalition agreement that will be signed on Monday, Nov. 3, coinciding with the inaugural session of the new Chamber of Deputies.
“We have an agreed coalition agreement. We agreed to sign it on Monday, the day the new Chamber of Deputies meets for the first time,” Babiš said in his regular morning video.
Babiš added that discussions will continue on the program statement of the incoming government and on appointments to parliamentary committees and leadership roles. According to Prague Castle, cited by Echo24, he is expected to present the coalition agreement and its program priorities to President Petr Pavel later this week.
He also said the ANO movement would propose new rules of procedure for the Chamber of Deputies to make parliamentary work more efficient. “Today, we will discuss the new rules of procedure of the Chamber of Deputies, our proposal, which the current government has been calling for, in particular, to be changed so that the Chamber of Deputies is effective,” Babiš said.
The pledge comes after years of obstruction tactics by ANO and SPD in opposition, which repeatedly delayed proceedings in the lower house. President Pavel had previously urged lawmakers to reflect on whether parliamentary debate rules should be reformed to prevent gridlock.
The new Chamber is expected to elect its leadership on Nov. 5, for which SPD chairman Tomio Okamura is considered a strong contender for Speaker.
The incoming government is poised to adopt a more nationalist and eurosceptic stance, potentially aligning Czechia with Viktor Orbán’s Hungary and Robert Fico’s Slovakia. The three coalition parties have pledged to reject the European Union’s migration pact and the ETS2 emissions trading scheme for transport and buildings.
“The European Union will not govern us. We will respect certain rules that apply there, but we are accountable to our voters,” said ANO First Deputy Chairman Karel Havlíček earlier this month, adding that the pact could be rejected “at the first meeting” of the new cabinet.
Babiš reiterated the stance, saying, “In our first government, we will reject the migration pact and we will reject ETS2.”
SPD leader Tomio Okamura confirmed that the coalition had reached a “compromise” on tightening residency permit rules, stating, “We have already agreed that we will reject the migration pact at the first meeting of the new potential government and that we will reject ETS2 emission permits because it only brings about higher prices.”
It means a possible rejuvenation of the Visegrád Four, or perhaps Visegrád Three-And-A-Half, with Polish President Karol Nawrocki sympathetic to the positions of Budapest, Bratislava, and Prague, but who faces political opposition in his own country with a Donald Tusk-led left-wing government.
A man living in an asylum accommodation has been convicted by the Tübingen Regional Court for pushing a male acquaintance out of a window and raping him, an incident that was captured by a surveillance camera. The 30-year-old man has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for aggravated assault and rape.
The incident date back to November 2024 in the city of Reutlingen and involved the 30-year-old man was drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana with the victim inside an asylum accommodation.
The two men reportedly began arguing with one another, when the defendant pushed him, according to the victim. The man fell seven meters out of the window (approximately 22 feet), according to a report from SWR.
The victim was critically injured on the ground when the asylum seeker came outside, pulled down his pants, and then raped him. A surveillance camera captured the rape.
Pedestrians eventually arrived and began shouting for help, with one of them striking the rapist with a handbag. However, this did not deter the man from continuing to rape the injured victim, according to a judge, who cited the shocking details in his verdict.
The prosecutors in the case demanded 12 years, while the defense attorneys argued for an acquittal, saying the rape could not be proven.
The suspect has no prior convictions but the judge stated that the man has no mental illness or addiction issues that could have mitigated the sentence. Even though the defendant was on drugs at the time of the incident, they were not a significant amount. The judge ruled the man acted “deliberately.” The migrant also did not care that the man was seriously injured or that witnesses were trying to stop him.
A 26-year-old French police officer, Éric G., has been imprisoned for 15 months in pre-trial detention for shooting an illegal Algerian migrant to death after the man broke into his 94-year-old grandmother’s garage in Bobigny in Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the most multicultural neighborhoods in Paris.
All of Éric G.’s requests to be released from pre-trial detention have been systematically denied — rejected a total of seven times. The officer’s lawyer indicates that the officer is being persecuted by the judge because he is a White man who shot an Algerian.
“Basically, it was a blond man with blue eyes who shot an Algerian,” said Éric G.’s lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard.
Remarkably, the case has not even gone to trial, well over a year after the officer shot the Algerian man to death. However, the officer remains incarcerated in extreme conditions.
The officer’s lawyer dismissed the court’s main argument for continued detention—the risk of recurrence—as nonsensical:
“The main argument [for continued detention] is the risk of recurrence. As if he were going to find himself tomorrow morning in his grandmother’s garden with his service weapon, in front of another squatter. It makes no sense,” Lienard stated. He also rejected the hypothesis of his client pressuring the civil party, denouncing the situation as “a profound injustice” rooted in political bias.
On Saturday, June 29, 2024, police officer Éric G., a 26-year-old, shot and killed Slimani, who had previous arrests on his record, including for illegal cigarette sales.
Éric G. maintains he was acting in self-defense.
The sequence of events began around 6:00 a.m. when Éric’s mother alerted him to suspicious noises at his elderly grandmother’s house, following an incident from the day before in which someone was trying to force open the garage door.
Éric G. was off-duty at the time of this incident. He said he took his service weapon and went to the house. He said that he believed his grandmother might be prone to hallucinations, which is why he did not want to call emergency services right away.
In a report written by Éric G. after the incident, he described the situation when he first arrived.
“Arriving at his home, I put on my police armband, climbed over the fence, and headed towards the garage, the area that had been damaged and squatted the day before,” reads the report.
The garage, a small outbuilding, contained the individual, Amar Slimani, visibly asleep.
Éric, who was off-duty but wearing his police armband, contacted 17 (the police emergency number) after confirming the man’s presence. He stated, “I announced my position, told him he was being arrested for trespassing, and told him to stay calm, with which he initially seemed to cooperate,” in his report. While on the phone, the situation escalated.
According to Éric, the suspect became increasingly hostile. The man “became increasingly uncooperative and ended up confronting me in a very provocative and threatening manner.” Éric drew his telescopic baton, issuing a final warning:
“I gave him my final order, pointing with my left hand toward the back of the garage. And brandishing the telescopic baton in my right hand, I told him in a strong and firm tone to move away and back off.”
The police officer claims that after a brief stare-down, Slimani grabbed what he mistook for a metal sledgehammer, later identified as a caulking gun, and armed himself.
“He had won the balance of power,” Éric stated in his report.
🇫🇷🚨A French anti-crime officer was beaten savagely by a group of thugs in the French city of Tourcoing.
Spectators watched on and filmed the brutal assault.
He suffered severe injuries and remains hospitalized.
Fearing for his life, Éric said that he tried to flee but realized he was cornered, as the man was chasing him:
“I immediately made the decision to flee toward the street. During this escape, I realized he was chasing me and that I could no longer escape.”
Éric drew his service firearm, turned, and fired seven times, hitting Slimani five times. The victim died shortly after, despite Éric’s attempt to administer first aid.
In his report, Éric described his immediate actions: “My priority is to help him. I place his body in the lateral safety position and take his pulse: I feel movement. […] I try as best I can to apply what I was taught in police school and during continuing training regarding self-defense. I think the individual is alive but unconscious. I call 17 again to request medical assistance and to be guided. I am still alone.”
Prosecutor initially recommended not to prosecute
Éric G. was immediately placed in police custody and subsequently in pretrial detention, against the initial advice of the prosecutor’s office. Fifteen months later, despite guarantees for his release, including offers of employment and housing outside the department, every request has been rejected.
His mother, Michelle, expressed her despair: “He needed people to welcome him outside the department and a promise of employment. Well, there are two families waiting for him and two employers ready to put him to work!” she swore.
She questioned the severity of his detention: “Why don’t they let him go out with an electronic bracelet? Why are they treating him as if he were the worst serial killer?”
She added: “My son shot to avoid dying, not to kill! What’s the point of persecuting him like this?”
National Rally backs officer
The Algerian’s family is claiming that the Algerian man, who broke into the grandmother’s garage, is the victim of a “racist crime.”
Clearly, the case has become political, with the National Rally backing the officer. Yassine Bouzrou, the lawyer for Amar Slimani’s relatives, confirmed this reality, saying, “We believe it more than ever, now that we know the family has the support of the National Rally.”
The psychological assessment of Éric G. is now being used against him. The report claims he is “rigid” psychologically and expressed little sympathy for the Algerian man.
The lawyer for the Algerian is also going on the attack, saying that continued pretrial detention is “the least we can do.”
The laywer claims that the putty gun did not represent a weapon and that the seven shots fired by the officer showed his determination to kill the Algerian. He said Éric G.’s version of events featured “numerous lies” and is “completely contrary to the truth.” He said that Slimani may have simply been an illegal worker doing “odd jobs” for the grandmother. The officer’s lawyers vehemently deny this claim, saying that the man had no tools when he was found at the scene.
Furthermore, Éric G.’s family completely denies this claim. The officer’s mother said her family has now been destroyed and that it appears their son is the victim of revenge.
“I recognize that their family is destroyed, but what’s the point of destroying ours now? Is this revenge?” the mother asked.
Éric G.’s mother further confirmed her son is struggling in prison. In French prisons, police officers are targets and must be kept in extreme isolation.
“He has dark thoughts, it breaks my heart. He told me that if we weren’t there, he would have hanged himself already,” said Éric G.’s mother.
As for Éric G.’s grandmother, she passed away months ago. She was never told her grandson was incarcerated. This measure was taken by the family to “spare her” the pain, according to the officer’s lawyer, Lienard.
A 34-year-old Algerian man living illegally in France appeared in court on Tuesday to face charges of raping a 79-year-old woman in her Paris apartment after meeting her in a grocery store and offering to carry her groceries home.
The incident occurred in April 2024 in the 20th arrondissement of the French capital. The suspect has been remanded in custody since that time.
According to prosecutors, cited by Le Parisien, the man met the victim on April 14, 2024, around 6:30 p.m. at her local grocery store, where he offered his assistance. The elderly woman accepted his help and invited him in for a glass of wine. Prosecutors allege that he then began to touch her and raped her despite her pleas for him to stop. He reportedly left the apartment afterward, telling her they might see each other again.
The elderly woman called the police that same evening to report a sexual assault. When officers visited her the next day, the suspect allegedly phoned her home. A police officer who answered heard him identify himself under a false name. DNA collected from the victim’s chest and clothing later matched the suspect following his arrest.
During questioning, the accused initially denied any sexual contact but later admitted to “sexual gestures,” insisting there had been no penetration. His defense attorney, Julien Zanatta, argues that the case rests largely on the testimony of a vulnerable woman. “When she first called police, she described a sexual assault, and as time went on, the allegations escalated to rape,” Zanatta said. “Her daughter and stepson have said she suffers from cognitive disorders and has previously made false accusations against others.”
“I did not rape this woman,” the man told the court on Tuesday. A mechanic by trade, he has lived in Seine-Saint-Denis for nine years without legal status. He has no prior criminal record, and a psychiatric assessment found no sign of mental illness. Investigators, however, described him as “a man who lives in constant concealment,” with no official address, no registered job, and a drinking problem.
The defense maintains that the DNA evidence only confirms his client’s presence at the apartment and, at most, limited sexual contact, not rape.
Sexual assaults in France by foreign nationals, particularly involving elderly victims, have increased at a disturbing rate in recent years.
Earlier this month, a Guinean migrant living illegally in France was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the rape of an 83-year-old woman during a daytime burglary at her home in La Penne-sur-Huveaune last year.
In September last year, a convicted rapist from Guadeloupe was handed a 20-year prison sentence for the attempted rape of a 102-year-old resident of a nursing home in Rouen.
Specifically, when it comes to Algerians, most criminals are not deported back to their home country after serving their sentences. Remix News previously reported back in 2022, after the murder of 12-year-old Lola by an Algerian migrant with a deportation order, that just 22 of the 7,731 Algerians set for deportation between July and January 2021 were returned.
Former Frontex chief and National Rally MEP Fabrice Leggeri has spoken about how the European Union elite exerted immense pressure on him when he tried to defend EU borders against mass migration, including a key commissioner who claimed it was his job to “welcome migrants.”
The Frontex Fundamental Rights Office has gradually expanded significantly. In 2020 and 2021, Leggeri became the target of political attacks from the European Commission, led by Commissioner Ylva Johansson of the socialist Swedish Workers’ Party.
“When I looked through her CV before our first meeting, I thought: ‘She’s probably impossible to work with.’ But she was a commissioner and had real influence,” said the Frenchman. “[…] At our first meeting, I explained to her what we were doing – developing a European border and coast guard, with uniforms and weapons, and why we were experiencing some delays. She interrupted me and said: ‘You don’t need weapons and uniforms.’ Because, as she said, the role of the border guard is to welcome migrants,” Leggeri reported.
He also said that Johansson threatened him twice, telling him: “Like it or not, your job is to welcome migrants.”
Leggeri was subjected to pressure for attempting to fulfill Frontex’s mandate – supporting member states in managing the EU’s external borders and combating cross-border crime, including illegal migration.
The MEP, now a member of the Patriots for Europe group, shared the details with Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik, a member of the Confederation’s European Parliament, according to the Do Rzezcy news portal.
Leggeri explained that initially, the European Commission showed some support for Frontex’s actions, but at the same time, it was increasingly pressured by the proliferation of pro-immigration NGOs.
Their “activists,” calling themselves “defenders of fundamental rights,” gradually attempted to “advise” and “consult” Frontex against counteracting the influx of illegal migrants. They recommended, for example, busing illegal immigrants from the Belarusian-Lithuanian border to Lithuania and Poland.
Therefore, Leggeri advised the Polish authorities against using Frontex’s assistance.
“It was October 2019. That’s when I felt real pressure, political hostility towards the very idea of border management. Previously, the idea was to create a kind of European border guard to support national border services. But from the moment Johansson arrived, various organized actions began against me and Frontex itself,” Leggeri said. He added that George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and some left-wing media outlets were involved.
As he explained, Johansson and Soros’ operatives worked to take over Frontex from within and reinforce left-wing NGO activists who would ensure the entry of illegal migrants into European countries. The idea was to create a command structure parallel to that of the member states, in order to paralyze border defenses against illegal aliens. This selected staff, so-called “fundamental rights controllers” and “independent officers,” went into the field, including to Lithuania, and began intimidating member states’ border guards by claiming that the orders issued by their superiors were allegedly illegal.
A Syrian bus driver is on trial in Germany, accused of attempting to murder his former partner and their infant son by setting fire to her apartment while they were inside.
At the Munich Regional Court, prosecutors alleged that Abdulrahman K., 31, acted out of anger over €367 a month in child support payments.
According to the indictment, Abdulrahman K. crept into the stairwell of the apartment building one evening in March 2024, poured gasoline through a crack in the door of his ex-partner Jenny G.’s flat, and ignited it.
Jenny G., 31, told the court that she woke to an explosion and escaped through the flames carrying her 1-year-old son. She suffered burns to her face and arm, while the child was unharmed. The fire caused €62,000 in damage and rendered the apartment uninhabitable.
“The shock still runs deep,” she told the court, as cited by Bild. “I have anxiety attacks, constant nightmares. My ex wanted to burn me and my son.”
The defendant has admitted to starting the fire but denied intending to kill. “I didn’t want to kill anyone,” he said in court, claiming that he had five liters of gasoline but only poured out a glass in front of the door. He added, “Family is the most important thing to me.”
Prosecutors reject this, saying he planned to kill both mother and child to escape his financial obligations. At the time of the attack, he was reportedly €1,700 in arrears on maintenance payments, burdened with €110,000 in debt, and earning around €2,000 a month.
The couple met in 2023, and Jenny G. became pregnant shortly after. Prosecutors say Abdulrahman K. showed little interest in the child after the relationship ended and became enraged when ordered to pay child support.
He faces life imprisonment if convicted of attempted murder.
Police have confirmed that a 22-year-old Afghan national has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder after a triple stabbing in Uxbridge left one man dead and two others injured.
Officers were called to Midhurst Gardens at around 4:40 p.m. on Monday following reports of multiple stabbings.
Emergency services found three people injured at the scene. A 49-year-old man, suffering from stab wounds, died despite the efforts of paramedics. A 14-year-old boy was taken to the hospital with knife injuries, and another man, aged 45, remains in the hospital with life-changing injuries.
Wayne Broadhurst, 49, was stabbed 15 times while walking his dog. He is not believed to have known his attacker.
Wayne Broadhurst was just walking his dog on a Monday evening; something millions of Europeans do every day after work.
He was attacked, initially from behind, and stabbed 15 times in a senseless act of violence. As he was on the floor, lifting his hands to defend himself, his… pic.twitter.com/hYlqWM1qdX
Police said the suspect was tasered and arrested nearby before being taken into custody. GB News reported that the man is an Afghan national. According to The Times newspaper, he arrived in the U.K. in the back of a lorry in November 2020 and claimed asylum, which was successful. He was granted leave to remain in 2022.
Footage of the senseless murder has circulated on social media, showing the attacker approaching Mr Broadhurst from behind, before stabbing him, causing him to fall down. As he lay on the ground, lifting his hands to defend himself, his attacker continued to plunge the blade into his body multiple times.
BREAKING: Police have confirmed that the suspect arrested for the triple stabbing in Uxbridge, Hillingdon, is an Afghan national.
Chief Superintendent Jill Horsfall described the incident as “a shocking and senseless act of violence that has left one man dead and two others injured.” She added that the attack “will have understandably caused concern to the local community” and that additional officers would remain in the area “to provide reassurance while detectives work intensely to piece together the circumstances.”
Local resident Ben James, 28, told reporters that his family member witnessed the suspect “come out of a House in Multiple Occupation [HMO] screaming and shouting.” When James arrived at the scene an hour later, he said there were “piles of blood” and “two people on the floor.” He added, “It’s a bit scary, but it’s becoming the normal round here.”
Another witness, mother-of-two Sinead Clarke, 36, said she saw police chase and taser the suspect. “There was a man running away from the police. The police tasered him and arrested him. I think there were four people chasing him,” she said, adding that she turned up the television to distract her young children from the scene.
🇬🇧🔴 "Someone's been stabbed over here. Someone's been stabbed here. Babe, I can't take it."
One man has died and two others, including a minor, were injured in a stabbing spree on Monday evening in Hillingdon, west London.
Remix News showed footage of a woman talking to her partner as she walked down the street while officers were attempting to resuscitate the victims.
“Someone’s been stabbed over here. Someone’s been stabbed here. Babe, I can’t take it,” she could be heard saying.
A spokesperson for the London Ambulance Service said crews responded rapidly, including a trauma team from London’s Air Ambulance. “We treated three people at the scene in total,” the spokesperson said. “We took one patient to a major trauma center, but sadly, despite the best efforts of our crews, a patient was pronounced dead at the scene.”
Police said the investigation is ongoing, and the suspect remains in custody while inquiries continue.
A migrant from the Congo with a long history of fraud remains on the run from law enforcement after being sentenced to over six years in prison for posing as a fake psychiatrist. The man, Clive Lygidre Etitie, was convicted for treating 521 psychiatric patients, many of them in a fragile mental state, at the New Psychiatric Hospital in the French city of Navarre.
For nearly two years, between November 2015 and May 2017, the Congolese man utilized a fake Romanian psychiatric diploma to treat patients, including making diagnoses and distributing psychotropic medication. He was also involved in counseling patients, in which patients are said to have divulged sensitive information about their mental state.
There is no telling how much damage the man did to hundreds of patients, all due to authorities failing to conduct a proper background check on the fake foreign doctor.
The convicted man, Etitie, had already been tracked in the past for posing as a nurse by the Jura Primary Health Insurance Fund (CPAM), which is seeking €125,000 in damages against the man in a civil case. CPAM actually discovered the man was working at the New Psychiatric Hospital while it was conducting research on his various medical frauds dating back to 2014.
Just to highlight what a failure French authorities were is the fact that when he was hired as a psychiatrist, he had already been convicted in 2014 by the Lyon Criminal Court for “illegal practice of nursing.”
As the French newspaper Paris Normandie wrote, “His whole life is nothing but lies. And running away.”
During searches of his home and car, police discovered 16 false administrative documents, including fake diplomas, and ink stamps issued by French and foreign government agencies. It was also during this search that investigators discovered that, in addition to his psychiatric treatment, he had also been receiving Responsible Social Security (RSA) social benefits since September 2015.
In October 2024, the African migrant was sentenced in his absence to four and a half years in prison and “a permanent ban on practicing a health-related profession by the Évreux Criminal Court.” However, the fraud appealed the decision.
He was imprisoned at the time, but the court ordered his release. Now, Etitie remains on the run.
Etitie’s appeal did not go as planned either, with the Rouen Court of Appeal only adding to his sentence. On Oct. 20, 2025, he was sentenced to six years in prison. If police ever find the man, he will have to serve his sentence.
Remarkably, French police have not released any mugshot or photo of Etitie, despite the man being on the run from law enforcement for his grave medical fraud.
Medical fraud and foreigners
The case harkens back to the major fraud problems that are presented with foreign medical labor, with this type of case being seen again and again. In Germany, Saudi national Taleb al-Abdulmohsen treated psychiatric patients for years before driving a vehicle into a massive crowd at a Christmas market last year. Remix News reported on the man’s extraordinary case, in which he received medical licenses despite incredible red flags and fraud. He was seen as so incompetent at his job that fellow medical staffers named him “Dr. Google.”
As Remix News previously detailed in 2023, Europe has been pillaging Africa’s doctors. The doctors who are valuable should be available to those in Africa, where medical services are far worse off. However, the report details how many fraudsters are making their way into Europe’s medical system.
While many doctors and nurses in the Middle East and Africa have legitimate medical credentials, it cannot be denied that Africa and the Middle East feature some of the most corrupt countries in the world. In turn, there has been a serious issue with medical degree corruption. This has been seen in a range of countries, including South Africa, in which students trade cash bribes for diplomas and other qualifications. The reality is that many of these schemes go largely undetected. In Liberia, officials claimed one medical school was a “diploma mill,” only for the school operator to turn around and claim the officials threatened to shut down his university if he did not pay them bribes.
In countries such as the U.K., doctors have been found to have been working for up to 19 years with fake medical degrees.
🇸🇾🇩🇪 German politicians are spreading misleading information about Syrian doctors working in Germany.
5,000 Syrian doctors may sound like a lot, but there are 420,000 doctors in Germany. The number of Syrian doctors is approximately just enough to cover the 1 million Syrian… pic.twitter.com/fHJh9945y9
The practice of fake doctors carrying degrees from fake medical schools is widespread in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. While a fake degree may not be enough to gain a visa to Europe, more elaborate schemes have a far better chance of fooling European authorities.
Even in Europe, the issue of cash for medical diplomas exists, particularly in countries such as Ukraine. The country’s universities not only train Ukrainians for the medical profession, but also a wide range of foreign students who earn their degree in the country. Other nations like Romania face a medical system so corrupt that many doctors are choosing to work elsewhere, but that same corruption may follow these workers into their new host countries.
While there are many talented doctors and healthcare workers outside of Europe, the problem for these nations is that more money and a better quality of life can be had in the West. For both the fraudsters and the skilled, the West remains a major draw.
Award-winning broadcaster, writer, and former politician Sir Trevor Phillips has said that Muslim grooming gangs have targeted “tens of thousands” of White children across Britain, describing the abuse as “industrial” in scale and protected by political fear.
Speaking to Times Radio, Phillips said the ongoing grooming gangs inquiry has been hindered by authorities’ reluctance to confront the link between race and sexual predation.
“What’s coming together here is a really horrid combination that nobody really ever wants to talk about — the intersection of race and sexual predation,” he said. “Let’s be honest, a lot of this is bringing those two things together in an unpleasant way.”
🇬🇧 “We’re talking about tens of thousands. It’s industrial. These children are chosen because they are White.”
An important shift in the language being used by mainstream broadcasters in relation to Asian grooming gangs operating in the U.K. pic.twitter.com/Ps6D0eyQd4
Phillips accused successive governments and local Labour councils of failing to act for fear of inflaming community tensions. “The government clearly never wanted these two things to be put together,” he said. “Much of this took place in areas run by local Labour councils, and the authorities who ought to be watching over this — stopping it, monitoring it — did nothing.”
He said that, unlike other forms of child abuse, these crimes were not hidden. “The difference with this grooming gangs thing is that everybody knows. It happens in public. The girls are first attracted by young men from within those communities — flash cars, cigarettes, drugs — and then they’re passed around amongst older men,” Phillips said.
Drawing on decades of reporting on child abuse, he added that the victims were deliberately chosen “because they are White and because they are outside the community of the groomers.”
Phillips, who won a Royal Television Society award for a 1988 documentary on pedophiles, said this form of abuse stood apart due to its vast scale and the complicity of public institutions. “These people know that they are protected,” he said. “They’re protected politically, by social workers, by local police, because everybody says we don’t want to ramp up tensions in the community.”
The remarks come as the government’s ongoing inquiry into grooming gangs faces criticism for being too limited in scope. The investigation follows revelations such as the 2014 Jay Report, which found that more than 1,400 girls were abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, often by groups of men of predominantly Pakistani heritage. Similar networks were later uncovered in Rochdale, Telford, Oxford, and dozens of other towns, primarily across England.
Phillips warned against attempts to downplay the racial and cultural dimensions of the scandal, calling it “completely different” from other forms of child exploitation. “This could not be more different,” he said. “That’s the scandal here.”
Me and the other survivors have come together to speak about the main issues that lead to us resigning and we have responded to the home secretary's statment last night with conditions that would need to be met to ensure that this inquiry runs smoothly for us to consider… pic.twitter.com/l6JTzHO811
In recent months, the government’s inquiry into grooming gangs has faced renewed controversy after several victims resigned from its advisory panel, saying their voices were being ignored and that the investigation had become “toothless.” Former participants accused officials of narrowing the inquiry’s scope to avoid confronting the ethnic and religious factors of the abuse.
Rape gang survivor Ellie Reynolds tells the truth about real racism in Britain. pic.twitter.com/jHgbbYTKZX
At a press conference with Reform U.K. leader Nigel Farage on Monday, one rape gang survivor, Ellie Reynolds, told journalists, “It’s taken the media decades to recognize grooming gangs that are coming over and raping our children because they are White.”
In a joint letter addressed to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood last week, four survivors who resigned from the Victims and Survivors Liaison Panel said they had been “dismissed, silenced, and called liars” by government officials, including Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips, whom they accused of publicly contradicting their accounts.
They said they would only consider rejoining the inquiry if Phillips resigned, if survivors were consulted on the appointment of an independent chair, and if the inquiry’s focus remained strictly on grooming gangs and group-based child sexual exploitation. The survivors said their conditions represented the “bare minimum” required to restore trust, warning that without them, the process risked becoming “yet another exercise in protecting the reputations of failed institutions rather than seeking truth and justice for victims.”
Women say they are increasingly afraid of traveling on Paris’s RER C line, particularly after the attempted rape of a woman in Choisy-le-Roi by an Egyptian illegal migrant earlier this month.
Several female commuters told Le Figaro they have adopted precautionary measures as part of their everyday routine. Some avoid traveling alone, others choose seats carefully, or carry pepper spray.
“Every woman has a story to tell about the RER,” said Alicia, a café worker who lives between Paris and Amsterdam. “I feel much safer in Amsterdam,” she added.
Le Figaro listed several techniques used by women to deter would-be attackers. It wrote:
“Clothilde has learned never to ride a train alone. Inès takes off her headphones to ‘listen to her surroundings.’ Adèle holds her keys between her fingers, like claws. Lisa ‘creates a protective bubble’ for herself with earphones stuck in her ears. Joe never lets a man sit behind her. Lola wears several layers of clothing. Tiphaine sits next to a man who inspires confidence. Élodie always carries pepper spray in her bag. Hortense carries an umbrella with a spike on the end. Some use the ‘turkey technique’ in cases of imminent danger: making animal noises to mimic madness.”
🇫🇷🔴 Many young women in France have a "subway shirt" for avoiding harassment on the train system.
It has become a "reflex" to put on more clothing before getting on public transport, even in summer.
Studies show such behavior is widespread. A 2022 Paris Region Institute report found that most women develop strategies to avoid harassment. Sociologist Julien Noble of the CNRS said the RER network, a hybrid commuter rail and rapid transit system connecting central Paris with outlying areas, “concentrates a greater social mix,” making it perceived as less safe than the metro.
In March, Remix News reported on new data from the National Observatory on Violence Against Women, which showed an 86 percent uptick in sexual violence on French buses and trains in the last decade. Young women are most targeted; 75 percent of victims are under the age of 30, while 36 percent are minors.
Some 63 percent of those arrested for sexual assault were foreign nationals. That does not include naturalized French citizens who are categorized in statistics as French.
🇫🇷🚨 Sexual violence against women on French public transport has increased 86% since 2016, according to new data released today from the National Observatory on Violence against Women (Miprof)
“While most violence against women is committed by members of their close circle, the fact remains that public spaces, and particularly public transport networks, remain places where women are exposed to sexist and sexual violence as soon as they enter them,” noted Miprof Secretary General Roxana Maracineanu at the time.
The survey also showed that 7 out of 10 women who live in the Île-de-France region have already been victims of sexual violence during their lifetime.
Few victims pursue legal action. “We tell ourselves that it’s a waste of time and that it’s unlikely that the perpetrator will be found,” said Claire Geronimi, founder of Éclats de Femmes, an association supporting assault survivors. She founded the association after being sexually assaulted herself by a foreign national.
🇫🇷🔴 On a Paris metro: "You French are poor sons of b**ches. It's Africa that’s rich. You motherf**ker."
"I f**k your mothers, in the name of Allah, in the name of Allah, I f**k their mother, in the name of Allah, you will see!" pic.twitter.com/pAWhgKH5lh
Le Figaro notes that transport operators and regional authorities have introduced several measures in response. Île-de-France Mobilités has expanded surveillance, installing 80,000 cameras and increasing security staff. Regional president Valérie Pécresse wants AI-based video monitoring to immediately identify assaults occurring on public transport.
Proposals for women-only carriages have been suggested but not adopted. Feminist associations argue that such a measure would normalize the problem rather than solve it. “It would mean that we have accepted insecurity,” said Geronimi, “and that separating men and women is the only solution.”
Le Figaro’s investigation comes after Jhordana, a Brazilian tourist visiting her brother in Paris, was subjected to an attempted rape by an Arab attacker on a morning commuter train on Oct. 15.
🇫🇷‼️ A Brazilian tourist was subjected to a vicious sexual assault on a French train on Wednesday morning, and only escaped being raped thanks to the intervention of a brave woman who filmed the assailant to scare him off.
At Choisy-le-Roi station around 8:30 a.m., most passengers got off, leaving Jhordana alone with her attacker. She soon realized a man had been staring at her. He briefly stepped off the train but then returned as the doors closed, leaving only the two of them inside.
“He walked towards me without speaking. I was panicking, I stood up,” she told Le Parisien through her brother, who translated her account. “Then he pushed me, still without a word. I tried to escape, but he pulled down my pants. It’s clear he was trying to rape me.”
The attacker bit her on the lip when she resisted, slapped her, and groped her buttocks and breasts. When she tried to call for help, he placed his hand around her throat to stop her from screaming. “He choked me to silence me. That’s when I felt like I had no more strength,” Jhordana recalled. “I saw myself dying.”
Thankfully, a woman from another carriage noticed the assault and stepped in, opting to record the attacker, who subsequently exited the train at the next stop and fled.
On Sunday evening, Parisian authorities confirmed they had charged a homeless Egyptian national, who was the subject of an unenforced deportation order, with the attack.
🇫🇷🔴 "it seems he is looking for prey."
Serial groper, Tunisian migrant Nidhal O., sexually assaulted 3 different women in the Paris Metro — all on camera.
He was arrested in December 2023 and was finally sentenced to 11 years in prison on Sept. 26.
Earlier this month, a Tunisian national. 26-year-old Nidhal O., was sentenced to 11 years in prison and a permanent ban from France after being found guilty of six sexual assaults and one attempted rape, committed primarily on the Paris metro system.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced that the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Budapest is a foregone conclusion, despite both parties canceling the meetup.
“This summit will take place. Take it as a fact,” he said in an interview with M1 television. He said that although a specific date had not yet been announced, “the framework for this meeting already exists” and when both Putin and Trump decide to meet, the meetup “can be finalized very quickly.”
He referred to the Sharm el-Sheikh peace summit on the Gaza Strip as an example, which he noted was finalized in just three days after prior, behind-the-scenes preparations.
Given that some commentators signaled that the meetup cancellation could mean the war is set to drag on for years, Orbán’s statement appears to be a drastically more optimistic assessment of the situation. Furthermore, Trump has stated that he will not meet with Putin again unless a firm peace deal is hammered out beforehand.
“I’ll need to know that we’ll reach an agreement. I won’t waste my time,” Trump said during his visit to Qatar. He said his goal is peace and said he maintained a close personal relationship with Putin, although he said that Putin’s current stance was “very disappointing.”
Orbán emphasized that the Trump-Putin talks should address European security more broadly and not be limited to negotiations solely about the war between Ukraine and Russia. He also urged Europe to begin direct negotiations with Moscow to help hasten the peace process.
Russia appears to be holding the door open to the Budapest meetup. A few days ago, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke about the cancellation.
“There were no clear agreements on a specific date. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to say that the summit has been canceled,” he said in an interview with Pavel Zarubin. He added that there was a desire from both sides to resume dialogue in the near future.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that Putin should be arrested if he attempts to fly to Budapest, as Hungary is an EU country. Other leaders in Europe may also pounce at the opportunity to bring Putin into custody, as he is wanted on war crime charges by the ICC>
Peskov also noted that “not everyone is interested in holding the summit,” but did not specify anyone or any countries.
One major point of concern for the Hungarians is their continued flow of Russian gas and oil, which helps Hungary achieve some of the lowest energy bills in Europe.
The Hungarian prime minister said he wanted to persuade Trump to lift sanctions on the Russian oil sector.
“Donald Trump is wrong,” he said during a visit to Italy, referring to restrictions imposed on Rosneft and Lukoil. Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said that Orbán could appear in Washington “even next week” if necessary.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has estimated that new sanctions could reduce Russian oil exports by 50 percent, which would mean a loss of up to $5 billion per month for Russia. Some experts believe this could significantly reduce financing for Russia’s war, although others point out that Moscow has learned to circumvent “simple energy sanctions” that are implemented.
A new play in Budapest, written and directed by Béla Pintér, shows a character being put in a box and beaten to death.
As graphic and perhaps unappealing as that may be for many theater-goers, there is an even bigger problem with “Kabuki”: Everyone agrees the female character, played by a man by the way, is intended to represent Maria Schmidt, a major ally of Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán and director of a few institutions, namely, the 20th Century Institute, the 21st Century Institute, and the House of Terror Museum.
As the opposition-friendly portal 444 wrote: “But then everything gets really rough when the Fidesz oligarch, Schanda (!) Vera, who looks like Mária Schmidt, asks the poet to be their party’s candidate. The man (…) reluctantly admits that he is unable to run, as he finds the way the government party is treating the martyred (Russian opposition leader) Alexei Navalny so outrageous. The woman is completely upset about this, as she doesn’t think Navalny is worth anything and believes that Russia has free elections, unlike the West.”
The portal continues, stating that “the woman annoys him so much” that he “throws her into a large box and beats her to death with a stick.”
One commentary in Mandiner hit home as to the boundaries being crossed “in the name of art.”
“Béla Pintér’s latest play, in which the beating of the director of the House of Terror Museum is played out on stage, is not art: it is at once hate speech, political incitement, and moral corruption. The play doesn’t make you think, it doesn’t invite dialogue – it just hits you. Both literally and figuratively.
“For someone to dramatize the death of a living, public figure and elevate it to a theatrical experience is not a brave gesture, but a tasteless, inhumane provocation,” wrote Katalin Szily, a member of Fidesz’s coalition partner, KDNP.
“Béla Pintér and his company have now abused this responsibility. This is not satire, not social criticism, but cold cynicism and intellectual vandalism. And the viewer, who watches and applauds, unwittingly becomes part of this ritual of hatred,” she continued.
“Where is the line? Where do we draw the line? Tomorrow, maybe they’ll stage the execution of politicians and journalists and applaud?”
Szily also poignantly asks, “Where, oh where, are the voices in the name female solidarity?”
Author Gabor Bokor also wrote: “Béla Pintér is an important figure in the Hungarian theater world, a pioneer of alternative stage plays, with which he has gained many fans.”
“We can think whatever we want about Mária Schmidt’s statements, we can criticize her in a play, this is part of artistic freedom, but I beg you: Kill her?” he asks.
After all the ceremony, congratulations, and even talk of Nobel Peace prizes, the reality on the ground in Gaza looks bleak.
“There will be no peace in Gaza as long as Islamists rule the strip,” Timea Hajdu headlined her article for Mandiner.
The primary concern emphasized in Hajdu’s piece is that Hamas will “derail” what she calls a “fragile peace,” with executions already well documented by the terrorist group of anyone seen as hostile to their intentions or known to have collaborated with Israel to bring about the peace deal in the first place.
Hajdu quotes Tablet’s Michael Doran, who said during a podcast: “This is clearly a message, they are indicating that they are the masters of the region, and at the same time they are sending a message to the Arab countries about what should be done with the peacekeepers.”
Accusing Hamas of stalling for time by falsely claiming they cannot find the rest of the hostages killed, Hajdu predicts that, despite fulfilling the first part of U.S. President Trump’s lauded peace plan, it will most likely go no further.
The return of all hostages, the removal of weapons, the expulsion of Hamas, respect for the security boundary, and long-term deradicalization: These are the five steps to fulfill. But they are already stuck at the first, with the second a long shot, which is, of course, vital for the third, and so on.
Hajdu is also insistent that only Israel will be able to disarm Hamas, but how can this happen without ending the ceasefire agreement?
At the peace summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey also signed on to support Trump’s plan, but none of them undertook the task of disarming the terrorist organization. Quoting Doran: “On paper, Arab countries support disarmament, but in practice they will do nothing to promote it.”
Or better yet, in the words of Jordan’s King Abdullah: “What is the mandate of security forces inside of Gaza? And we hope that it is peacekeeping, because if it’s peace enforcing, nobody will want to touch that,” he told BBC Panorama.
He also noted that even for the task of peacekeeping, it will take time for his country and Egypt to train local Palestinian police.
“Israel has experience with what happens when an enemy is called upon to disarm,” Hajdu reminds readers. “After the 2006 Lebanon war, UN Security Council Resolution 1701 stated that Hezbollah’s complete disarmament was necessary to bring the conflict to a permanent end. However, this did not happen, and Israel eventually had to invade Lebanon in 2024 to push back Hezbollah’s lines, and years of Mossad planning were needed to eliminate the terrorist organization’s top brass in a sting operation.”
Given these harsh realities, it is difficult to see any chance of enduring peace when the U.S. seems to think Israel must “keep the ceasefire from collapsing” and that Arab countries will somehow disarm Hamas.
Hajdu then turns to a piece in JNS by Jonathan S. Tobin, its founding editor-in-chief, who essentially laughed off Trump’s envoys for believing that Qatar and Turkey would help keep the peace. He had some particularly harsh truths regarding Qatar.
“Even Trump seems to have swallowed the Kool-Aid about Qatar’s being a good friend of the United States and a tireless worker for peace. That’s in spite of the fact that the Gulf emirate is largely responsible for enabling Hamas to start the war and also spreading Islamist propaganda via its Al Jazeera media outlet and by sponsoring and funding the Muslim Brotherhood,” he writes.
Tobin also called out Trump’s team, and specifically VP Vance, for thinking a “fantasy security team,” including Muslim and Arab countries, “but not Americans,” would take care of getting Hamas to lay down its weapons.
“Arab governments may dislike Hamas and wish to be rid of it, but the chances that any of them would actually take on that job themselves are about as close to zero as one can get.”
Tobin’s conclusion is not at all rosy, as without the voluntary disarmament of Hamas, Israel will have no choice but to eventually intervene. And all the ceremony in Egypt will be for naught.
“It is just as important to point out that the unwillingness of the Trump team to honestly address that chasm between the expectations they have encouraged and reality may be a source of real conflict between the United States and Israel,” he adds, noting that this could also lead to boosting those in the MAGA movement who are “both isolationist and hostile” to Israel.
Hajdu also rightfully points out that even without Hamas, do the people of Palestine want to live in peace with their Jewish neighbors? “Hamas may lose the leadership of Gaza, but the hatred that has been cherished for almost 80 years will not go with them,” she writes.
Citing “the most optimistic experts,” she says they view Hamas as too destroyed to ever regain power, and Israel as easily able to go in and take out any remaining terrorists. But how does this result in Trump’s “everlasting” peace?
The U.S. has been clear that action will be taken if Hamas refuses to give back the rest of the bodies and disarm. And yet, this most certainly would involve Israeli troops, not American, with Hajdu also highlighting that the IDF has already had to “take action against terrorists several times last week.”
During his visit to Budapest for a Hungarian-Israeli business forum, Israeli FM Gideon Sa’ar also did not shy away from bringing up the “peace” process in Gaza, essentially confirming that Trump’s “Deal of the Century” was falling flat.
Accusing the Palestinian Authority of continuing its “pay-for-slay” policy, Sa’ar said that financial benefits are still flowing to the families of slain terrorists, in violation of the peace deal. He also laid blame on the EU for legitimizing the practice.
“The terrorists are collecting their payments from the Palestinian post office. And the PA is now making additional payments to evil terrorists released as part of the [ceasefire] deal,” he said, as quoted by The Times of Israel.
The Israeli FM also made clear that Israel will not tolerate any presence of Turkish troops on the ground in Gaza, throwing a wrench in whatever “constructive role” VP Vance had intended (or hoped) for Turkey.
“In Egypt, grand promises were made barely two weeks ago,” Hajdu writes, reminding readers of the agreement signed, meant to bring “comprehensive and lasting peace” to Gaza and ensure “friendly and mutually beneficial relations between Israel and its regional neighbors.”
As King Abdullah told the BBC: “If we don’t solve this problem, if we don’t find a future for Israelis and Palestinians and a relationship between the Arab and Muslim world and Israel, we’re doomed.”
Yesterday, Budapest hosted the largest-ever business forum between Hungary and Israel.
A total of 62 Hungarian and 36 Israeli companies gathered in the Hungarian capital, with Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó sending a clear message: the Jewish community in Hungary is safe.
“We in Hungary are proud to guarantee the safest home in all of Europe for the Jewish community living here,” Szijjártó stated.
Against this backdrop, bilateral relations between Hungary and Israel are strong, and deals are being made to the advantage of both countries.
The foreign minister highlighted that economic cooperation between the two countries “has expanded to completely modern economic areas: research and development, technological cooperation, space exploration, and the defense industry,” Szijjártó said, as quoted by Magyar Nemzet.
Flagship projects involving Hungarian companies include Continest Technologies participating in Israeli army tenders, 4iG moving forward in the defense and space industries, and 97 percent of Israel’s poultry imports being provided by Palmi-Top.
Szijjártó also noted that Israeli investors play a very important role in the Hungarian economy.
Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar was also at the event, posting on X: “Always good to be in Budapest with my friend Hungarian @FM_Szijjarto. Hungary has a clear moral dimension in its foreign policy, standing by Israel and calling for accountability for the PA’s Pay-for-Slay policy. I came to Budapest today with the largest-ever economic delegation of Israeli businesses to Hungary. We are eager to even further strengthen the close economic and people-to-people relations between our nations!”
Always good to be in Budapest with my friend Hungarian @FM_Szijjarto. Hungary has a clear moral dimension in its foreign policy, standing by Israel and calling for accountability for the PA's Pay-for-Slay policy. I came to Budapest today with the largest-ever economic… pic.twitter.com/e2XYzMFSw1
Turning back to the safety of Jews in Hungary, the Hungarian foreign minister highlighted the fact that the Israeli national football team plays all of its home matches in Hungary, without any need to do so behind closed doors and without any police presence, as is seen in Western Europe.
“So I would like to encourage members of the Israeli business community to explore opportunities for cooperation at today’s more than 150 bilateral business-to-business meetings, and you can be sure that you will always be safe here, both you personally and your businesses and your business activities,” he told those gathered.
Taking a jab at Brussels, the Hungarian foreign minister also bemoaned EU politics and its “absolutely biased anti-Israel policy,” which has led to restrictions on trade and other economic dealings with Israel.
“We will always oppose these,” Szijjártó said, promising further cooperation with Hungary as well as dedicated efforts to improve cooperation between Israel and the EU.
A 26-year-old taxi driver from Eritrea has been charged with raping a female passenger during a ride in the Swedish city of Östersund last year, but prosecutors face an uphill battle in having his deportation approved.
Prosecutors are seeking both imprisonment and deportation, but the Swedish Migration Board has reportedly refused to allow expulsion, arguing that the man would face “inhumane or degrading treatment” if returned to his home country.
The assault occurred in September 2024 when the woman, who was heavily intoxicated, entered the taxi. During the journey, the driver inserted his fingers into her vagina — an act legally defined as “a sexual act comparable to intercourse” in Sweden. The woman reported the attack soon afterward, prompting a police investigation and rape charges.
The Eritrean, who came to Sweden in 2017 as a dependent relative of his parents, admitted during questioning to inserting his fingers into the woman’s vagina but denied committing rape. The victim told police she was too drunk to consent to any sexual act.
Chief Prosecutor Stefan Ekeroth has requested that the man be deported after serving a prison term. However, Migration Board lawyer Michael Rönndahl disagreed, writing in a statement cited by Samnytt that “he risks being subjected to inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment upon return to Eritrea” because of the country’s forced conscription policy.
“The Migration Board therefore assesses that there are obstacles to enforcing a deportation decision,” Rönndahl added.
The case is one of several recently reported in Sweden involving foreign nationals accused of sexual offenses.
In a separate case, a 44-year-old taxi driver, also from Eritrea, was convicted of sexual assault after propositioning a 17-year-old passenger and commenting on her appearance throughout the ride.
She was returning home from her father’s birthday party when the middle-aged man told her he would like to sleep with her and that she “needed love.” Despite showing no interest, the harassment continued throughout the journey. The court found the teenager’s account credible and sentenced the man to pay an 8,000-krona (€732) fine.
Separately, 16-year-old Meya Åberg from Skellefteå was raped by African migrant Yazied Mohamed while walking home from her job at McDonald’s. Despite being convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, Mohamed will not be deported, with the Court of Appeal for Upper Norrland ruling that the crime was not “extremely serious” enough to justify expulsion.
Four of the five judges on the panel cited the “duration” of the rape in their reasoning, rejecting the prosecutor’s deportation request. One judge, Sammy Lie, dissented, saying Mohamed should have been expelled from Sweden.
“I want to say that I hate him and that he has destroyed me,” Meya told Swedish news outlet Norran, describing how she later suffered panic attacks after repeatedly encountering her attacker around town and eventually stopped attending school.
As an example of what is considered sufficient enough of a crime to justify deportation in Sweden, an Afghan migrant was sentenced to five and a half years in prison and will be expelled from the country after brutally raping a woman who was in Gothenburg to serve as a bridesmaid at her sister’s wedding.
In May last year, the intoxicated woman was lured to a park where she was raped by her attacker, who choked her until she lost consciousness before fleeing with her credit card.
Sadly for the victim, the Afghan had already been the subject of a deportation order, having been rejected for asylum on several occasions. However, this order had not been enforced prior to the attack.
Remix News has long covered the case of Mila Orriols, who has received tens of thousands of death threats and insults to the point that she requires constant police protection. Now, Mila is being prosecuted in a Lyon court for “racist insult” for a post she made on the X platform.
Mila’s X post from February 2024 read as follows: “I’ve noticed that many people with a background of inbreeding have very small foreheads. A huge part of families from North Africa are inbred, and many of them have misshapen and quite ugly faces, as well as very small foreheads. This especially applies to the twisted immigrants who attack us on the street every day.”
She deleted the post 10 minutes after writing, but someone took a screenshot and filed a complaint.
A number of men have been cyberstalking Mila since 2020, and at least 10 have been convicted in court in Paris. However, despite the threats, the 22-year-old Mila remains an activist and routinely posts on X, and some of her posts have been controversial. She is now being prosecuted in a Lyon court for her comment on North Africans on Oct. 21. A judgment is expected on Dec. 16. The prosecutors are demanding a €1,500 fine, according to Le Parisien.
Mila was arrested for the comment last July and has been active talking about her arrest on social media.
Following the trial, Mila remains defiant, stating that she regrets the form of her comments, but not their content. She also said that scientific studies back her comments that North Africans have high rates of inbreeding.
🇫🇷🔴French feminist activist Mila is being prosecuted for "racist insults" for saying many North Africans are inbred and many have "quite ugly faces."
Her post from 2024 read: "I've noticed that many people with a background of inbreeding have very small foreheads. A huge part… pic.twitter.com/3ITmvabUlD
“Every day since I was 16, I have been the victim of hundreds of thousands of insults, threats and degrading and increasingly absurd defamations,” said Mila while speaking to reporters.
She further stated that her comments were, in part, a result of years of death threats and that the main content of her comment was based on factual scientific studies.
“I get up in the morning being hounded, spied on, reviled and demonized all the time. So one time, I slipped up in response to this torrent of hatred. The answer was clumsy. I don’t regret the content, but I may regret the form, but the form is no offense. The damage caused by inbreeding is factual, backed up by science. I have a number of scientific studies to back this up. I’m sorry I offended people, but just because you offend people doesn’t make it an offense,” she stated.
Her lawyer also was defiant, stating: “We showed quite clearly, unlike the public prosecutor, that there was nothing to be ashamed of, apart perhaps from a clumsy or provocative expression, and that provocation is still freedom of expression and that we are in France and that it must be respected.”
Inbreeding shockingly common across the Arab-Muslim world
It is well documented that in many Arab-Muslim communities, marriage between family members is a deeply rooted custom. This fact has also been confirmed by university studies, including from the Algerian Ministry of Health, which indicate that 23 percent of all marriages in the country are between family members, and in certain regions, this rate is much higher.
Furthermore, a simple Google search can produce a wealth of articles about the high rates of family inbreeding among Muslims across the world.
“In 2011, it was estimated that intra-familial unions made up to 20-50 percent of all marriages in North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia. Besides Muslims, some Jews and Arab Christians in the Middle East have a history of cousin marriage,” reads the top search result from Wikipedia.
Furthermore, Arab countries have had “some of the highest rates of consanguineous marriages in the world,” according to the journal Reproductive Health, which is archived in the National Library of Medicine, run by the NIH. In Saudi Arabia, the rates of cousin marriage are estimated to be a high as 58 percent.
The data is shocking in part because the age-old stereotype, shared by many liberal White people in the West, is that American southern Whites are the ones who are “inbred,” but this is actually a distorted stereotype countered by hard data. Not only is cousin marriage illegal in many southern states, but the practice is not widespread even where it is still legal. An estimated 0.2 percent of all marriages in the U.S. are between second cousins or closer, showing that Hollywood and liberal stereotypes, once again, are completely divorced from reality.
However, what may have gotten Mila in hot water is not necessarily her claim about interbreeding between Arab-Muslims, but her comment about their foreheads and “ugly faces.” It remains to be seen how the court will rule in this case in Lyon.
While her words may appear crude, the perils of inbreeding after centuries of the practice in the Middle East have been known for decades, to the point that many North African and Middle Eastern countries are actively warning against the deeply rooted tradition.
A report from the New York Times details the risks prevalent in Saudi Arabia, which has seen a number of recessive genetic disorders increasingly presenting medical problems amongst the general population.
The Times report details the devastating health consequences, especially when so many inbred people are having many children, and many of those children are born with disorders.
“The couple had two healthy boys, now 22 and 20, but their third child, a girl, was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a crippling and usually fatal disease that was carried in the genes of both parents. Their fourth, sixth and seventh children were also born with the disorder.
Spinal muscular atrophy and the gene that causes it, along with several other serious genetic disorders, are common in Saudi Arabia, where women have an average of six children and where in some regions more than half of the marriages are between close relatives.
Across the Arab world today an average of 45 percent of married couples are related, according to Dr. Nadia Sakati, a pediatrician and senior consultant for the genetics research center at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh.
In some parts of Saudi Arabia, particularly in the south, where Mrs. Hefthi was raised, the rate of marriage among blood relatives ranges from 55 to 70 percent, among the highest rates in the world, according to the Saudi government.”
Europe, on the other hand, has already faced strict prohibitions against marriage to close family members for centuries, in large part due to prohibitions issued by the Catholic Church, which banned cousin marriage. The ban was issued in 1091, nearly a thousand years ago, in the Code of Canon Law, which was used to reduce nepotism and family-based clan alliances within Europe.
The prohibition on family marriages was put forward by a number of key Christian religious thinkers, including St. Augustine. The law was not always followed by everyone. For example, many royal families intermarried within Europe, but for the general population, cousin marriage remained forbidden. This prohibition led to a dramatic drop in clan structures and, as a knock-on effect, helped diversify the European genetic pool to some extent and increase trust in institutions, including the state and the Church. This may, in part, account for why European societies, particularly Northern Europeans, have lower corruption rates, higher trust in the state, and are among the most innovative countries in the world.
Originally from northern Isère, Mila Orriols is known for her outspoken stand against Islam in 2020, when she was just 16 years old.
She received an estimated 50,000 death threats from Muslim internet users, prompting her to leave her school in Villefontaine and go into hiding with police protection. However, she did not back down and became an outspoken activist on behalf of women facing cyber harassment.
Mila is facing multiple prosecutions, including for revealing the identity of a man who was sentenced to three months’ suspended imprisonment for harassment. The fact that she is actively hunted by Islamists and other groups, and considering France’s history of Islamists murdering their targets in France, seems to be of little concern to the left that continues to label her as “far right.”
Zoltán Kovács, Secretary of State for International Communication, noted that the Middle East was also discussed and that Orbán also met with other high-level Vatican dignitaries. He also added a commentary on the meeting from the Vatican itself.
“According to the Holy See, discussions were held in a cordial atmosphere, emphasizing the strength of bilateral relations and the Catholic Church’s commitment to supporting Hungary’s social development and well-being — with special focus on families, youth education, and the protection of vulnerable Christian communities,” Kovács posted.
⛪ His Holiness @Pontifex Leo XIV received @PM_ViktorOrban for a private audience at the Vatican on Monday. Following the meeting, the prime minister held talks with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State, and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with… pic.twitter.com/tgAQ86FLdN
János Nagy, secretary of state leading the Prime Minister’s Office, also posted a picture of the meeting between the Pope and Viktor Orbán, accompanied by only one word: Peace.
Before his visit, Orbán also posted to Facebook a lengthy message about his quest for peace.
“The world is slowly getting used to wars. Over the past two decades, military conflicts have been popping up all over the world, from the Caucasus to the Middle East to the devastating Russian-Ukrainian war that has been raging in our neighborhood for three years.
“We are bombarded with news and images of destruction and war fatalities. At first, we are shocked, then we just grieve, and finally, we slowly get used to it.
“But as the world gets used to wars, they become more and more dangerous. They are like a bushfire on a scorching summer day. If we do nothing about it, sooner or later, the flames will reach our country, our homes, and the future of our children.
“If we want to preserve the peace of Hungary, we cannot swim with the mainstream of Brussels.
“We want to stay out of the war fever spreading around the world, which is why we have been organizing an anti-war coalition since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Today I will report on Hungary’s efforts to the Holy Father, and then to the Prime Minister of Italy.”
Orbán will also meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Monday.
Catalan police are investigating an attempted kidnapping of an 11-year-old girl in the town of Torelló, north of Barcelona, after four North African men attempted to bundle her into a vehicle as she returned home from her local supermarket.
The incident occurred shortly after 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday, when the girl went to buy yogurt at a store on Sant Fortià Square, only a few meters from her home and visible from her mother’s balcony.
According to reporting by El Caso, two of the men entered the supermarket as the girl arrived, while two others waited in a parked car outside. When she left the store, one of the men in the car called her over and offered her €10 if she would get in. When she refused, the two men from inside the shop came back out and joined in trying to persuade her.
The girl ran home screaming for help. Her mother, who had been watching from the balcony, managed to photograph the vehicle before the men drove away. The perpetrators allegedly shouted insults at the mother as they left. Police patrols were dispatched, but the suspects had already fled.
The girl suffered an anxiety attack after the incident and has since been afraid to leave the house. “She used to go out to play in the park, but now she doesn’t want to go outside,” her mother told El Caso, adding that the child has struggled to sleep and remains unsettled at school.
🇪🇸‼️ In Barcelona, North African migrants were caught on camera trying to bundle an 11-year-old girl into a car while she was on the way to the shop opposite her home.
Her mother speaks out, "She burst into the house in tears, trembling. That night, she couldn't sleep or eat. It… pic.twitter.com/9LL7lxHQUL
In an interview republished by Remix News, the mother said, “It was terrifying to see my little girl suddenly start to run, screaming. She burst into the house in tears, trembling. That night, she couldn’t sleep or eat. It was horrible.”
Investigators from the Mossos d’Esquadra have reviewed footage from the supermarket’s security cameras, confirming the presence of the suspects and their vehicle. Police say the four men have now been identified and located.
They are believed to be squatters living on Sant Josep Street, a property known locally for recurring disturbances that have alarmed nearby residents.
No arrests have yet been made, and the investigation remains open. The family has requested a restraining order to protect the girl.
The incident follows multiple cases of attempted kidnapping by foreign nationals across Europe in recent days. Two men were arrested for allegedly attempting to kidnap a young girl in Córdoba last Monday, described by media outlets as being of “North African origin.” Neighbors who witnessed the scene intervened and managed to stop the attempted kidnapping before alerting the National Police, who quickly arrived and arrested the suspects nearby.
Similarly, a Gambian minor was arrested in Bologna, Italy, after allegedly attempting to kidnap a newborn baby from a stroller on Via Carracci, near the city’s high-speed train station, on Sunday, Oct. 19.
According to reports from Corriere della Sera, the 17-year-old, who is living in a community center for unaccompanied minors, suddenly reached into a stroller and tried to take the baby, despite the presence of both parents and several witnesses. With the help of passersby, the child’s parents managed to fend off the migrant teen who fled the scene, but was later arrested.
Police in Bremen are searching for 38-year-old Kayahan Özdemir, who is suspected of killing his ex-girlfriend, Anna R., and seriously injuring her 12-year-old son in a brutal knife attack on Oct. 19.
The assault took place in broad daylight on Agnes-Heineken-Straße in the Kattenturm district of Bremen.
According to investigators, the 30-year-old mother of three bled to death at the scene, while her son survived with serious injuries. Police believe Özdemir, a businessman of Turkish origin, fled Germany shortly after the attack and may now be hiding in Turkey.
“At around 1 p.m., emergency personnel were called to Agnes-Heineken-Straße because an injured woman was believed to be lying there. At the scene, emergency personnel found the 30-year-old woman bleeding heavily. They immediately provided first aid until paramedics arrived. An emergency doctor could only pronounce the Bremen woman dead,” the police report read.
It noted the attacker was wearing a mask and attacked both victims with the knife, leaving the boy with minor injuries. He was transported to the hospital following the attack.
Authorities have issued a European arrest warrant and released photos of the suspect to the public. “Özdemir may be armed and dangerous. Anyone who sees him is asked to notify the police,” Bremen police said in a public statement.
Kayahan Özdemir is considered to be armed and dangerous. source: bremen polizei
The suspect is the father of Anna R.’s youngest daughter, aged two. Investigators are examining whether the killing was driven by jealousy or a relationship dispute.
Police and prosecutors in Bremen are reviewing eyewitness statements and nearby security camera footage to reconstruct the events leading to the killing.
“The reason the woman was targeted is not yet clear. We are investigating whether it was a random attack or a personal grudge,” a police spokesman said.
In the Swiss city of Benglen, a man living inside an asylum home was photographed fleeing a family home through a window. The man had entered the 25-year-old daughter’s room and is believed to have stalked the younger daughter earlier in the evening. The police have already released the man, saying they cannot detain him.
The story first began circulating on WhatsApp, and dates back to Oct. 13, when a man dressed all in black gained access to a single-family home in Benglen. It happened to be the daughter’s room, who had just been in the room but was in the bathroom at the time.
The mother, 62-year-old Adrianna, was in the kitchen when he heard noise coming from the daughter’s room. The mother went to check upstairs and saw the suspect inside.
“Knowing that my daughter (Petra) was in the bathroom, I went to check – and saw a strange man standing in her room. I yelled at him, whereupon he immediately fled and climbed out the window again. I managed to take a photo of the man. He ran away towards the woods,” said Adrianna.
The mother, however, had the presence of mind to take a photo of the suspect before he fled out of the window.
Speaking with Blick, Adrianna told the paper: “Someone who enters a brightly lit bedroom at half past eight in the evening is ready for anything, ready to rape or even ready to kill.”
Earlier encounter?
However, the Blick article reveals that the daughter may have actually been targeted.
Just hours before, the same man had struck terror in another family member, when the 23-year-old sister, Elisa, was out with her dog on her usual route.
“A man sat on the bench on a hill next to the table tennis table,” said Elisa. When she walked past, the man kept shouting and following her, saying, “Hello.”
Elisa then changed her route and returned to her home through a detour to lose the man.
An hour and a half later, the same man allegedly entered into the other daughter’s window.
The sister, Elisa, immediately recognized the man as the same one who followed her in the park earlier from the mother’s photo. The police were informed about both incidents.
Police secured forensics at the scene and the man was arrested the same evening. Although he lives at an asylum home, the man apparently has Swiss citizenship.
“The exact circumstances and motive are the subject of the ongoing investigation,” the police told Blick. “According to the investigators, it was not an attempted theft, but there was suspicion of another motive. However, after questioning, the man was released from custody because further detention was not legally possible.”
Remarkably, despite the man being accused of stalking and sneaking into a young woman’s window, the police say he has been released.
“The man was released after questioning,” the police told Blick.
The suspect is a 35-year-old Swiss man who lives in an asylum home. However, he appears to be a welfare recipient who is living at an individual room inside the asylum home, which is possible for individuals on welfare even if they are not asylum seekers.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has revealed that Hungary will once again offer incentives to families to use solar as their energy source. Like the previous Solar Energy Plus Program, which ended in January, this would entail individual family homes having their own solar panels to meet their energy needs.
Of course, as before, the issue of energy storage is still a challenge, and homeowners will need help paying for the storage batteries for this purpose.
In an interview with Economx earlier this month, Orbán said the government is “dividing and multiplying how to provide support to families to have batteries with which they can store the energy produced during the day.” According to the prime minister, this will affect hundreds of thousands of families and the state can “sweat out” the necessary resources for this, reports Mandiner.
Analysts at the Makronom Institute say that ideally, families would use the electricity generated during the day, but when the sun shines, a huge amount of electricity is produced — often much more than we can use immediately, creating a massive energy surplus.
Currently, around 310,000 households – single-family homes, townhouses and other privately owned properties – operate so-called “household solar power plants” in Hungary. These systems account for roughly a third of the country’s total solar energy generation capacity, and during their peak performance, when the sun is shining everywhere across the country and at high altitude, their production is equivalent to the emissions of today’s Paks nuclear power plant.
Just for comparison: Paks provided 47 percent of the country’s electricity production in 2024. However, since Hungary rarely uses this energy in full during sunny periods, it is critical to have some form of on-site energy storage.
In a recent interview with Mandiner, Hungarian Energy Minister Csaba Lajos Lantos had some stats to show how dedicated Hungary is to solar.
“Among the EU member states, Hungary had the third-highest increase in weather-dependent renewable capacity from 2019 to 2023. The domestic share of solar systems in electricity production was the third highest in the world and the second highest in Europe last year. With this, we are not only strengthening our self-sufficiency capabilities and energy sovereignty, but we are also making significant progress in fulfilling our climate commitments. While fossil-based energy production in Hungary decreased by 18 percent last year, that of solar power plants increased by one and a half times,” he told the portal.
In terms of the issue of storage, Lantos said that excess energy from family homes being dumped on the market can be avoided by way of on-site storage solutions, although there are no details yet as to how the new government program will help cover the cost of such batteries.
Two Ukrainians suspected of working for foreign intelligence agencies have been detained in Poland after a joint operation by the Internal Security Agency (ABW) and the Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW). Due to the message found on one of their phones, there is suspicion both of them worked for Russian intelligence services.
“Joint actions of the Military Counterintelligence Service and the Internal Security Agency led to the detention of Ukrainians in Katowice who were carrying out activities for foreign intelligence,” Jacek Dobrzyński, spokesman for the coordinator of special services, reported on platform X on Monday morning.
“A man and a woman, aged 32 and 34, carried out intelligence assignments, including identifying Poland’s military potential and installing devices for covert monitoring of critical infrastructure. The information they collected concerned soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces and critical infrastructure located on Polish territory, including transport infrastructure providing logistical and military support to the fighting Ukraine,” he explained.
The investigation into the suspected offense under Article 130, Section 3 of the Penal Code is being overseen by the Military Affairs Department of the District Prosecutor’s Office in Lublin. By court order, the suspects will spend the next three months in custody.
Article 130, paragraph 3 of the Penal Code concerns ties to foreign intelligence services and espionage. This provision stipulates that anyone who provides assistance to a foreign intelligence service or organizes its activities in exchange for remuneration or the promise of remuneration shall be subject to a prison sentence of six months to eight years.
A 24-year-old Ukrainian was caught during a police check.
In early October, police officers in Biała Podlaska searched two 24-year-old Ukrainians and found drugs in their possession. One of them had correspondence sent to a Russian-speaking recipient on his phone. The correspondence included photos and coordinates of critical infrastructure at the disposal of the Polish Army.
“Materials collected by ABW officers indicate that the suspect was in conversation with a Russian-speaking user in order to carry out further advanced sabotage activities aimed at the security of Poland and Ukraine. In his statements, the man presented pro-Russian views, questioning the sovereignty of Ukraine. The court arrested him for three months. The court decided to apply non-custodial measures against the second suspect. He will be charged with possession of narcotics,” the statement read.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned that if the Kremlin attacked a NATO country, Great Britain could also be a target. His comments came during an interview with The Sunday Times. Tusk also finds it worrying how indifferent the British public is to the Russian threat, writes Mandiner.
Regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine, the Polish prime minister says Kyiv is ready to fight for another two to three years, which is surprising enough. And yet, Tusk also believes there’s a chance the war could drag on for a decade. Apparently, Ukrainian President Zelensky “hopes” it won’t.
Tusk, who also previously served as European Council president, told the paper that Polish secret services expose Russian sabotage actions every week.
He also had words about illegal migration, stating that it poses a serious security risk and that the European Convention on Human Rights needs reform.
“Brexit? That was a historic mistake,” Tusk said, adding that he believes Poland could overtake the United Kingdom in living standards within a few years.
Conceding that Russia’s economy is facing massive problems and cannot remain viable in the long term, Tusk says this will likely only make Putin more aggressive.
Also, Russians, he says, are better than their Western counterparts in terms of being willing to fight and make sacrifices.
The Polish politician additionally warned that Russia’s new hypersonic missiles, deployed in Belarus or Kaliningrad, could reach any European capital, including London.
An Egyptian migrant subject to an unenforced deportation order has been charged over the attempted rape of a young Brazilian woman aboard a commuter train near Paris, French authorities announced on Sunday evening.
The Créteil public prosecutor’s office said it had requested the 26-year-old suspect be placed in pre-trial detention and that a judicial investigation had been opened “to identify other potential victims.”
The attack occurred on Oct. 15 between Villeneuve-le-Roi and Choisy-le-Roi, in Val-de-Marne. The victim, Jhordana, a 26-year-old Brazilian woman who had recently moved to France, told Le Parisien that the man approached her without speaking. “He walked towards me without speaking. I was panicking, I stood up. Then he pushed me, still without a word. I tried to escape, but he pulled down my pants. It’s clear he was trying to rape me. He strangled me to make me shut up. Then I felt like I had no more strength,” she said.
Her cries drew the attention of another passenger, Marguerite, who intervened, filming the man and forcing him to flee. “I saw his mouth, his hands touching her. Something had to be done. I took out my phone and filmed. I told him I was going to call the police, I asked him to back off,” Marguerite told the newspaper.
🇫🇷‼️ A Brazilian tourist was subjected to a vicious sexual assault on a French train on Wednesday morning, and only escaped being raped thanks to the intervention of a brave woman who filmed the assailant to scare him off.
Regional president Valérie Pécresse later praised the woman’s “bravery” and said she would be awarded the Île-de-France medal. Jhordana, left bruised and traumatized, was granted five days of medical leave.
The suspect was tracked down and arrested nine days later in Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines) after investigators used CCTV footage, witness statements, and mobile phone data. Police found him carrying a bag containing a box of permanent hair dye, suggesting he had intended to alter his appearance to evade capture, according to French media.
During questioning, the man reportedly admitted to being involved in an “altercation” with the victim but denied any sexual intent. Prosecutors confirmed he is of Egyptian nationality, 26 years old, under an order to leave French territory (OQTF), and not previously known to law enforcement.
Jhordana’s lawyer, Eduardo Mariotti, said his client “praises the efficiency of the investigators’ work, which led to the rapid arrest of the individual.”
Since the footage of the attack was circulated on social media, police have received additional reports from women who recognized the suspect.
One 20-year-old student said he had sat beside her on the same train line and began “touching himself” beneath his clothing, while another woman’s daughter said her mother had experienced similar behavior weeks earlier.
Prosecutors have asked any further victims to come forward as the investigation continues.
A 15-year-old Irish girl, Kaiden McKenna, an active boxer in her hometown of Castleblayney, has delivered a moving speech against mass immigration. In the video, she describes her fear of taking public transportation and simply going for a jog in her hometown — all due to rising immigration and the presence of migration centers in her area.
“As a young person, especially a young girl, I feel more unsafe now than ever…After a few scary encounters, I can’t even walk alone to the bus anymore,” says McKenna,
“I’m here to give my perspective on the IPAS centers and the unvetted (migrants) moving into our town,” she says.
🇮🇪🔴Many European teenage girls now live in fear due to mass migration. There needs to be free debate on this issue — not repression.
A brave 15-year-old Irish girl, Kaiden McKenna, speaks out against local migrant centers in Castleblayney.
She directly blames IPAS centers, short for International Protection Accommodation Service, which are migrant accommodations sprouting up across Ireland. She also expresses her worries about future centers being built in her area.
“Every morning, either my mom just after a night shift or my dad dragging my brother out of bed, one of them has to walk me to the bus,” she stated.
McKenna also expresses her fears about going running in her own town.
“Going for a run with my mom meters behind me in the car because it’s not safe is unacceptable. It’s only going to get worse if there are more IPAS centers in Blaney,” she warns.
🇮🇪 "This has happened about three times in the last two weeks. It's very, very intimidating."
An Irish woman is too afraid to leave her car to walk to work because hooded migrants are lurking outside her workplace and staring at her. pic.twitter.com/BCvSiPLJL3
Like McKenna, many women in Europe no longer feel they can no longer freely move about in public. Just like Ireland, other countries such as Germany and France have seen a dramatic increase in sexual assaults and violence against women associated with mass immigration.
The situation has left many European youths with a growing sense of hopelessness as the situation rapidly deteriorates.
🇩🇪🚨 "I can no longer go out alone. I need a bodyguard."
A German woman is sexually harassed in Bad Dürrenberg.
"This happens to me so often. I have contact with people like that every day when I go out."
The state of fear McKenna describes echoes similar stories across Europe, which are often fueled by high-profile cases, such as the rape and murder of 12-year-old Lola in Paris by an Algerian migrant, who was just convicted yesterday and sentenced to life in prison. The heinous crime may have even had ties to North African occult beliefs.
However, it is the day-to-day crime and harassment that typically burdens European women the most.
A number of similar accounts from young European teens have sparked a continent-wide discussion about mass immigration. Much like McKenna’s video, a recent video featured a teen German girl speaking out about how dramatically life has changed due to mass immigration.
“I can hardly recognize the Germany you tell me about today. And since then, I’ve been asking myself. What would it be like if you could go to the outdoor pool without fear?” she said.
🇩🇪🔴 A young German teen ponders what Germany would be like if Merkel had not welcomed over 1 million migrants.
She was only 4 when the former chancellor made her decision, but life has dramatically changed.
There have always been sexual predators in every society, but statistics from every country that has embraced mass immigration in the West tell the same story: Sexual violence is growing worse and worse. While some may find McKenna’s worries about going for a jog overblown, going for a jog for many women in certain areas can mean harassment. In many cases, it has ended in disaster, as seen here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
🇫🇷🚨 Female joggers in France face wave of rape and knife attacks in recent months.
A 44-year-old woman was stabbed several times in her back and neck while she was jogging in Gard. The suspect is still on the run.
A Swedish court is under fire after an African migrant raped 16-year-old Meya Åberg, with the court ruling the migrant could not be deported because the rape did not last long enough.
She is just one of many horror stories out of Sweden, including the heartbreaking case of Luna, who still remains in a coma after being nearly strangled to death by an African migrant who attended her own school and has a history of violence and watching pornographic strangulation videos on school computers.
Just like McKenna’s fear of taking the bus, there is also good reason for women to fear public transport in general. In Germany, foreigners commit 59 percent of all sexual violence on public transport. It has gotten to the point that in Berlin, the Green Party is calling for “women-only train cars.”
🇩🇪‼️ "Gold help me."
A thief stole a young German woman's phone and then tells her, "in a mixture of English and German, that he would only give it to me if I had sex with him."
It all happened in Berlin's famed Görlitzer Park, where migrants gang raped a woman last year. pic.twitter.com/wt0j674bji
While there are many young women who either ignore this data, or have different life experiences or values that lead them to embrace open borders, many women are also turning to right-wing parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
🇩🇪🚨 "Germany needs the AfD"
Young women are increasingly promoting the AfD party on TikTok.
Many of them feel increasingly unsafe in Germany, and they believe AfD is the answer. pic.twitter.com/iXemPYBV0c
🇩🇪‼️ Young German woman explains why voters are turning to the AfD
"I’m afraid to travel by train, afraid to go into town, afraid to do anything in public. And they talk about people being afraid of the AfD. The AfD has done nothing to anyone, unlike other people." pic.twitter.com/hYlQVKXb1Q
Women across Europe are increasingly resorting to different methods to deal with the increasing sexual violence and harassment, whether it is avoiding certain areas at night, or simply avoiding going out entirely. Many are also using their smartphones as a method of self-defense.
🇳🇱🔥 A Dutch woman being harassed on the streets of Amsterdam by a Black male films herself for safety.
Then, her hero shows up. He pulls up his bike and holds her hand.
She's now asking TikTok to help her find the unknown man who came to her aid. pic.twitter.com/ljFnjDI1Yi
Some are even resorting to self-defense training and other non-lethal defense tools, such as “smurf spray” in the Netherlands.
🇳🇱🇩🇪 Women in the Netherlands and Germany are now trying to defend themselves with "Smurf spray" after an asylum seeker raped and murdered 17-year-old Lisa.
"Since Lisa’s death, many of (self-defense) products have been sold out, including the Smurf spray."
Regardless, the trend is clear. There will be more and more migration and, in turn, more and more suffering for Europeans.
As McKenna warns, “It’s only going to get worse.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article placed McKenna’s speech in October 2025. However, her speech date back to the summer of 2025. Her speech has only gone viral after it was reposted on social media this month, which accounts for this error.
In the wake of a report that has shed light on exactly how much Algerians benefit from the Franco-Algerian agreement of 1968, many are talking about revisiting and even tossing the decades-old agreement.
Shockingly, the report was not written by anyone from the political right, but instead by two Macron deputies from the centrist Renaissance, Charles Rodwell and Matthieu Lefebvre.
Remix News has written at length about the ongoing tensions between Algeria and France, namely, outrage from Algiers at Macron’s backing of Morocco’s plan for Western Sahara, the imprisonment of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, and France’s attempted expulsion of Algerian influencers for inciting violence against those opposed to the Algerian regime, as well as for hateful comments against France.
However, we have also extensively covered the issue of crimes committed by Algerians in France and across Europe, including cases in Germany, Austria, and Spain.
So, it comes as no surprise that people are reacting furiously over this report, pointing out just how easy Algerians have it in France, i.e., coming to France and living off the state.
Xavier Driencourt, who spelled out the highlights in Le360, called the report a “bible” of information regarding the “cost of Algerian immigration in France.” He further states that this cost is estimated at some €2 billion per year, “not including indirect costs (housing, employment, legal costs, court congestion, etc.).”
Co-writer of the report, Charles Rodwell, reportedly explains that blame does not solely rest on the 1968 agreement, but also on the 1980 Social Security Convention, as well as “the crazy jurisprudence of the Council of State, which reinforced the privileges of Algerians.” It is this sort of fatal combination that has enabled Algerians all these years to live off the bountiful generosity of the French taxpayers.
Driencourt kindly lists the exact ways, based on Charles Rodwell and Matthieu Lefebvre’s report, in which Algerians “win every time.”
The French state’s “largesse” towards Algerian nationals includes being able to come to France on a single short-stay visa, instead of having to secure a long-stay visa. They are also automatically granted a “private and family life” residence certificate, without a regular entry visa.
Family reunification is also easier. The spouse of a French national will be granted a residence permit without having a long-stay visa. Potentially sham marriages and even polygamy are swept under the rug. Judges must not demand any verification of their living together, their “common life.” And in the case of polygamy, a residence permit cannot be withdrawn.
Access to social benefits must be a huge draw for Algerians, as “no length of residence condition is necessary to obtain the minimum income (RSA) or the minimum old age pension (APSA).” This is true even if the Algerian has never paid into the system. Meanwhile, other foreigners must show they have been paying in for 5 or 10 years before being able to draw benefits.
A rather shocking fact noted by Charles Rodwell and Matthieu Lefebvre is that Algerians are the only nationality not required to promise to respect the “values of the Republic” or to speak even minimal French to gain residency.
No company? No problem. Algerian students are automatically granted a residence permit as a “trader” or entrepreneur, without having to prove their “company” exists.
On an even more disturbing note, the Middle Eastern practice of Kafala (forcing migrant workers to work for a single employer for their entire permitted residency) “is expressly recognized and enshrined in French law,” which Driencourt notes is “a source of numerous abuses as I observed in Algiers.”
Saudi Arabia has abolished the system, but kafala is still prevalent in Arab countries, including Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan.
Driencourt reserves some special words for the Council of State, France’s highest administrative court and a legal advisor to the executive branch, calling it “out of touch” and harshly criticizing the manner in which judges have interpreted the 1968 agreement.
“Even an Algerian who constitutes a threat to public order cannot have his residence permit withdrawn! The same remark applies to a polygamous Algerian!” we read.
Algeria also benefits, it should be noted, and in no minor way: “Since Algeria refuses to pay retirement pensions to Algerians who do not live in Algeria (presumably, they live in France), it is France that, without any legal or international obligation, takes charge of the retirement pensions of said Algerians… The deputies estimate the amount of pensions paid to Algerians residing in Algeria at €1 billion.”
There is also apparently an issue of growing hospital debts from Algerians, as Algeria never reimburses French hospitals for care received by Algerian nationals. However, the government has previously stated that the outstanding amount owed on this front is only some €2.5 million.
The Macronists’ report is nevertheless clear on the state of Algerians in France: “a poorly integrated community, which benefits from multiple exemptions and advantages, living off French social benefits,” writes Driencourt.
The conclusion of the report’s authors is that the long-standing agreements with Algiers must be denounced. Writing that is one thing. Doing so may be far more difficult.
Two men arrested for allegedly attempting to kidnap a young girl in Córdoba have been released on bail pending investigation.
According to police sources, the alleged incident occurred around 9 p.m. on Monday in the city’s Sector Sur neighborhood, when two men reportedly tried to abduct a minor against her will. Neighbors who witnessed the scene intervened and managed to stop the attempted kidnapping before alerting the National Police, who quickly arrived and arrested the suspects nearby.
No Spanish media outlets have provided further information about the two suspects. However, images circulating online, including from the account Visegrad24, claim to show the two suspects and describe them as “North African migrants,” though authorities have not confirmed their identities or nationalities.
The Córdoba judicial authority has now agreed to release the two men on charges while the investigation continues. Provincial government deputy Ana López told reporters that the National Police “continue to work on the case,” noting that statements have been taken from the two suspects and that “various investigations” are underway.
The Córdoba case follows a similar incident reported in Bologna, Italy, over the weekend. There, a 17-year-old Gambian minor was arrested after allegedly attempting to kidnap a newborn from a stroller on Via Carracci, near the city’s main high-speed train station.
According to Corriere della Sera, the baby’s parents and bystanders intervened immediately, preventing the abduction. The suspect was later apprehended by police and now faces charges of attempted kidnapping and resisting a public official.
A 13-year-old boy with a non-Western migration background was arrested in Norrköping on May 11 while carrying a bag containing a loaded pistol, a magazine, and 15 cartridges after traveling from Katrineholm on what prosecutors say was a planned assassination mission to Stockholm.
Prosecutors now want a court to establish the facts, but the boy cannot be found criminally responsible due to his age.
According to reporting by Samnytt and TV4, the boy told police at the scene, “I am here to murder,” and in later questioning said he had been threatened: “I had to… if I don’t do it, they’ll kill my family.”
Prosecutors say the child soldier had been instructed to travel to Stockholm, meet a contact in Hallunda, and then “shoot him, and everyone in the house” in return for a promised payment of 300,000 kronor, around €27,500. The boy told investigators he had been given a train ticket and that he later missed his intended departure and spent a night in an apartment in Norrköping. When police stopped him outside a Co-op store, they found the weapon in a shopping bag.
Because of his age, the 13-year-old cannot be criminally prosecuted under Swedish law, but the prosecutor has filed an evidentiary case asking the court to examine whether he prepared for murder and committed aggravated weapons offenses. The requested hearing will establish whether the facts are proved even though he cannot be sentenced.
An 18-year-old Stockholm resident, identified in the indictment as Antoine Martin Galleguillos, has been charged with preparation for murder, aggravated weapons offenses, and involving a minor in crime. The prosecutor alleges that the 18-year-old, together with others, recruited the 13-year-old, arranged weapons and transport, provided accommodation, and accompanied him on part of the journey. The indictment notes that Galleguillos has an existing criminal record for aggravated drug offenses and related crimes. Galleguillos denies the allegations.
The prosecutor’s case cites multiple lines of evidence, including encrypted chat conversations recovered from seized phones, fingerprints, and DNA matches on the weapon and related items, image and film comparisons, and telephone analyses that show contact chains. According to the indictment, aliases such as “Patheko” and “Hemskt Hehe” appear in chat logs that the prosecutor says are tied to the recruitment of minors for other violent crimes.
Investigators also recovered several mobile phones in the apartment where the 13-year-old slept that had messages from his siblings and mother, who had begged him not to carry out the attack.
Under Swedish law, a person under the age of 15 cannot be convicted, but courts may still examine responsibility in a hearing.
Recruiting child soldiers to carry out attacks has become the modus operandi of criminal gangs in Sweden, a disproportionate number of which involve foreign nationals.
Last month, two 14-year-old boys with a migration background were convicted of a grenade attack on a family villa in Eskilstuna while the family and children were still inside. They were immediately released following the conviction and will not be punished.
“If they were 15, I could have arrested them and maybe remanded them into custody. But now it didn’t work, so they were handed over to social authorities immediately after the deed,” said prosecutor Anton Larsson Forsberg at the time.
In April last year, a Polish father was shot in the head by a gang of youths in front of his 12-year-old son. The man in his 40s and his son were cycling towards the local swimming pool in Skärholmen, southern Stockholm, when they were confronted by the gang, who pulled out the firearm and shot.
Similarly, in October last year, a 16-year-old was arrested, accused of shooting dead a man in his 50s in Malmö — an assassination police believed was a case of mistaken identity.
Five Syrian men aged between 17 and 26 have been arrested in connection with the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Heinsberg, near Aachen.
The Aachen public prosecutor’s office confirmed that the suspects are all Syrian nationals and have been remanded into custody.
According to information reported by Bild and Focus Online, the teenage victim was persuaded by her ex-boyfriend to meet him on Sunday evening. When he picked her up, three other men entered the car. He then drove them to an apartment in Heinsberg, where two additional men were waiting.
The woman was allegedly raped there by the five Syrians, who, according to investigators, threatened her with a Taser during the assault.
After the incident, the suspects reportedly contacted the ex-boyfriend, who picked up the girl and dropped her off at a friend’s house. The victim then informed her friend about what had happened, and the friend’s parents contacted the police.
Senior public prosecutor Katja Schlenkermann-Pitts confirmed that a Special Operations Command (SEK) was involved in the arrests. During the subsequent search of the apartment, officers seized both a Taser and a pistol. Four of the suspects were arrested immediately after the crime, and a fifth later surrendered to authorities.
The Aachener Zeitung reported that the attack took place on Anton-Loevenich-Straße in the Unterbruch district of Heinsberg, in a residential area containing a former school building that had previously served as emergency refugee accommodation but has not been used for that purpose for some time.
Schlenkermann-Pitts said the suspects include both juveniles and adults under German law. Arrest warrants have been issued against all five. For reasons of victim protection, the public prosecutor’s office has declined to provide further details about the victim or the precise circumstances of the assault.
The decision to deploy a SEK unit in a rape investigation was described by local media as unusual. Prosecutors have not commented on the reason for the deployment.
A 37-year-old Algerian migrant, well known to the police, was arrested in the German city of Soest Sunday night for allegedly raping a 20-year-old woman for hours in an abandoned building. Police say her boyfriend had tried to intervene to stop the rape, but the migrant had knocked him unconscious.
“After several hours, the woman and the witness managed to leave the location and call the police,” the police said.
According to a report from German newspaper Soester-Anzeiger, the couple was only able to escape once the Algerian man fell asleep after hours of rape. The building is a well-known location for homeless and transient people. Police report that the woman is also likely homeless.
Once the couple reported the crime, the police were able to arrive on scene and arrest the man inside the abandoned building. They identified the suspect as living in a refugee accommodation (ZUE) in Soest. Police also found a knife in his possession.
The migrant was already wanted for another crime and was on probation, according to a police spokesperson.
A police source told Focus Magazine: “He is well known to the police.”
The Algerian already has convictions for bodily harm, robbery and theft; however, he has no charge related to sexual crimes on his record.
The Algerian is now being charged with rape. The Arnsberg public prosecutor has obtained a warrant from the district court.
The 20-year-old is currently undergoing medical and psychological treatment. There is no medical information about her male partner who was knocked unconscious.
New data from Germany and Poland is putting a spotlight on aid to Ukraine, including welcoming refugees who end up receiving benefits from the state. These countries are now asking just how much more they are willing to give.
Ever since Russia’s invasion in 2022, Ukrainian citizens aged 18 to 60 have been able to leave the country only with official permission. But at the end of August, Kyiv decided to liberalize the law, allowing young men aged 18 to 22 to travel abroad.
According to data from the German Interior Ministry, the number of Ukrainians coming to Germany per week increased from just 19 in August to over 1,000 in September.
In October, the number increased even further to 1,400-1,800 per week.
Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder has now called on the EU to respond to a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees.
“We must control and significantly limit the rapidly increasing influx of young men from Ukraine,” Söder said in an interview with the Bild daily, as cited by Do Rzeczy. “The EU and Berlin must influence Ukraine to change its liberalized exit regulations again,” he added.
A new survey by the INSA Institute for “Bild” has also shown that the majority of Germans do not want to finance benefits for refugees from Ukraine.
Currently, only 17 percent of respondents answered “yes” or “rather yes” to the question about citizenship benefits for refugees from Ukraine. The majority, 66 percent, are against it, and 7 percent of respondents indicated that it makes no difference to them. The remainder either did not answer or selected “don’t know.”
The survey also asked about the idea of mandatory return of Ukrainian men to their homeland to serve at the front.
Sixty-two percent of respondents believed that able-bodied Ukrainian men who arrived in Germany after the outbreak of the war should be allowed to return to their homeland. Eighteen percent of Germans surveyed opposed this, while 8 percent indicated they were indifferent, and 12 percent did not provide a clear answer.
Over in Poland, there has also been a report published highlighting just how much aid that country has provided to Ukraine.
Paweł Kowal, Chairman of the Council for Cooperation with Ukraine, presented the “Polish Aid to Ukraine 2022–2023” report on Thursday.
The total cost of free assistance, including training, logistics, repairs, and medical support, exceeded $4 billion by March of this year. In 2022, it reached $1.6 billion, and in 2023-2024, $1.3 billion. Poland has also donated over 19,500 Starlink terminals to the front.
In total, aid for Ukraine represented 3.83 percent of Poland’s GDP.
The report’s authors, notes Do Rzeczy, also highlighted assistance for Ukrainian refugees, including access to healthcare, the labor market, and the education system. Poland additionally supported Ukrainian entrepreneurs by facilitating their business operations.
The report also notes that Ukraine did purchase €2.2 billion worth of weapons from Poland between 2022 and 2023.
Leaders of the ANO, the SPD, and the Motorists party said this week that they are united in rejecting the European Union’s migration pact and will make its rejection a top priority once a new government is formed.
“The European Union will not govern us. We will respect certain rules that apply there, but we are accountable to our voters,” said ANO First Deputy Chairman Karel Havlíček, adding that the pact could be rejected “at the first meeting” of the new cabinet.
ANO leader and likely future prime minister Andrej Babiš reiterated the stance earlier this week, declaring, “In our first government, we will reject the migration pact and we will reject ETS2,” referring to the EU’s emissions trading system for transport and buildings.
Both the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and the Motorists movement share ANO’s opposition to the measures. SPD chairman Tomio Okamura said the parties had reached a “compromise” on tightening residency permit rules and confirmed that “we have already agreed that we will reject the migration pact at the first meeting of the new potential government and that we will reject ETS2 emission permits because it only brings about higher prices.”
The EU’s migration pact requires member states to either accept relocated migrants, pay €20,000 per migrant they refuse, or contribute alternative assistance to states most affected by illegal migration. ANO and its allies have long criticized the outgoing government of Petr Fiala for supporting the pact, calling it a violation of national sovereignty.
Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia have all vowed to also reject the pact, setting up a potential showdown between Brussels and the Visegrád Four.
Havlíček said there was “consensus in the emerging coalition” to reject the pact and dismissed concerns about potential EU sanctions, insisting that “politicians are accountable to Czech voters, not the European Union.”
Last week, Slovak Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok spoke to iROZHLAS about the incoming Czech government, saying Bratislava would stand in solidarity with Prague on both the migration pact and ETS2. “It is a social massacre,” he said of the EU’s proposed emissions allowance system. “For the average Slovak household, it means a burden of €3,000, which is literally impoverishment.”
On the migration pact, Eštok added, “We refuse to pay financial penalties for not wanting illegal migrants. I am convinced that, just like the meaningless Green Deal, the entire European Union will reconsider.”
Talks between the three Czech parties appear to be nearing completion, with the coalition expected to secure a parliamentary majority. Under the current agreement, ANO would control nine cabinet posts, including the premiership, the SPD three, and Motorists four, according to iDNES.cz. SPD leader Tomio Okamura is expected to become Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies.
“We have agreed on everything,” said Motorists leader Boris Šťastný. “We will manage to agree on everything by Friday, 99.9 percent of the time.” Havlíček confirmed there were “no fundamental contradictions,” and Okamura added that “we are able to come to an agreement.”
A Gambian minor has been arrested in Bologna after allegedly attempting to kidnap a newborn baby from a stroller on Via Carracci, near the city’s high-speed train station, on Sunday, October 19.
According to reports from Corriere della Sera, the 17-year-old, who is living in a community center for unaccompanied minors, suddenly reached into a stroller and tried to take the baby, despite the presence of both parents and several witnesses.
The child’s mother and father immediately intervened, shouting for help as others nearby rushed to assist, preventing the abduction.
The baby girl, who was strapped into the stroller, was unharmed. The suspect fled the scene but was located and apprehended minutes later in Villa Angeletti park by police officers responding to the parents’ call.
Authorities said the suspect resisted arrest and now faces charges of attempted kidnapping and resisting a public official. Police confirmed that he has no previous criminal record.
Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the boy may have mental health issues, though no medical documentation has yet been presented. He had been residing in a shared accommodation for unaccompanied migrant minors in the city.
Because both the suspect and the victim are minors, officials have withheld further details.
The SIULP police union praised officers from the Bolognina-Pontevecchio station for their quick response, noting that cooperation between police and citizens was essential to the arrest.
“Thanks to the timely reporting to the Operations Center and the description provided, the patrols in the area quickly coordinated, managing to locate and arrest the perpetrator after a brief chase. The cooperation of citizens was essential, in addition to the minors’ parents,” the union stated in a post on Facebook.
Prosecutors are continuing to investigate the motive behind the act. The baby has since returned home safely with her parents.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán marked the anniversary of the 1956 Revolution in Budapest with a public address portraying his government as the spiritual heir of those who rose up against Soviet tanks nearly 70 years ago.
Speaking before tens of thousands gathered for a Peace March on the national holiday, Orbán cast modern-day Brussels as Hungary’s new oppressor and vowed that the country would remain “a strong and sovereign nation with dignity” standing for peace while the rest of Europe “marches with the war alliance.”
“The pro-war countries have already formed a coalition of the willing,” Orbán declared. “They are willing to send others to die. If Brussels had not blocked the U.S. President’s peace mission, the war would be over. Everybody knows that if Donald Trump had been president, the war would not have broken out, and if he were not chained now, there would be peace.”
Throughout the speech, Orbán repeatedly drew parallels between the 1956 uprising against Soviet domination and his government’s present-day confrontations with the European Union. “From there, the Soviets have left, the IMF has gone home, and the pro-migration Brussels will go the same way,” he said to loud applause. “None of them could swallow us. We were stuck in their throats.”
🕊️ The day of the Budapest Peace March has come. Today we send a message to the whole world: Hungary says NO to war! We will not die for Ukraine. We will not send our children to the slaughterhouse at Brussels’ command.
Portraying Hungary as the “only migrant-free country in Europe,” Orbán praised supporters of his Fidesz movement for defending “families against the whole Brussels snake pit,” expelling “LGBTQ activists from schools,” and maintaining a “Christian and patriotic constitution.” He described his supporters as “the largest national patriotic movement in Central Europe, and perhaps in Europe as a whole.”
On foreign policy, Orbán insisted that Hungary would not be drawn into the conflict in Ukraine, calling it “not our war.” “We will not give our money, we will not give our weapons, we will not go to war, and we will not die for Ukraine — but we will live for Hungary,” he said. He rejected any prospect of Ukraine joining the European Union or NATO, asserting that such membership “would bring the war in, take our money out, and destroy our economy. Partnership, yes; membership, no.”
As the 2026 elections draw closer — Hungarians will head to the polls in April next year — Orbán framed the coming months as a historic choice between “peace or war, freedom or slavery.” He urged his followers to convince “misled Hungarians” that opposition parties “sent here from Brussels” are tools of “the Brussels bureaucrats who want to impose the migration pact on us.”
Calling on Hungary’s youth to “wake up, rebel, your country is waiting for you,” Orbán warned that “the Brussels empire wants you to be homeless Europeans… It wants you to stay in the virtual world, hooked up to a computer.”
Concluding his speech on Kossuth Square, Orbán declared: “In 1956, Budapest was the European capital of freedom. In 2025, Budapest will be the European capital of peace. God above us all, Hungary above all!”
Berlin police searched the home of journalist and commentator Norbert Bolz on Thursday over a sarcastic tweet ridiculing the title of a newspaper article, with prosecutors alleging he used a banned Nazi slogan.
Bolz described the incident as a “joke” that had been grossly misunderstood.
Bolz told Bild after the house search that “the sad, despotic reality that I have only ever described in recent years has caught up with me. Scary.“
Bolz has been regularly interviewed and quoted as an expert by Bild.
The Berlin public prosecutor’s office launched an investigation accusing Bolz of using symbols of unconstitutional organizations. The charge stems from a post in January in which he wrote, “Good translation of woke: Germany awaken!” The tweet was a play on words referencing an article published in the left-wing newspaper Taz, originally titled “AfD ban and Höcke petition: Germany awakens.” The headline was later changed.
Prosecutors argue that “Germany Awake” was a slogan used by the Nazi Party, making its use a potential criminal offense. However, the search warrant reportedly attached little weight to the context.
Bolz rejected any suggestion of intent to promote extremist ideas. “I thought it was a good joke,” he told Welt. “The Taz newspaper had written something about Höcke with the conclusion ‘Germany is awakening.’ I thought that’s actually a good definition of ‘woke,’ because ‘woke’ also means ‘awakened.’ The madness has changed sides. I couldn’t imagine that this could be misunderstood.”
Bolz said four police officers arrived at his home at around 9 a.m., took a screenshot of the post, and advised him “to be more careful in the future.”
A spokesperson for the Berlin public prosecutor’s office confirmed that the search was not part of a broader crackdown on social media posts. “Only a 72-year-old man is accused in this matter. The investigation is ongoing. Further information cannot be provided to protect the investigation,” the office said.
The warrant reportedly bore the logo of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), indicating possible federal involvement. Bolz’s lawyer, Joachim Steinhöfel, sharply criticized the authorities’ actions, calling the case “another worrying loss of control by the criminal justice system.”
“The irony in Bolz’s tweet is so obvious that one would have to be deliberately misunderstanding to construct a criminal offense here,” Steinhöfel said.
“It is unacceptable that agency heads apparently can no longer distinguish between punishable propaganda and permissible expression of opinion. This incompetence is no small matter — it undermines trust in the rule of law,” he added.
Hausdurchsuchung wegen eines Posts. Junge, nette Polizisten, die mir abschließend den guten Rat gegeben haben, in Zukunft vorsichtiger zu sein. Das werde ich tun und nur noch über Bäume sprechen.
Bolz later took to social media to comment on the raid. “A house search because of a post. Young, friendly police officers who gave me the good advice to be more careful in the future. I’ll do that and only talk about trees from now on,” he wrote.
The German journalist and author has previously published books criticizing the woke culture visible across Western Europe in the modern day. In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung back in June, Bolz said, “I assume that this cultural revolution of the woke has been taken to such extremes that we are now on the verge of an implosion. For years, wokeness has been taking over from the top. It worked. The terror was effective.
“But now there are more and more people who are making fun of it and distancing themselves from all the rituals associated with it.”
Welt newspaper, where he routinely also appears as a guest, had the house search as the number one story on its front page today. The editorial staff is also aghast at the house raid.
WELT editor-in-chief Jan Philipp Burgard told Bild: “Welt stands for freedom of expression. According to all the information we currently have, the authorities’ actions seem completely excessive.”
WELT editor Ulf Poschardt also said, “In a constitutional state, it is assumed that everything that is not forbidden is allowed. Irony has not been forbidden so far. However, the current trend towards house searches and prosecutions of so-called opinion crimes is an alarm signal for the state of our liberal constitution. The house search with Prof. Dr. Bolz must shake every liberal Democrat. Time for politics and justice to reflect and turn back.“
Beyond the prospects of hosting the Budapest Peace Summit to help broker peace in Ukraine, Hungary also plans to discuss bilateral relations with Trump’s team next month in D.C. Foreign Affairs Minister Péter Szijjártó has been in D.C., presumably paving the way for that meeting and finalizing the agenda.
The Orbán government has been eager to address certain trade and economic issues, with the double taxation agreement (suspended by the U.S. back in 2022), top of the list. Although it is unclear if that suspension will be lifted, there are plenty of other items on the agenda to negotiate. Szijjártó has previously indicated that cooperation with the U.S. will extend to defense as well.
In a post on Facebook, Szijjártó stated that the two leaders, Trump and Orbán, will have a personal meeting in November and that a major agreement will be signed regarding Hungarian-American economic and energy cooperation.
During his talks with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, energy was a primary focus. Hungary is seeking to expand its nuclear capacities and is looking for American tech to do so, including nuclear fuel elements for the Paks expansion and small modular nuclear reactors.
Orbán also noted last week that he would soon meet with Trump to discuss economic issues, that there is a date, and that the negotiation agenda is around 80 percent complete, writes Portfolio.hu.
Since Trump took office, nine American investments have been announced in Hungary, with another HUF 100 billion (€26 billion) worth expected this year. This has been confirmed by István Joó, CEO of the National Investment Agency, who is also in Washington for talks alongside FM Szijjártó with various industry players.
Discussions have already been held with Procter & Gamble on further strengthening Hungary’s role in P&G’s global production chain, and with Becton Dickinson on expansion opportunities.
According to Szijjártó, the European-American trade agreement previously concluded by the European Commission is harmful to Europe, and this can be neutralized and managed if they can embark on a large-scale bilateral economic and energy cooperation with the Americans.
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský became aggressive in an interview with Politico after former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš won the Czech elections and is expected to become prime minister again.
Lipavský addressed the future prime minister, saying: “He will behave like Orbán’s puppet. That’s a big difference. To behave like Orbán and be someone’s puppet. And he will be all about [being a] puppet.”
The foreign minister fears that the politician could reduce the Czech Republic’s weight and credibility in the European Council if he follows Orbán’s “confrontational” strategy in EU discussions.
Babiš — who has not yet formed a government — has stated that he does not want conflict with the European Union, but according to the foreign minister, his rhetoric and alliances tie him to the “hardline” V4 direction.
The Czech Republic has been one of the EU’s most prominent pro-Ukrainian actors in recent years, supplying Kyiv with more than 3 million rounds of ammunition and severely restricting the movement of Russian diplomats. However, Lipavský says this policy could soon change radically.
“I am very pessimistic that Czechia will keep its place on the world stage in terms of support to Ukraine, because he’s [Babiš] is criticizing the ammunition initiative,” said the foreign minister.
“He’s saying that he will not provide any new money for Ukraine,” he added.
According to the minister, this could undermine the Czech Republic’s credibility among countries that take a tougher stance against Moscow, and at the same time could allegedly strengthen Orbán’s regional influence.
Politico notes that Babiš is often compared to Donald Trump, with whom Viktor Orbán also regularly compares himself. Lipavský, on the other hand, sees Czech-American relations as weakening under the Babiš government because the politician opposes increasing defense spending, and he also criticized the purchase of the F-35 fighter jets manufactured by the United States.
“Donald Trump is saying: ‘Spend more money on defense.’ What will Andrej Babiš do? Most likely spend less money on defense,” said Lipavský, according to Politico.
According to the Czech foreign minister, this could remove the Czech Republic from the United States’ strategic alliance circle, and the country
“It could end up in a position like Spain: with little influence but a lot of compromise,” he claimed.
Lipavský summarizes that Babiš’s policies are not independent, but subordinate:
“It creates the illusion of a strong leader who pounds the table in Brussels, but in reality, he would veto along with Orbán and bring nothing home,” said Lipavský.
In another shocking case out of Sweden, Swedish girl Meya Åberg was assaulted and raped by African migrant Yazied Mohamed while on her way home from work at McDonald’s in Skellefteå when she was only 16 years old.
However, despite the migrant being sentenced to prison, he will escape deportation, with the four judges out of a five-judge panel citing his belief that the rape did not last long enough to merit deportation.
In fact, after the rape, the victim was confronted with seeing her rapist, Mohamed, at school, at work, and around the town she lived in, showing just how little protection victims of sexual assault face in so-called “progressive” Sweden.
“I want to say that I hate him and that he has destroyed me,” Meya said about the perpetrator during an interview with Swedish newspaper Norran.
The assault dates back to Sept. 1, 2024, when the young Swedish girl missed the bus and had to walk through an underpass after getting off from work at McDonald’s.
At that point, the African suspect, Mohamed, grabbed her phone and held her down while he raped her. During the rape, she managed to break free and run away from her attacker.
The case was immediately reported to the police, both by the victim and her family. Mohamed was placed under arrest, but her sense of safety appears to be permanently shattered.
“I was completely destroyed,” said Meya.
The young girl then missed school for a few days. However, on her first day back at school, she caught sight of the African man who raped her while he stood by a pool table near the school cafeteria.
“I had a panic attack, ran away, and locked myself in a toilet,” said Meya after observing Yazied Mohamed.
From that point on, she saw him several times around town, at school, and while at work. Due to her fear of running into her rapist again, she decided to stop going to school entirely.
The 18-year-old convicted African, who arrived in Sweden as an asylum seeker when he was a minor, was detained and acquitted in a district court due to a lack of evidence. However, after the prosecutor appealed at the Court of Appeal, Yazied Mohamed was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison due to rape, and must pay a 240,000 Swedish kronor (€21,000) fine to Meya Åberg.
The prosecutor had also demanded that Yazied Mohamed be deported back to his home country of Eritrea. However, the Court of Appeal for Upper Norrland stated the man has “refugee status” and under the law, in order to justify deportation, it must involve “an extremely serious crime and it would entail a serious danger to public order and security to let him remain in Sweden.”
The judges in the court argued that the crime was not serious enough to meet the criteria for a deportation order, with the court citing, among other factors, that the “duration” of the rape was not long enough.
“Rape is therefore in many cases to be regarded as such an extremely serious crime that can lead to a refugee being deported, but an assessment must be made of all the circumstances of the individual case. Taking into account the nature and duration of the act in question, the Court of Appeal finds that the crime is indeed serious, but that there was no question of such an extremely serious crime that could lead to a decision on the expulsion of Yazied Mohamed. The deportation request must therefore be rejected,” writes the Court of Appeal for Upper Norrland in its judgment.
However, one judge dissented, Sammy Lie (SD), who wanted Mohamed deported.
“Unlike the majority, I believe that the crime is an extremely serious crime and that it would entail a serious danger to public order and security to let Yazied Mohamed remain in Sweden. Yazied Mohamed’s connection to Sweden is not such that he should not be deported. I therefore believe that Yazied Mohamed should be expelled from the country and forbidden to return here,” wrote Lie in a dissenting opinion.
The five-member panel was made up of appellate judges Lars Viktorsson and Elida Sundkvist along with temporary appellate judge Hanna Hamrén as rapporteur. In addition, lay judges Lena Berggren and Sammy Lie were also on the panel. Lie is the only dissenting judge.
Meya has undergone psychiatric treatment for the rape, and she is now actively speaking with the media about her story and encouraging other women to report sexual assaults and rapes.
Statistics Sweden data reports that there are 49,000 people born in Eritrea who were residents in 2024. Sweden’s crime data indicates there were 25,879 sexual offenses recorded in 2024, up 7 percent from 2023, including 10,167 reported rapes. This figure also represents a 7 percent rise year-over-year, with foreign-born assailants making up a staggering 72 percent of the cases. Overall, the Swedish population is 20 percent foreign-born.
Sweden has long been beset with sexual assault and rape cases involving foreigners, but the establishment has consistently persecuted anyone who points this fact out, including academic researchers.
In 2022, two top academic researchers were prosecuted for their research that tied mass immigration to the drastic increase in sexual crimes in Sweden.
Prof. Kristina Sundquist from Sweden’s Lund University, alongside two other colleagues, conducted detailed research into the profile of those who commit sexual violence in Sweden. The research was not aimed at racially profiling the offenders, as the scientists themselves put it, but they nevertheless have discovered some facts about the ethnic profile of rapists by accident.
The published results show that immigrants are not only disproportionately over-represented in rape cases, but despite being a minority in Sweden, they commit the vast majority of sexual violence. This is despite the fact that the study only analyzed cases between the period of 2000 and 2015 — that is, before the enormous 2015 influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa.
They based their study on a sample of 3,000 convictions in rape cases. As mentioned above, the goal of the study was not to inquire into the perpetrators’ ethnic background, but to see if there were common denominators in health issues, social status, employment, etc. The revelations about the ethnic profile were only an ancillary finding, but they were impossible to ignore.
“Immigrants were just a variable, and it turned out to be quite a remarkable discovery as there were many immigrants and foreign-born people in this group,” said Kristina Sundquist.
The scientific research was conducted because, as the paper says in its introduction, “Sweden has witnessed an increase in the rates of sexual crimes including rape. Knowledge of who the offenders of these crimes are is therefore of importance for prevention.”
The findings of the study actually align with the same trend found in other reports and studies conducted in the past in Sweden regarding sexual assault and gang rape. Even in other crime areas, such as murder, migrants are vastly over-represented. Such studies have been rare, but to date, nobody has been threatened with prosecution for conducting scientific research up until now.
The Swiss Federal Council has launched a public consultation on plans to prevent people in the asylum system from traveling abroad, in line with rules previously adopted by Parliament.
Under the proposal, asylum seekers, provisionally admitted persons, and individuals granted temporary protection would no longer be allowed to leave Switzerland, except in narrowly defined circumstances authorized by the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM).
A press release from the Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE) explained how the ban applies not just to their countries of origin but to all Schengen countries, effectively limiting their free movement across Europe.
The only general exception will apply to refugees from Ukraine who hold the temporary “S” protection status, the Federal Council said in a statement issued in Bern on Wednesday. These individuals will continue to be allowed to travel abroad, although their permitted stays in Ukraine will be limited to 15 days per half-year, down from the current 15 days per quarter.
The restrictions stem from legislative reforms passed by Swiss lawmakers in December 2021, which amended the Federal Act on Foreign Nationals and Integration. Their implementation was delayed following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, which led to a refugee crisis across Europe.
The Federal Council said several orders will now be amended to implement the new rules, including provisions defining the “specific personal reasons” under which SEM may grant exceptional travel authorization. Such exceptions could apply, for instance, to those needing to visit another country to prepare for voluntary return or permanent resettlement.
The Italian government under Giorgia Meloni has decided to move forward with increasing Italy’s retirement age, despite some within her own coalition arguing against it, with one minister even calling it “inhumane.”
The change is said to be in line with longer life expectancy, based on data from the Italian statistical office (ISTAT).
According to the latest budget draft, cited by Portfolio.hu, starting Jan. 1, 2027, Italian workers will be able to retire at 67 years and 1 month, with the length of service 42 years and 11 months (one year less for women). The age will increase again in 2028 to 67 years and 3 months, and again in 2029 to 67 years and 5 months.
The move is being made to strengthen investor confidence and budgetary discipline, issues France is currently facing, but that country has decided to toss the idea of increasing its retirement age due to the social backlash.
Italy is also under pressure to keep its pension system afloat in the face of an aging workforce and shrinking population.
According to regulations, the retirement age is reviewed every two years, and if life expectancy increases, the age limit is automatically increased.
The retirement age in Italy was last increased in 2019.
Retail sales in September grew by 6.6 percent year-over-year, the Central Statistical Office (GUS) reported on Wednesday, slightly below expectations but still far higher than last month’s 3 percent year-over-year figure.
This is also good news for VAT revenues for the government, reports Business Insider.
Compared to August 2025, retail sales decreased by 2.7 percent, while for the January-September 2025 period, sales increased by 3.9 percent year-over-year (compared to a 2.6 percent increase in the same period in 2024).
After eliminating the impact of seasonal factors, September 2025 retail sales were 4.9 percent higher than in the same month of the previous year and 0.6 percent lower compared to August this year.
The largest increase was recorded in retail sales at textile, footwear, and clothing stores, rising by a staggering 20.5 percent at constant prices. Sales at furniture, electronics, and household appliance stores rose by 16.1 percent, and at car dealerships by 15 percent.
Polish consumers have been under a cloud of layoffs, due to a slower economy, high labor costs, and a higher cost of living on all fronts, forcing them to keep spending tight.
Italy has experienced yet another femicide, this time involving a man originally from Morocco, who brutally beat and stabbed his ex-partner, the 50-year-old Nadia Khaidar. She suffered for three months in the hospital from horrific injuries before finally succumbing to her wounds.
The suspect, her 44-year-old ex-partner, Redouane Ennakhali, allegedly attacked her three months ago, on July 27. His charge of attempted murder has now been upgraded to murder.
Ennakhali, who has Moroccan origins and has various criminal records, was arrested by the carabinieri of the Bologna Mobile Radio Unit outside the victim’s home in the Santa Viola area, according to Italian newspaper Bologna Today.
Neighbors had alerted authorities after being alarmed by loud noises and screams coming from the apartment. Authorities found the man in a state of confusion, repeatedly uttering disjointed phrases, including: “I killed her.”
Police investigations reconstructed the events, determining that Ennakhali had gone to Khaidar’s home and violently attacked her with punches, kicks and stab wounds after she had decided to definitively end their relationship.
The victim’s condition was immediately critical, and 118 rescuers rushed her to Maggiore Hospital. She spent a month in the intensive care unit before being transferred to a private clinic, where she passed away after a long period of agony.
“Reports of men killing their wives, ex-partners, or daughters because they don’t behave as they wish are increasing,” she noted.
She cited research by forensic scientist Frank Urbaniok showing that Afghans are reported for serious violent crimes five times more often than Swiss citizens, Moroccans eight times more often, and Tunisians nine times more often.
“The disproportionate crime rate has a lot to do with cultural influences. It is about how violence is dealt with, the image of women, or the role of the rule of law in these countries,” Urbaniok told the same newspaper in April.
A government report has revealed that nearly three-quarters of all people convicted under Denmark’s “gang section” are immigrants or descendants from non-Western countries.
The figures, released by the Ministry of Justice in response to a parliamentary question from Conservative MP Mai Mercado, show that between 2018 and 2025, a total of 213 people were convicted under Section 81a of the Criminal Code — a clause allowing courts to double sentences if an offense is likely to provoke gang violence.
The response, seen by Remix News, presents data compiled by Statistics Denmark and the Attorney General, showing that 54 convicts were of Danish origin, 36 were immigrants from non-Western countries, and 117 were descendants of non-Western immigrants. That means 72 percent of all convictions under the gang clause involved individuals with non-Western roots.
The statistics, first reported by Berlingske, surprised Conservative immigration spokesman Frederik Bloch Münster, who said the figure was “remarkably high.”
Researcher Lars Højsgaard Andersen of the Rockwool Foundation said that several countries — including Iraq, Turkey, Somalia, and Lebanon — stand out in the statistics, suggesting that cultural attitudes toward law and authority may play some role.
Notably, Denmark’s population of foreigners and those with a foreign background only totals 15 percent, which makes it all the more remarkable that 72 percent of those convicted of gang crime have a migration background.
According to the Statistics Denmark data, Lebanon is the most common foreign country of origin for those convicted of gang crimes with 35 cases, followed by Somalia (29), Iraq (23), and Turkey (17).
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has repeatedly described uncontrolled immigration as Denmark’s “biggest threat.” In May, she warned: “If too many people come who commit crimes, who are not democrats, and who threaten our trusting and open society, then that is the greatest danger.”
The new data arrive as the Danish People’s Party (DF) advances one of Europe’s most hard-line immigration platforms ahead of a general election expected next year. In its latest manifesto, DF pledges mass repatriations, citizenship reviews, and bans on Islamic practices, claiming that mass immigration from the Middle East and North Africa has brought “crime, parallel societies, and cultural change.”
The party warns that immigration from countries such as Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia has caused “the largest demographic change in Danish history” and insists that “Middle Eastern conditions must be pushed back so that everyone in the country can feel at home.”
Notably, unlike countries like Germany and France, Denmark keeps crime data on those with a migration background. With this data, Denmark argues it can better keep track of the integration efforts of those who have gained Danish citizenship but also have foreign parents. The data is shocking, showing that second-generation migrants actually have higher crime rates than first-generation migrants, which are already astronomically higher than ethnic Danes.
Following a statement by German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, in which he claimed that Turkish migrants were behind Germany’s “economic miracle,” he has been sharply debunked. In fact, the Welt newspaper’s senior history editor not only lambastes Wadephul but the entire foreign ministry.
“The CDU politician is spreading economic-historical nonsense in the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet,” writes Sven-Felix Kellerhoff, the Welt’s senior history editor.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann David Wadephul adjusts his headphones during a press conference with Romanian counterpart Oana Toiu, in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Oct.14, 2025. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)
Here is what Wadephul had to say about Turks building Germany.
“It was crucially important that women and men from Turkey made the so-called economic miracle possible through hard work under sometimes very difficult circumstances – they helped build the modern industrial nation of Germany,” said the foreign minister.
However, the Welt historian editor notes that the CDU politician is experienced enough about the history of international relations and should know about the real significance of the 1961 recruitment agreement between Germany and Turkey.
“From a historical perspective, this is utter nonsense. Is the Federal Foreign Office, with its current workforce of more than 13,000 employees worldwide, really incapable of protecting its own minister from such false statements in a prepared, by no means spontaneous, press conference?” slams the Welt history editor.
Kellerhoff then goes on to write that it only takes “a few seconds” to correct the record on this piece of misinformation.
He notes that the Bundestag Printed Paper IV/859 of December 21, 1962, entitled Foreign Workers in the Federal Republic details how Germany had increased the number of foreign workers in the country from 0.4 percent in 1954 to 3.1 percent by June 30, 1962.
Based on this data, he then examines when the peak period of Germany’s “economic miracle” was, when the country experienced annual growth rates between 5 and 11 percent. During that time period, the Welt history editor writes that 99.6 to 96.9 percent of the workforce were native Germans.
Of the remaining workers, Turks hardly factored in. As of mid-1962, there were exactly 265,978 workers from Italy. Italy was the first nation with which Germany entered into a recruitment program. In addition, 87,327 were recruited from Spain, 69,146 were from Greece, and 47,427 came from Austria.
Remarkably, there has been much propaganda about Turks building modern Germany, but in fact, there were only 15,318 Turks in the country during that period.
Kellerhoff is not done embarrassing the foreign ministry either. Germans are known for keeping data, statistics, and records of nearly everything, and Kellerhoff uses this data, which is all available freely online, to further blow up the narrative being presented by the federal government.
“It takes only a minimal amount of effort to look up the official Statistical Yearbooks for the Federal Republic of Germany,” writes Kellherhof. He then goes into the data from the 1950s and 1960s.
“For example, the number of Turks employed in the Federal Republic of Germany increased sharply from mid-1962 to June 30, 1969, ultimately reaching 212,951. However, this group of foreign workers still ranked third behind Italians with 340,234 and Yugoslavs (who were only officially recruited since 1968) with 226,290,” writes the history editor.
Turkish guest workers wait with luggage for the weekly bus to Istanbul from Frankfurt, Germany, around Dec. 2, 1978. (AP Photo/Rolf Boehm)
“At this time, the much-vaunted ‘economic miracle’ had already come to an end, following the first economic slowdown in 1963/64 and the first crisis in 1967. And Turks still made up significantly less than one percent of the total workforce in West Germany: Turks certainly hadn’t played a ‘decisive’ role in the upswing of the West German economy. Such a false claim would have caused any history student to fail their intermediate exams in the 1990s – which doesn’t reflect well on the qualifications of today’s German diplomats,” Kellerhoff writes in what looks like an indictment on the entire foreign ministry.
The historian points out that the extremely low unemployment rate in Germany was part of the recruitment drive in foreign countries. Most of these countries were located in Europe, but Turkey was an exception. Still, Turkey’s workers played a minuscule role in Germany’s economic miracle. If Turks were the driving force, then perhaps Turkey itself would have been a global economic powerhouse, but that was never the case.
In 1968, the unemployment rate was only 1.5 percent, and in fact, unemployment remained below 1 percent until 1972 when the oil crisis began. In November 1973, a recruitment ban was imposed, which ended foreign workers coming to Germany.
Kellerhoff then further notes the dramatically different mindset behind this immigration in the past, which emphasized that workers should return home at the end of their work. The deal was that they make money, and eventually, they return home.
“In any case, it was actually intended that the employees would return to their home countries after the agreed period and be replaced by other compatriots. This ‘rotation principle’ was intended to discourage permanent immigration. However, this changed at the end of 1973: Because no new guest workers could come, the existing ones stayed – and brought their families from their homeland to Germany. At that time, in the economically difficult 1970s, the proportion of Turks among foreigners in the Federal Republic rose to more than 1.5 million,” Kellerhoff wrote.
The historian then ends his article by slamming the false claims from the foreign ministry.
“One could write off Wadephul’s false statement as a minor error, one that at most reflects poorly on his own ministry. If, indeed, it weren’t for the reaction of all sorts of semi-reputable to dubious online services and blogs. Here, the foreign minister’s claim is widely seen as evidence of the allegedly planned ‘repopulation’ of Germany, an attack on a central achievement of the Germans after 1945. Since the statement in the Hürriyet interview is truly beyond salvage and simply remains inaccurate, Johann Wadephul has made it quite difficult to counter such absurd conspiracy theories,” he writes.
However, this claim about Turks is not limited to Wadephul. It remains a piece of standard propaganda and misinformation widely claimed by the German federal government for years now.
In fact, in 2022, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier claimed during a visit to one of the traditional industrial zones in the Ruhr area that Germany is a country with an immigrant background, and its wealth and prosperity would not have been possible without immigrants.
“I always say that it is not the people who have an immigrant background, but Germany, the country itself, that has an immigrant background,” the federal president said in a speech to the workers of the Friedrich Wilhelm Ironworks in Mülheim an der Ruhr, where 45 percent of the factory workers are of foreign descent.
Referencing the guest worker deal with Turkey, he said that “the guest workers came to help build a fast-growing economy. Without their work, much of the prosperity experienced in our country would be impossible.”
Notably, as the Welt historian noted, it was mostly Germans who were responsible for the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s, but guest workers played a minor role. Most of them were also supposed to go back home.
Turks, in particular, are considered the worst-integrated of all immigrant groups despite their long track record in the country, according to a report from the Berlin-based Institute for Population and Development.
The report found that immigrants of Turkish origin were the “least successful of all immigrant groups in the labor market and they are often jobless, the percentage of housewives is high and many are dependent on welfare… The state of Saarland was found to have the worst record — 45 percent of its Turks had no educational qualification of any kind.”
Even second- and third-generation Turks struggle to integrate into German society despite having decades-long roots in the country. They feature some of the highest rates of welfare of any immigrant group and high crime rates, including a large organized crime network. As Der Spiegel wrote, many young Turks have failed to integrate into German society, and some of them openly state there is “nothing” good about the country. In terms of work prospects, severe challenges remain, as Spiegel writes:
“Almost a third of all men and women with foreign roots between the ages of 25 and 35 have no professional qualifications. The data is especially alarming for the roughly three million Turkish immigrants, Germany’s largest minority. The share of young Turks with no professional qualifications rose from 44 to 57 percent between 2001 and 2006. This figure alone — 57 percent — perfectly illustrates the sheer magnitude of the failure on both sides.
A research report by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees concludes that four out of five Turks in Germany between the ages of 38 and 64 have no more than a junior high school education, while only a little more than a quarter have at least five years of schooling.”
The Remix News report continues to detail the various integration challenges presented by Turks. That is not to say that none integrated into Germany, but to say they built Germany or even contributed significantly to the German economic miracle is a gross overstatement.
The West’s founding myths are no longer grounded in reality
So, why does the German government partake in such narratives? The reason is that there needs to be a myth built around the “immigrant,” and even if this myth does not correspond to reality, it must be promoted, almost as a religious mantra.
These are temples to a new religion of open borders, just as Cologne once raised the famed Cologne Cathedral to the heavens, they are now raising new cathedrals to their new ideals.
Just as doubt is death for any religion, the dissenters and the naysayers will be persecuted who challenge this new religion — just as Galileo stood before the Roman Catholic Church, punished for puncturing the myth that the Earth was the center of the universe.
The German government will also continue to promote misinformation on this topic, or at the very least, not provide the full picture, including all all the benefits and all the costs. That would encompass the complete story of mass immigration in Germany, but that presents far too messy a picture for the myth — and the religion — to survive.
It is nearly the same myth promoted in the United States, where Americans are all told that Black slaves built the country, despite slaves being involved in labor-intensive agricultural industries, mainly cotton, which did not play a key role in America’s technological advancement and industrial development. Technology and organization were, in fact, the key factors that fueled America’s growth into a global superpower.
It is not worth going into all the misinformation on this topic, but most of America’s rise to power was built in the industrial north, where patents, inventions, and industrial might were the key players in the rise of the country. Cheap manual labor, while important for any nation, has not played a key role in the rise of any country. In fact, slavery was banned far later in South America, in countries such as Brazil, yet Brazil never rose to be a prominent industrial or technological player in the history of mankind.
These founding myths, both in Germany and the U.S., have not only become dogmatic, but it is becoming close to illegal to challenge them. Yet, for any semblance of truth to exist, historians like Kellerhoff need to challenge them everywhere, regardless of how powerful the preachers are.
A 43-year-old mother from Martigues, near Marseille, died after what her family and lawyers describe as a chain of “catastrophic failings” by French emergency services. The woman, identified as Sylvia Iannello, succumbed to internal bleeding hours after being violently kicked in the stomach by her partner, Samir M., during an argument on the night of Aug. 2.
Despite making nine calls to France’s emergency services between 2:30 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., Sylvia was denied help and told by dispatchers to “take a taxi” or “see a psychiatrist.”
According to Le Figaro, emergency responders initially visited her home after she reported being assaulted, but when Sylvia refused to be taken to the hospital — saying she wished to file a complaint the next day — the team left. Within hours, her condition deteriorated sharply due to a ruptured spleen and massive internal bleeding.
Recordings obtained by investigators from the Marseille Territorial Crime Division reveal that when Sylvia called again for help, a dispatcher accused her of “joking” and told her “to think about it first.” Another operator reportedly told her, “We came once, do you think we’re taxis?” A doctor on the line suggested she was having psychiatric problems and dismissed her symptoms. Sylvia’s final words were faint: “I’m exhausted, I can’t get up.” She was later found dead on her balcony by a neighbor.
“I can’t find the words. It’s unimaginable,” her father, Pierre, told Le Figaro. “My daughter would still be alive if the emergency services had done their job seriously.”
Sylvia’s family has filed a criminal complaint for “failure to assist a person in danger,” a charge now under investigation by prosecutors in Aix-en-Provence. Her father, mother, and brother say both firefighters and medical responders ignored clear signs of life-threatening trauma. “They are lifesavers, not people who kill people,” her mother, Angèle Formoso, said.
“This failure to provide assistance probably deprived Sylvia Iannello of a chance of survival and contributed to her death in particularly sordid and unacceptable circumstances,” said lawyer Julien Plouton, representing the family.
Samir M. was arrested days later and charged with “violence resulting in death without intent to cause it.” He was initially hospitalized in a psychiatric facility before being placed in pre-trial detention.
Sylvia’s father revealed how his daughter had met Samir around 18 months ago, and abusive behavior was apparent from the outset.
“Two or three times, my daughter called me in the middle of the night to tell me that he didn’t want to leave her house. I told her that she had to leave him, that she shouldn’t let him come back to her house, but I think she was in love with him,” he said, as cited by BFMTV.
The father recounted his first time meeting Samir. “From the start, I found him strange. He drank a lot. I told my daughter I didn’t trust him,” he said, adding that his daughter’s new partner had a problem with both alcohol and drugs.
No media outlet has published any further information regarding Samir — a typical Arabic name — opting not to disclose his immigration status or country of origin.
A crowdfunding campaign has been launched by Sylvia’s relatives to support her two children and pursue legal action against those they believe failed her.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has accused some within the European Union of attempting to sabotage peace by disrupting the now-canceled meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump in Budapest.
“The foreign minister of a European Union member state says that Russian President V. Putin could be detained during a flight over this country, and the European Commission’s media environment is warning Hungary that it should implement an international arrest warrant,” Fico said in a statement released by the Slovak Government Office.
“I have always maintained that the EU has turned into a war cabinet, that a significant part of EU member states support the war in Ukraine in the naive belief that this way Russia can be weakened and even defeated,” he added, calling attempts to derail peace talks a “sad sight.”
Fico criticized what he called a paradox, where “some leaders are pushing for the Budapest summit” while others are undermining it. He said there were also efforts to include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, describing this as “throwing pitchforks into a possible agreement.”
The foreign minister referred to by Fico is Poland’s Radoslaw Sikorski, who warned that his government could not guarantee Putin’s safe passage through Polish airspace, citing the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for the Russian leader over alleged war crimes. “I cannot guarantee that an independent Polish court won’t order the government to escort such an aircraft down to hand the suspect to the court in The Hague,” Sikorski told Radio Rodzina.
Sikorski said Poland, as a member of the ICC, is obliged to act if Putin enters its jurisdiction. “I think the Russian side is aware of this,” he added. “And, therefore, if this summit is to take place, hopefully with the participation of the victim of the aggression, the aircraft will use a different route.”
Fico had urged the European Union to do everything in its power to ensure that the Trump-Putin peace summit in Hungary goes ahead “as quickly as possible and without obstacles.” He declared: “The Trump-Putin summit in Budapest as soon as possible, without any obstacles and with the full support of the EU—that is my official position.”
Prospects for such a summit now appear to have dimmed. President Trump said on Tuesday that he did not want a “wasted meeting,” and the White House confirmed that there were “no plans” for a Trump-Putin meeting “in the immediate future,” following earlier suggestions that the two leaders would meet in Budapest within two weeks.
Trump said the sticking point was Moscow’s refusal to halt fighting along the current front line, noting, “Let it be cut the way it is. I said: cut and stop at the battle line. Go home. Stop fighting, stop killing people.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow’s position “doesn’t change,” insisting that Russia would only accept a “long-term, sustainable peace.” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the current proposal floated by Ukraine and the United States amounted merely to a temporary ceasefire and that “the root causes of the conflict” had to be addressed.
A preparatory meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was due to be held this week, but the White House said the two had had a “productive” call and that a meeting was no longer “necessary.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has previously stated that “Budapest is the only suitable place in Europe for a USA-Russia peace summit. With long-standing pro-peace leadership and trusted partnerships, we provide a reliable, secure, and politically stable setting. There was no other option. Simply put: They can count on us.”
Austria’s decision to deport a convicted rapist to Afghanistan has provoked criticism from Amnesty International, which called the move a “betrayal of human rights,” while the nationalist Freedom Party (FPÖ) accused the NGO of “perpetrator worship.”
The deportation, carried out on Oct. 21, was Austria’s first to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan since the terror group took power in 2021. The 31-year-old Afghan man, convicted in Austria of rape and grievous bodily harm, was deported from Vienna via Istanbul to Kabul, accompanied by Austrian police officers. According to the interior ministry, the operation was coordinated directly with Afghan authorities, following months of preparatory talks in both capitals.
Amnesty International denounced the move as a “clear violation of human rights,” accusing Interior Minister Gerhard Karner of the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) of pushing “deportation fantasies” and undermining Austria’s legal obligations. Aimée Stuflesser, the NGO’s asylum spokesperson, said, “Politics that deport responsibility is giving itself up! Anyone who extradites people to a state that commits crimes against its population is breaking the law. This betrayal of human rights must be stopped immediately!”
The interior ministry rejected the criticism, saying Austria would continue to deport convicted criminals regardless of conditions in their home countries. Karner said similar deportations to Syria and Somalia had already taken place, adding that Austria would “not offer safe haven to violent offenders.”
Wer sich nicht an unsere Regeln hält, muss gehen.
Heute Früh wurde ein wegen schwerer Straftaten verurteilter Mann nach Kabul abgeschoben – die erste Abschiebung nach Afghanistan seit 2021. Damit setzt Österreich ein klares Zeichen:
Chancellor Christian Stocker backed the decision, saying in a post on X that “those who do not abide by our rules must leave,” calling it a “clear message from Austria: zero tolerance for those who have forfeited their right to stay through criminal acts.”
The FPÖ, the Austrian parliament’s largest party, applauded the expulsion, but questioned the government’s newfound commitment to dealing with foreign criminals. It sharply condemned Amnesty International and other NGOs opposing the move, with FPÖ General Secretary and homeland security spokesman Michael Schnedlitz calling Amnesty’s protest “an unbelievable and perverse act of perpetrator worship.”
“If an NGO has a problem with a convicted rapist having to leave our country, then this organization clearly also has a problem with our constitutional state and our laws,” Schnedlitz said. “This is a mockery of the victims and a slap in the face of our society. Anyone who murders, rapes, or robs here has forfeited their right of hospitality.”
He went further, accusing the ÖVP of hypocrisy for funding NGOs it now criticizes. “The ÖVP is now crying crocodile tears and criticizing a problem it itself created and financed,” he said. “For years, it has developed an asylum industry with taxpayer money, which is now working with all its might against the interests of Austrians.”
According to public broadcaster ORF, the deported man had completed a four-year prison sentence before being returned to Afghanistan. The interior ministry confirmed that additional deportations of convicted offenders are being prepared, describing them as necessary to protect public safety.
While hosting a group of Indian-American members of his administration and CEOs to celebrate the Indian festival of Diwali in the Oval Office, Trump addressed the current state of peace talks on Ukraine.
“I don’t want a wasted meeting, I don’t want a waste of time,” he told press yesterday, as seen in a Times of India video. The comments come after a call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The U.S. president has emphasized that he has offered both sides to stop fighting along the current front line and “take some time off.
“You got two countries that are killing each other. Two countries are losing 5,000 to 7,000 soldiers a week,” he said, reiterating that for now talks between himself and Russian President Putin in Budapest have been put on hold.
“We’ll be notifying you over the next two days as to what we’re doing. But a lot of things are happening. I think we’re gonna get it solved,” the president said.
“I think Putin wants it to end, and I think Zelensky wants it to end, and I think it’s going to end,” he added.
Zelensky was quick to point out that Putin appeared to lose interest in talks once the idea of sending Tomahawks to Ukraine was off the table.
“Russia is again doing everything to escape diplomacy. And as soon as the issue of long-range weapons for us, for Ukraine, became a little more distant, almost automatically Russia lost interest in talks. This is a signal that this particular topic – the issue of long-range weapons – can be a necessary key to peace,” Zelensky said, as quoted by Do Rzeczy.
Meanwhile, the Indian portal Mint is reporting that India may start cutting its imports of Russian oil in exchange for a dramatic reduction in U.S. tariffs on its exports, from 50 percent to as low as 15 percent.
Having just spoken with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Trump, noted his “very good relationship” with the prime minister and adding that “he wants to see the war end as much as I do.”
“He’s not gonna buy much oil from Russia,” Trump told reporters.
A massive fire broke out at a refinery belonging to Hungarian oil and gas conglomerate MOL. The incident occurred at the company’s Danube Refinery in Százhalombatta. Firefighters contained the fire and secured the area. No injuries were reported.
Authorities are also continuously monitoring air quality, although no values above the health limit have so far been measured. As to the extent of damage at the refinery, an assessment can only take place after the plant cools down, which will take about 24 hours.
The exact cause of the accident remains unknown, with an investigation ongoing. The exact plant at the refinery that caught fire is AV3, a distillation plant. AV3 is the first processing unit where crude oil enters the refinery, is separated into different components according to boiling point, and then sent to further plants for further processing.
Of primary concern, especially going into the winter heating season, is security of supply.
“Mol Plc. will focus on Hungarian supply in the coming period and is also considering the need to use the strategic stock,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday morning, according to Telex. However, as of now, the refinery has already been restarted and Hungary’s needed supply has been assured.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also emphasized that Hungary’s energy supply remains secure, posting on Facebook: “This morning I discussed this with MOL executives and the Minister of the Interior. Hungary’s fuel supply is secure. We will investigate the circumstances of the fire at the Százhalombatta oil refinery as rigorously as possible.”
At a press conference, MOL ruled out any external influence and said the fire had nothing to do with a reported explosion in Romania.
“The expert investigation is still ongoing, but according to our current information, there is no indication that there was any external influence,” they told reporters, according to Index.
A Slovak court has sentenced Juraj C., the 72-year-old man who shot Prime Minister Robert Fico in May 2024, to 21 years in prison after finding him guilty of committing a terrorist attack.
The Specialized Criminal Court in Banská Bystrica delivered the verdict on Tuesday, ruling that the shooting was politically motivated and aimed at destabilizing the government. The verdict is not final, as the defendant retained the right to appeal, though the prosecutor waived that option.
The convicted pensioner was charged with committing a terrorist attack against a protected person and faced a possible life sentence. While the court accepted that there was no doubt he carried out the attack, the legal classification of his crime was contested. Alternatives such as attempted premeditated murder or assault on a public official were considered, but the judges sided with the prosecution’s position that the act amounted to terrorism.
As reported by TASR, the court concluded that Juraj C. had not attacked Fico “as a citizen of the Slovak Republic” but explicitly as the prime minister, targeting him because of government policies he opposed. “He was against this government and incited people to overthrow it,” the presiding judge said during Tuesday’s sentencing hearing.
Although the maximum penalty for a terrorist attack is life imprisonment, the court applied exceptional mitigating circumstances, noting Juraj C.’s age, poor health, and previously good character, and set the sentence at 21 years, just above the 20-year legal minimum.
Juraj C. admitted during the trial that he had planned to harm Fico so the prime minister would no longer be able to perform his duties, but claimed he did not intend to kill him.
NEW: 🇸🇰 "I'm even more afraid now than I was before."
A year ago today, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was the subject of an assassination attempt by an opposition activist.
On May 15, 2024, during a government event in Handlová, he legally carried a firearm and fired five shots at Fico as the prime minister approached supporters. Fico suffered serious injuries and was airlifted to hospital where he underwent surgery in Banská Bystrica.
The trial, which began on July 8, 2025, stretched over eight hearings and featured extensive evidence, including witness testimony from Fico’s security detail, video footage of the shooting, audio recordings of conversations between Juraj C. and an undercover agent, and even the bloodstained clothes worn by the prime minister.
In her closing argument, prosecutor Habčáková described the attack as “an assault on the basic principles of democracy and the stability of the state.” She argued that Juraj C. sought to reverse government policy, force the cabinet’s resignation, and trigger early elections, and that he had attacked “the entire government of the Slovak Republic as a collective body headed by the prime minister.”
In his own closing remarks, the defendant delivered a poem and a lengthy account of his life before being reminded by the judge to focus on the case.
Prime Minister Fico, who spent more than six weeks recovering from his injuries, did not attend the trial but, through his lawyer, publicly forgave Juraj C. for the attack.
“It’s time for forgiveness. I have no hatred for the assassin, I don’t want to take revenge or seek compensation. I forgive him and leave him to sort out his thoughts,” Fico said in June last year.
“It is clear that he was only a messenger of evil political hatred from the failed and frustrated Slovak opposition,” the Slovak prime minister added.
Fico himself provided testimony during the trial, albeit through a recording played in the courtroom in July.
“I heard sounds that I did not identify as gunfire. At the same time, I felt a sharp blow to the abdomen. I absolutely did not register any person who resembled the accused,” he said.
The Slovak leader was once again the target of an assassination attempt in October last year, but that time the gunman, a radical supporter of Ukraine, was discovered in time beforehand.
“What’s worse is that these attempts appear even afterward. We had an incident at Dukla, which the public was not yet informed about,” Fico told Standard newspaper in an interview.
Five German state premiers have launched a direct challenge to Chancellor Friedrich Merz over plans to replace the Bundeswehr’s aging “Fuchs” armored personnel carriers with vehicles from Finnish manufacturer Patria, warning that such a deal would undermine both national security and Germany’s defense industry.
Hesse’s Minister-President Boris Rhein of the CDU, who first raised the alarm in September, has now been joined by Winfried Kretschmann (Green Party, Baden-Württemberg), Markus Söder (CSU, Bavaria), Olaf Lies (SPD, Lower Saxony), and Hendrik Wüst (CDU, North Rhine-Westphalia). Together, they penned a highly critical letter to Merz, urging the government to abandon the planned purchase and prioritize German-made systems.
“In the context of the urgently needed expansion of the Bundeswehr, we see the necessity of giving priority to products of the national defense industry, not only from an economic perspective, but also from a technological and security policy perspective,” the letter states, as cited by the Bild newspaper.
The row centers on the planned successor to the Fuchs, which has been built for decades by German defense giant Rheinmetall. The federal government is considering buying Patria’s 6×6 armored vehicle as part of a €2 billion order for up to 1,000 units, despite Rheinmetall offering its own alternative, the Fuchs 2.
The premiers complain that Berlin is already moving ahead with procurement from foreign manufacturers, including the Patria heavy mortar system and the CAVS “Pioneer Group” variant, even before domestic options have been properly considered. Although parts of the Patria vehicles would be assembled in Germany, the state leaders warn that “even if a foreign system were to be finally assembled in Germany, the added value would still largely take place abroad.” They also argue that switching from the Fuchs platform after decades of use would generate additional costs that have not been adequately calculated or taken into consideration.
Their concerns are heightened by the scale of Germany’s planned involvement in the multinational Common Armored Vehicle System (CAVS) program. Under a deal first announced in July 2025, Berlin is in talks to buy around 3,500 Patria 6×6 armored vehicles worth up to €5 billion. The CAVS initiative, which includes Finland, Latvia, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark, aims to standardize armored vehicles across participating nations, but critics say it risks sidelining domestic manufacturers and exporting jobs abroad.
“We ask you to also consider purely national solutions, from domestic production with domestic added value, when considering the successor to the Fuchs,” the premiers urge.
The German government is seeking to increase its defense spending from 2 percent of GDP to 3.5 percent by 2029, and therefore, significant expenditure is expected. However, state leaders want to ensure that “Made in Germany” is prioritized before looking further afield.
Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) has arrested eight people on charges of planned acts of sabotage, reportedly involving explosive parcels to be sent via Poland to Ukraine. It is believed this is yet another plot by Russia to destabilize the region. Details are still forthcoming.
Polish PM Donald Tusk posted on X early this morning: “ABW, in cooperation with other services, detained eight people in various parts of the country in recent days, suspected of preparing acts of sabotage. The case is ongoing. Further operational activities are continuing.”
“The matters that Prime Minister @donaldtusk writes about concern the reconnaissance of military facilities and critical infrastructure elements, the preparation of means to carry out acts of sabotage, and the direct execution of attacks. ABW is closely cooperating with SKW, the Police, and the Prosecutor’s Office,” wrote Tomasz Siemoniak, minister without portfolio, on a repost of Tusk’s announcement.
According to Reuters, Romania was also involved with the arrests, with Jacek Dobrzynski, spokesperson of the Minister Coordinator of Special Services, telling press: “Preliminary information indicates that they created a route of some kind to send explosives through Poland and Romania to Ukraine.”
In yet a further post, Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński decided to use the occasion to launch a political attack against opposition party Law and Justice (PiS), although what he was intimating remained unclear: “ABW has detained eight people suspected of preparing acts of sabotage in Poland. In this context, it appeals to PiS politicians to stop the policy of hatred that serves to divide Poles. The benefit from such irresponsible actions is gained only by those who want to destroy our Homeland.”
This is not the first time Russia has been accused of planning to send explosive packages, nor the first time it has instigated Poland, with drone incursions and cyberattacks on Polish territory becoming commonplace.
Russia was also believed to be behind the waves of migrants crossing illegally into Poland from Belarus, in an attempt to disrupt the border, create chaos for the Polish military, and destabilize Polish society.
Poland, both left and right, has been an ardent supporter of Kyiv and eager to see Putin withdraw from neighboring Ukraine. It has also accepted over 1.5 million refugees from Ukraine, although some moved on to other countries. The country has recently said it is at capacity and has even been granted an exemption from the EU’s migration quota scheme due to the number of Ukrainians it already must deal with.
Police in Dublin have launched a criminal investigation after a 10-year-old girl was allegedly raped by an African man in his 30s at the Citywest Hotel, a facility being used as an emergency accommodation center for asylum seekers.
The alleged attack took place on Monday morning on the hotel’s grounds and has sparked renewed public anger over Ireland’s handling of rejected asylum cases and enforcement of deportation orders.
According to The Irish Times, the suspect had already had his asylum claim rejected last year and has been under a deportation order since March 2025. Despite that order, he remained in the country and was still living at the Citywest facility, which has become one of the largest accommodation centers for asylum seekers in the country since the start of the migrant influx.
The man was arrested on Monday and remains in police custody.
The victim is believed to have been under the care of Tusla, Ireland’s Child and Family Agency, which is responsible for child protection and family support. In a statement issued Monday evening, Tusla confirmed that a young girl who had been placed into the agency’s care by her family earlier this year due to significant behavioral issues was involved in a “serious incident” over the weekend.
The agency explained that the girl had been living in a fully staffed residential placement operated by a funded community partner. She absconded from staff supervision during a planned recreational trip into Dublin city center, prompting staff to report her missing to An Garda Síochána. She was later found to have visited a relative’s home but absconded again later the same day.
She later informed them that she had been involved in a serious incident. Staff were eventually able to ascertain her whereabouts based on the details she provided and alerted the authorities, who located her.
🇮🇪 “Rapists out!” — Irish patriots descend on the Citywest Hotel in Dublin where police have launched an investigation amid reports an African failed asylum seeker in his 30s raped a 10-year-old girl.
The rape allegedly occurred on the hotel’s grounds on Monday morning.
The alleged rape has provoked anger among local residents and reignited debate about the government’s handling of asylum seekers whose deportation orders are not enforced. On Monday evening, protesters gathered outside the Citywest center, chanting “Rapists out!” and demanding the closure of the facility. Many residents say they have been warning for months that the situation was unsafe.
Saggart resident & Mother Ann protesting tonight after reports of a sexual assault on a 10 year old at the CityWest IPAS Mega hub. Locals are very concerned at being ignored by officials as to how dangerous their small once safe village now is for residents. HT @PhilipDwyer_MOIpic.twitter.com/P4iiOWkyIT
One local mother, Anne, spoke to citizen journalist Philip Dwyer at the scene, describing how the presence of the center has affected daily life in the community and increased fears for children’s safety. “My name is Anne, and I live in the village here. I have a young child that goes to the primary school that’s three minutes away from this hotel and complex,” she said. “The guys that are here in this center are drinking alcohol and smoking drugs on the steps of the primary school. I had to call the Gardaí to remove them. This is an everyday recurrence.”
Although police have responded to complaints, Anne said the problem remains persistent. “The Gardaí came last week and moved them on, but our children were about to walk out the door of the school. They’re drinking alcohol, they’re smoking drugs in the village in the little square facing the pub. This is what we’re faced with every day. Drug paraphernalia on the streets. This is not an exaggeration. None of us want to be here, but this is our reality. And now a young girl, 10 years old, allegedly sexually assaulted in these grounds. We’ve been saying this. People have been protesting for a long time. We’ve begged our government, we’ve begged our TDs, we’ve appealed directly because we could see this was going to happen.”
Anne also expressed concern about a public gymnasium next to the facility frequented by young girls. “What could possibly go wrong? Our worst nightmares are already happening,” she said.
Locals have also pointed to evidence of drug use in nearby areas. “We found burnt tin foil and drug paraphernalia hidden in bushes,” Dwyer reported. “Anybody who thinks the people here are exaggerating — we can show you photographs.”
Despite the gravity of the allegations, Irish political leaders have so far remained largely silent. Gardaí have declined to provide further information, citing the ongoing investigation. Meanwhile, Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s most recent social media post — congratulating Japan’s new female prime minister — prompted a plethora of responses criticizing his failure to address the most viral topic across the Irish capital.
According to the Polish Bank Association (ZBP), the Polish financial sector is currently the most vulnerable to cyberattacks in the entire European Union.
In what is being called a strategic shift, hackers have abandoned their former corporate targets and are now focusing primarily on ordinary online banking users.
The scale of cybercriminals’ activities has exceeded anything previously observed, the group is claiming, and hackers are carrying out attacks every day, at different times, perfectly imitating bank employees, writes Do Rzeczy.
“If the caller claims to be a bank employee and you have even a split second of doubt about their identity, you should immediately hang up and call the hotline number listed on the bank’s official website,” urges Tadeusz Białek, president of the ZBP.
Hanging up and forcing the scammer to reset the entire process is currently considered the most effective method of protection. Banks warn that even displaying a “real” bank number on the screen doesn’t guarantee authenticity—spoofing allows any hotline number to be impersonated.
Meanwhile, the Polish government has launched the “Cybersecure Government” program, investing record amounts in protection against cyber threats. Over PLN 258 million (€61 million) will go to 48 key public institutions – including 11 ministries, 19 central offices, 16 provincial offices, as well as the State Protection Service and the National Police Headquarters.
Grants ranging from PLN 500,000 to PLN 10 million cover, among other things, modernization of IT infrastructure and security systems, security audits, implementation of new procedures, and employee training, including realistic cyberattack simulations.
“The scale of the project demonstrates that we are working systematically. This is about truly strengthening the state’s resilience and giving citizens confidence that the administration is prepared for the threats of the digital age,” says Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski.
The government seeks to increase the state’s technological resilience and competency, including by reducing the risk of data leaks and the paralysis of public services as a result of a cyberattack.
Russia’s ambassador to Italy has issued a stark warning to Rome against taking part in European plans to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, describing the proposal as “the theft of the century” and threatening swift retaliation if it goes ahead.
In a statement published on the Russian embassy’s Telegram channel, Alexei Paramonov said any Italian involvement in the plan would “substantially undermine, for many years to come, the very possibility of restoring economic and trade cooperation with Russia.” He warned that “any unauthorized conduct involving frozen Russian reserves will be characterized by the Russian side as theft, regardless of the pseudo-legal maneuvers implemented by the European Commission, which, by definition, are null and void under international and contractual law.”
Paramonov added that Russia would “immediately initiate a mechanism of countermeasures aimed at compensating for the losses caused by such hostile conduct, with similar damage to those who have undertaken such conduct.” He urged European countries, and Italy in particular, to “stop and reflect” on the consequences, saying they “will be very serious.” Among them, he listed a potential loss of confidence “in the Western financial system, and therefore also in the euro,” as well as a worsening of Europe’s economic climate.
The ambassador, who has previously accused Italy of “Russophobia” and “Ukrophilia,” said he hoped Rome would “demonstrate common sense” and make decisions “based on the interests of its own citizens.”
“Bureaucrats in Europe are increasingly eager to dip into other people’s pockets and solve their own problems with frozen Russian assets,” he added in a post cited by Il Giornale newspaper.
The warning comes as the European Union considers expanding its use of Russian central bank reserves frozen since the start of the war. Around $300 to $350 billion of Russian assets have been immobilised in Western jurisdictions, roughly half of the country’s total reserves at the time.
So far, the EU has limited itself to using interest from the frozen funds to repay a $50 billion loan to Ukraine, but falling returns are prompting calls for more drastic steps. Officials are now discussing a plan to replace the Russian assets with zero-coupon bonds issued by the European Commission, with repayment only once Ukraine receives reparations from Moscow.
Financial institutions and some EU member states have warned of the risks involved. Belgium has cautioned that outright seizure could potentially trigger a financial crisis, while bankers fear it could undermine global confidence in Western government bonds, Reuters reported.
Moscow has repeatedly threatened retaliation if Western governments move beyond using interest income. A person close to the Russian government told Bloomberg earlier this month that Russia could nationalize and quickly sell off foreign-owned assets under a new privatization procedure, potentially targeting hundreds of Western companies still operating in the country, including UniCredit, Raiffeisen Bank, PepsiCo, and Mondelez. Russian officials have also suggested that as much as $285 billion in Western foreign direct investment could be at risk.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned last week that the global financial system would “feel the consequences” if Russian assets were seized.
President Donald Trump spoke to the press on Air Force One, reiterating his desire for the war and “killing” in Ukraine to stop now. Nevertheless, many European countries are not on board with peace with Putin, with this position led by Poland.
“They can negotiate something later on down the line,” Trump told reporters, insisting that forces from both sides should “stop at the battle line – go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.”
In terms of what territories Putin would be allowed to keep in a potential deal, Trump was clear: “Well, he’s going to take something. “They fought, and he has a lot of property. He’s won certain property. We’re the only nation that goes in, wins a war and then leaves,” like we did under President Bush in the Middle East,” he added, recalling that he was in favor of America at least “keeping the oil” in Iraq.
Trump also confirmed that he does not intend to provide Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles due to the U.S.’s own needs, a major loss for Zelensky in terms of trying to push back on Moscow’s recent battlefield wins. Trump also hopes peace can be achieved without any such escalation.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was also disappointed, regarding both the Tomahawk decision and talk of conceding territory to Putin. A fervent supporter of Ukraine and continuing the war against Russia, Tusk said the international community should be putting pressure on Russia, not the Ukrainian leader.
“None of us should be pressuring Zelensky to make territorial concessions. We should all be pressuring Russia to cease its aggression. Concessions have never been the path to a just and lasting peace,” the Civic Platform (PO) leader wrote on X.
On Saturday, Tusk had also posted on X: “After President Zelenskyy’s talks yesterday in the White House and with European leaders, one thing is absolutely clear: Europe’s solidarity with Ukraine against Russia’s aggression is today more important than ever before.”
Prague will ban shared electric scooters from its streets starting in January under a new transport regulation system approved by city councilors.
The move follows years of complaints from residents and central city districts, who say parked scooters clutter pavements and that users, particularly tourists, pose risks to pedestrians by riding on sidewalks.
According to Echo24, the city’s new regulatory framework will rely on contracts between the Technical Road Administration (TSK) and operators of shared bicycles and e-bikes, which will be allowed only in designated parking zones. Shared e-scooters will not have such zones and will therefore be effectively barred from operation. Any scooters found parked on public streets will be removed by TSK.
Companies such as Lime and Bolt, which currently operate scooter-sharing services in the Czech capital, had sought to negotiate with resident associations and local councils, but those efforts failed to halt the incoming ban.
Lime had even launched instructions on its website detailing how one should correctly park a scooter in the city, urging riders not to park closer than 4 meters to bus and tram stops, not to park near intersections and crossings, and not to block emergency access roads.
Operators of permitted transport options will be charged a monthly fee of 25 crowns per vehicle for use of city parking spaces. Deputy Mayor Zdeněk Hřib of the Pirate Party, who introduced the measure earlier this year, said the decision followed recommendations from the Ministries of Transport, Interior, and Industry and Trade.
The city cited a series of problems linked to shared scooters, including a high number of accidents, frequent traffic violations, and public order issues. Officials also argued that the vehicles are rarely used for everyday transport by Prague residents and instead serve as a form of entertainment in inappropriate locations such as parks and sidewalks. Privately owned scooters will not be affected by the new rules.
Opposition to shared scooters has been especially strong in Prague 1, the city’s central district, where a local referendum held alongside recent parliamentary elections showed support for limiting or outright banning them.
“We are finally introducing clear and enforceable rules that will bring order to the public space and end the uncontrolled operation of shared e-scooters,” Hřib said, as cited by Expat.cz. “In the city center, they were often used more as a tourist attraction than as a means of transport, creating chaos on sidewalks and in pedestrian zones.”
In a potentially unprecedented move from Austria, two underage brothers, dubbed “system breakers” by police and Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP), could face deportation. In fact, the two have such an extensive criminal history totalling 2,200 reported criminal offenses, that their case is setting records in Austria and could reshape how underage criminal migrants are handled in the future.
The Interior Ministry is reportedly moving to revoke the residence permits of the pair, who have Serbian roots and live in Vienna, due to the sheer volume of criminal charges against them—the highest among all juvenile offenders in the country. The news magazine Profil reported the story, noting the two are currently in pre-trial detention.
The boys, a 14-year-old and his 16-year-old brother, were reported to authorities over 2,200 times last year. The younger brother is allegedly responsible for approximately 1,500 burglaries, many of which occurred before he turned 14 and were thus initially unpunishable under the law.
He was jailed this March, shortly after his 14th birthday, following the wreck of a stolen car in Vienna.
The Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum (BFA) has already begun proceedings to revoke the teenagers’ residence permits. However, the Interior Ministry stressed that a conviction is a necessary precursor for the revocation.
“An investigation is underway – criminal proceedings will follow,” the Interior Ministry stated. If successful, the revocation would be “linked to further measures – such as deportation to the country of origin,” which Profil indicates would be the first such case.
The brothers’ family situation is complex: Their mother lives in Vienna but reportedly does not have custody, and their father has already been deported.
The grandparents in Serbia have refused to assume custody, so the Vienna Child and Youth Services is managing the case and assessing whether state institutions in Serbia could take responsibility for the boys.
Nikolaus Tsekas of the probation service association Neustart warned Profil against adopting a purely “repressive” strategy against such offenders, arguing that juvenile criminals require “long-term support.”
Tsekas cautioned that deportation would merely displace the issue, potentially promoting “a life underground.”
A notorious Syrian crime family whose members are accused of more than 160 offenses in Germany has left the country under a state-funded “controlled exit,” with officials confirming that each received cash payments before departing.
The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Justice announced on Monday that 17 members of the family, many of whom were already known to police, had voluntarily returned to Syria. The family, originally from Syria and who arrived in Germany between 2015 and 2020, had been living in Stuttgart and had terrorized local communities for years.
The total crime count from the family came to light after a parliamentary inquiry from the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which was then released by the state interior ministry in December last year. It showed members had conducted 47 physical assaults, 11 threats, two robberies, three robbery-related thefts, and one case of smuggling of foreigners, while attempted murder charges had also been added.
One of the youngest criminals in the family is 17-year-old Khalil H., who committed 34 crimes in just two and a half years. He is now serving actual prison time after brutally stabbing a young woman. He also has three brothers who are in prison as well, all of whom are serving multi-year sentences.
According to Focus, four others had already left the country earlier this year, departing directly from prison or pre-trial detention in June and August. Bild reported that the remaining 13 boarded a scheduled flight from Stuttgart Airport to Turkey on Saturday, alongside regular passengers unaware that several serious criminals were among them.
According to the ministry, each departing family member received an average of €1,350 under Germany’s voluntary return program, totaling around €18,000 in taxpayer cash. Officials argued that this approach was cost-effective compared with deportation, which is currently not possible to Syria.
State Secretary Siegfried Lorek defended the move, describing it as “money well spent.” After months of unsuccessful negotiations, family head Almudy H., who is also a convicted criminal, accepted the state’s offer, with the prospect of family reunification back in Syria becoming more appealing once some members had already returned and others faced deportation upon completing their sentences.
Almudy H. has previously blamed the German Youth Welfare Office for the crimes, claiming the agency “spoiled his children” with handouts instead of having them work and earn their own way.
“The message is clear: Those who commit criminal acts have no future in Germany,” Lorek said, a somewhat confusing message considering the family only returned to their country of origin voluntarily.
Asked about the risk of the family trying to re-enter Germany, Lorek noted that human smuggling typically costs around €10,000 per person. “Therefore, the current funding cannot be used for this purpose,” he said.
Huge copper deposits have been discovered in Poland, and they present an opportunity for the country — and even all of Europe — to benefit from a resource seen as vital to the artificial intelligence and green tech revolution.
A recent report from experts at EY and Lumina Metals has revealed a significant discovery of copper deposits in Poland, potentially the largest in Europe in over 70 years. The research indicates that there are deposits totaling 165 million tons in the country.
Crucially, up to 98 million tons of this raw material lie at depths that allow for economically profitable exploitation, a finding that could elevate Poland to the status of a copper superpower, according to a report from Polish news outlet Do Rzeczy.
As experts point out, starting mining operations is still a long-term prospect. Further field research is required to fully confirm and document the discovered deposits. However, both investors and employees of the National Geological Institute-National Research Institute (PIG-PIB) remain optimistic about the findings.
The potential economic impact is vast: exploiting these newly discovered deposits could guarantee copper availability for the domestic market for the next 300 years. Furthermore, it could supply the entire European Union’s import needs for 60 years.
Copper is a vital raw material. Besides artificial intelligence, the resource is also essential for weapons production and green technologies. A report from UNCTAD suggests that global demand for copper may increase by over 40 percent by 2040.
The market context for this discovery is one of increasing copper value. According to Michał Stajniak, deputy director of the XTB Analysis Department, the price of copper may continue to rise toward historical peaks if a disaster impacts one of the market’s largest mines, potentially creating a raw material deficit.
Stajniak shared his market perspective in a recent conversation with ISBnews:
“Apart from the precious metals market, it is worth paying attention to copper, the price of which already reaches significantly above €10,000 per ton. Copper prices reacted strongly to the disaster at the mine in Indonesia, which caused copper mining there to drop to almost zero. It is the second-largest copper mine in the world, responsible for approximately 2%-3% of all global supply. This situation may lead to the market, which was still in slight oversupply, experiencing a deficit in 2025,” Stajniak told ISBnews.
Portugal’s parliament has approved a proposal to ban the wearing of burqas and niqabs in public spaces, with right-wing party Chega leading the initiative and its leader, André Ventura, telling those who disagree to “catch a flight back” to their countries of origin.
The bill, supported by the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Iniciativa Liberal, and CDS, passed its first reading on Thursday despite opposition from the Socialist Party (PS), Livre, the Communist Party (PCP), and the Left Bloc.
It will now be examined by the parliamentary committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees, and must receive presidential sign-off before becoming law.
The proposal states that “the use of clothing designed to conceal or obstruct the display of the face in public spaces” will be prohibited, with exceptions for health reasons, places of worship, and diplomatic or consular facilities. Penalties for violating the ban would range from €200 to €4,000.
Ventura argued that a woman “forced to wear a burqa” ceases to be “free and independent” and instead “becomes an object.” He accused the left of hypocrisy for defending women’s rights while “accepting a culture that oppresses them.”
"If you want to wear a burqa, there's a good solution. Catch a flight and go back to your country. It's easy to get to Portela Airport and buy a ticket back to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, wherever you want."
Speaking to journalists after the vote, Ventura addressed immigrants directly. “If you want to wear a burqa, there’s a good solution. Catch a flight and go back to your country. It’s easy to get to Portela Airport and buy a ticket back to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco — wherever you want. You’re not needed here, sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
Chega lawmaker Madalena Cordeiro echoed the party’s stance, telling parliament, “This isn’t Bangladesh, where everything is done as they please,” and declaring, “Enough of pretending that all cultures are equal.”
Ventura also noted that several European countries, including France, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands, have already enacted full or partial bans on face coverings, citing a European Court of Human Rights ruling that upheld France’s law as compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The bill still requires the approval of President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who could sign it into law, veto it, or refer it to the Constitutional Court for review.
The debate in Portugal comes amid a broader European push to limit Islamic dress in public spaces. In Denmark, the Danish People’s Party last week pledged to ban the hijab — a headscarf that does not cover the face — in all public places. “We must have Denmark back. A Denmark where there are no scarves in schools, where Danish is spoken in nursing homes, where the Danes are masters of their own house again,” party leader Morten Messerschmidt said.
In the Netherlands, both Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) and Caroline van der Plas’s Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) have promised to extend the current partial burqa ban across all public institutions ahead of next week’s parliamentary elections.
Ever since an Algerian woman, Dahbia Benkired, allegedly raped and murdered 12-year-old Lola Daviet in Paris in 2022, there have been rumors that the gruesome murder was connected to occult practices. Now, the horrific occult theory behind her murder has come more into light after the first day of the Algerian woman’s trial.
French journalist Amaury Bucco, who is covering the trial for Valeurs, stated on X that investigators had a number of solid leads to support the theory of witchcraft.
“Various elements of the investigation point to the lead of witchcraft: The investigator, for example, recounts having heard a witness during the investigations who would recount that Dahbia had a discussion a weekend before the events, in Pornic. Friends of this witness had started a philosophical conversation about zero and death, which would have interested Dahbia, who would then have mentioned an Algerian custom for finding treasure,” wrote Bucco on X. He has been providing live updates from the courtroom throughout the ongoing trial, which took nearly three years to actually bring Dahbia Benkired into a courtroom.
🔴 @Valeurs | AFFAIRE LOLA. Différents éléments de l'enquête évoque la piste de la sorcellerie:
L'enquêteur raconte par exemple avoir entendu un témoin durant les investigations qui racontera que Dahbia avait eu une discussion un week-end avant les faits, à Pornic. Des amis de…
From there, the details grow darker, including a fringe North African custom involving the killing of a White child with blonde hair.
“According to this custom, she would have recounted, one must kill a White and blonde child and cut off their head, then observe the direction of the blood flow to find a treasure,” writes Bucco.
“Other elements point to a context of witchcraft, Dahbia having, for example, stated that she had collected Lola’s blood in a bottle and drunk it. According to the investigations, Dahbia also conducted searches on her phone to find out how to perform a human sacrifice,” he continues.
Notably, one fact that has been established is that Lola had the numbers 1 and 0 drawn on her hands and feet, pointing to an occult element to her death.
The fact that investigators have now confirmed that Dahbia Benkired was searching for information about human sacrifice before the murder of Lola also raises suspicions.
Whether this theory is ever confirmed remains to be seen, but certainly Lola herself was a young girl with blonde hair and blue eyes.
In fact, such a tradition does indeed in North Africa and the broader African regions involving the ritual use of children, often with specific traits such as being blonde or albino.
“Specifically, in Morocco and some North African traditions, the concept of ‘Zuhri’ children exists—these are children believed to possess supernatural abilities to locate hidden treasures. The ritual can involve reading Quranic verses and sometimes spilling the blood of the Zuhri child as a sacrifice to appease spirits or djinns associated with the treasure. The child may also be left in a near-death state or killed as part of these ceremonies. This practice is tied to beliefs in djinns guarding treasures and the power of the child to uncover such wealth,” according to an article on the topic on Wikipedia. In addition, kidnappings of such children have been reported in Algeria itself.
Video footage, which has been leaked to Le Parisien after the first day of trial, shows Dahbia Benkired carrying the corpse of Lola around in a suitcase in a Paris bar.
BREAKING: This shocking video shows Algerian migrant Dahbia Benkired carrying a suitcase into a bar containing the body of 12-year-old French girl Lola.
Benkired raped and tortured Lola.
This video was leaked and played in court today during the first day of Benkired's trial. pic.twitter.com/O0N88A0RAx
More details have also come to light regarding Dahbia Bankired’s background, although her past still remains shrouded in mystery.
So far, her two sisters have refused to speak to investigators, and both her parents are dead. The investigation has relied on a few loosely related witnesses and acquaintances of Dahbia Bankired’s, and they all highlight the strange background of the suspect.
As for Dahbia Bankired herself, she has given different versions of her checkered past to investigators. From what has been established, she was born in Algiers, the youngest of three children.
However, once her mother left for France, she was given to her aunts, while her father, a violent alcoholic, was imprisoned in Italy. The aunts were prostitutes, and they allegedly forced the young girl to listen to their various sexually explicit tales and even made her watch pornographic films. She was also allegedly forced to fondle men in the family apartment, as well as in a local forest.
At the age of 17 or 18, she left for Algiers to France, in 2016, where she lived in a bar hotel together with her sisters and mother. Dahbia Bankired enrolled in school there, but was reportedly often absent from her classes and internship related to the catering industry. Nevertheless, she obtained her vocational diploma due to her intellectual abilities and the efforts of her teachers.
However, once her mother and father died, both of cancer, she lost her apartment due to her lack of income. The locks were changed, and the electricity was shut off. She also lost her identity papers and entered into an irregular situation in France.
She became addicted to cannabis and allegedly began prostituting herself, both on her own behalf and at the request of her aunts and her ex-partner, Moustapha. As Valeurs reports, however, “Dahbia Benkired seems to maintain a distant relationship with the truth. As if, over time, she had built a world for herself to cover her tracks. The head of the investigation would also say that the more the investigations progressed, the less clear Dahbia’s life trajectory seemed.”
One police officer called to the stand during the trial says he still does not know the true motive for the murder, even after three years of investigations, but Lola was forced to undress and was raped in both her anal and vaginal cavities, as lesions and lacerations in her genitalia revealed. She was also stabbed and suffocated with thick black tape. The forensic doctor described during the trial today that Lola had particularly deep anal penetration wounds that were inflicted approximately 30 minutes before her death. She was also stabbed so many times that it was impossible to assess how many times she was actually stabbed.
The suspect used a pair of scissors, but also inflicted two blows to the face with a 20-centimeter Ikea knife.
Lola died in agony in an apartment hallway while Dahbia Benkired drank a cup of coffee.
While the Algerian may have never secured any treasure from the murder of Lola Daviet, certainly a treasure was robbed from the Daviet family.
Lola Daviet’s father, Johan, passed away in 2024 from grief at the age of 49. He fell into depression, lost his family, was divorced, and quit working following the death of his daughter.
🇫🇷🔴 Many know the story of the 12-year-old French girl, Lola, who was raped and killed on this day in 2022.
Many have no idea that Lola's father, Johan Daviet, also died two years later as he descended into a pit of grief.
A Brazilian tourist who thought she would be safe in France says she no longer dares leave her home after a shocking attempted rape by an Arab attacker on a morning commuter train.
The victim, Jhordana, had boarded the train in Paris to travel to Juvisy-sur-Orge in Val-de-Marne on Wednesday morning, where she had recently moved to live with her brother. At Choisy-le-Roi station around 8:30 a.m., most passengers got off, leaving the carriage empty. Believing she was alone, she soon realized a man had been staring at her. He briefly stepped off the train but then returned as the doors closed, leaving only the two of them inside.
“He walked towards me without speaking. I was panicking, I stood up,” she told Le Parisien through her brother, who translated her account. “Then he pushed me, still without a word. I tried to escape but he pulled down my pants. It’s clear he was trying to rape me.”
The attacker bit her on the lip when she resisted, slapped her, and groped her buttocks and breasts. When she tried to call for help, he placed his hand around her throat to stop her from screaming. “He choked me to silence me. That’s when I felt like I had no more strength,” Jhordana recalled. “I saw myself dying.”
🇫🇷‼️ A Brazilian tourist was subjected to a vicious sexual assault on a French train on Wednesday morning, and only escaped being raped thanks to the intervention of a brave woman who filmed the assailant to scare him off.
A fellow female passenger who heard her screams intervened, stopping the attack and filming the suspect as he fled onto the platform. Remix News has published the footage showing a middle-aged woman demanding the attacker stay on the train and wait for the authorities.
The end of the footage shows the assailant exit the train at the next stop and proceed to run away on foot.
“I don’t have enough words to thank her,” Jhordana said of the woman. “What would have happened if she hadn’t come while he was strangling me? I might have died.”
Police have launched an investigation into the attack, but at the time of writing, the suspect remains at large.
“The fact that he’s out there makes me very nervous. I don’t dare go out anymore,” Jhordana said. “I also think about all the women he could attack in the coming days. I’m convinced that he’s done this before, and will do it again.”
Her brother Cicero said they were shocked such an attack could happen in France. “As Brazilians, we would never have believed that something like this could happen here,” he said. Jhordana added that she had assumed public transport would be safe in a developed country: “We are told that France is a highly developed country, but I don’t see anything here that truly protects women from assaults on public transport. On Wednesday, I was left to my own devices.”
She pointed out that in Brazilian cities, women-only carriages are common. “Nothing here truly protects women from assault on public transport,” she said. “I don’t know if I want to stay in France after this.”
Her concerns come amid growing alarm over the safety of women on French buses and trains. According to the National Observatory on Violence against Women (Miprof), the number of victims of sexual violence on public transport has risen by 86 percent in the last 10 years. In 2024 alone, 3,374 people were victims of sexual violence on public transport – 6 percent more than in 2023 and 9 percent more than in 2022.
Women make up 91 percent of victims, and three-quarters of them are under 30. Forty-four percent of all victims are in the Paris region. The data also shows that foreigners are disproportionately represented in such crimes: 63 percent of those arrested for sexual assault and 92 percent of those arrested for petty theft on public transport in 2019 were foreign nationals.
“While most violence against women is committed by members of their close circle, the fact remains that public spaces, and particularly public transport networks, remain places where women are exposed to sexist and sexual violence as soon as they enter them,” said Miprof Secretary General Roxana Maracineanu.
Figures published in September from the French agency INSEE show that 64 percent of violent robberies, physical assaults and sexual violence on public transport in Paris are committed by foreigners, with North Africans – who represent just 3.4 percent of the population – accounting for 43 percent. Across France, foreigners were responsible for 41 percent of such crimes in 2024.
🇫🇷🚨 Sexual violence against women on French public transport has increased 86% since 2016, according to new data released today from the National Observatory on Violence against Women (Miprof)
A majority of women in the Paris region now say they feel unsafe on public transport — 56 percent reported being afraid to use the rail network, and 80 percent said they remain constantly on alert.
Dutch Minister of Asylum and Migration Policy and Minister of Foreign Affairs David van Weel says the continued influx of migrants will destroy the Netherlands. He also had some harsh words about the realities of globalization.
Van Weel believes that the global situation is uncertain, and even countries like the Netherlands, which are theoretically ready for major changes, must be careful.
“The assumption that globalization will protect us from conflict has proven wrong. We are witnessing economic blackmail and armed clashes. People are worried. We must learn from this and protect ourselves. And we are already doing so, including at the EU level,” he told news outlet Rzeczpospolita, as cited by Do Rzeczy.
He then pointed directly at the EU mandate regarding migrants.
“For too long we have accepted an excessive influx of immigrants. If we do not stop this, society will explode,” he stated.
Emphasizing the social toll this has taken, van Weel highlighted the ongoing housing crisis in the Netherlands: “Today we have a very serious housing crisis. Houses are so expensive that immigrants have to stay in refugee centers. And at the same time, society does not want more such centers to be opened. And it is very negative that it is impossible to send back those who do not deserve asylum.”
Nevertheless, van Weel, a member of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) party, ruled out any further cooperation with Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV). The Netherlands will be holding its next general election on Oct. 29, and the VVD politician is lamenting the stance of many voters across Europe.
“In many, almost all European countries, the political scene is very polarized today. The extremes dominate. That’s the will of the voters. And yet, we have to govern the country.”
The VVD previously entered a coalition with the PVV, which van Weel says Wilders violated.
“We have to try to build bridges, try to reach an agreement with the extreme parties. We made such an attempt with the PVV. But Wilders didn’t keep his end of the bargain. He broke the agreement. And yet, even if his party is weakened, it remains the largest in the polls. But we will not enter into a coalition with him again,” he said.
Hungary is now the safest country in Europe because of Viktor Orbán’s leadership and its commitment to diplomacy over war, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó declared on Sunday, announcing that Budapest is preparing to host a peace summit agreed by the American and Russian presidents.
Szijjártó said Hungary is “the most vocal European member of the international peace camp” and praised Orbán as the only European leader who has maintained “mutual respect” and cooperation with both Washington and Moscow through the war in Ukraine.
He said that from the very beginning of the Russian invasion, Hungary had offered to act as a mediator and is now ready to host a summit aimed at ending the conflict.
“We have just reached the point where the American and Russian presidents have agreed that the peace summit will be held in Budapest,” Szijjártó said. He echoed Orbán’s description of Hungary as “an island of peace,” contrasting this with what he described as “war policies” pursued by almost all other EU member states except Slovakia and Hungary.
“Brussels is preparing for war; it wants to arm Ukraine, wants to finance Ukraine with the money of the European people, while Hungary is organizing a peace summit. That is the difference,” he added.
The minister said Budapest had already been mentioned as a possible venue during preparations for a previous summit in Alaska. Orbán recently spoke with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and Hungarian officials have held talks with U.S. and Russian diplomats. Preparatory meetings will now be organized, after which the summit’s agenda and date will be finalized, Szijjártó said.
Rejecting accusations that Hungary had isolated itself, he argued the opposite was true: The European Union has isolated itself from the world’s most powerful political players.” He accused Brussels of alienating itself from the United States through hostility toward Trump, from China by calling it a “systemic rival” and imposing tariffs on Chinese electric cars, from Russia through sanctions and soaring energy costs, and from Africa by attaching “gender-mad conditions” to trade cooperation.
Szijjártó also accused European politicians of trying to block peace efforts. “We can be sure that the vast majority of European Union politicians will do everything in the coming weeks or days to prevent this summit from taking place, because if the summit takes place, it offers a chance for peace, and they are interested in prolonging the war,” he said.
A 35-year-old man from Albi, Abdelkader K., a French national with a migrant background, was arrested for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl and masturbating on a highway. Once in custody, he responded to a policewoman’s questions with “incessant farting.”
The man has a lengthy criminal record, and was arrested in late September on suspicion of sexually assaulting a teenage girl, which included “rubbing his genitals” on a 16-year-old girl, according to French newspaper Le Depeche.
His next court appearance is on Nov. 18. His time in police custody following the arrest did not go smoothly, leading to additional charges.
His strange and anti-social behavior also led to additional charges once he was in police custody. He called a female police officer a “bitch” and made “inappropriate comments about her breasts.”
Whenever she asked him a question, he responded with “incessant farting,” according to a police report.
He also resisted officers’ efforts to take a fingerprint or provide other biological samples.
🇫🇷 "This is the life I live every day."
A terrified French woman is sexually harassed by two different men, one after another.
One even makes handgun motions while running up behind her.
"I can’t even begin to explain the hatred and fear — and yet, I stood my ground." pic.twitter.com/t6AMY5kr1k
The man also has a long criminal record, including an indecent exposure charge related to an incident from January in Albi, where he allegedly masturbated near a public highway in front of a local woman, whom he then followed home.
Appearing before the magistrate presiding over the Albi criminal court, the defendant, Abdelkader K., was asked, “Are you okay today? Are you calm?” He nodded in response, standing alone in the dock under the observation of prison officers.
Abdelkader K. has been in pretrial detention since Sept. 25 and appeared in court on that same day to request release until his trial. The presiding judge read out a long list of charges related to various crimes he has allegedly participated in.
🇫🇷 A 15-year-old French girl was abducted and brutally raped by a 41-year-old French-Arab man named Radouane.
"This teenager is yet another victim of a system that lets criminals go free and victims be forgotten."
Abdelkader K. is homeless, unemployed, and with an already extensive record. Abdelkader K. refused to participate in an initial “social investigation” into his psychology, leaving the judges with little information to assess his character. Abdelkader K. stated his wish to live with his father in Toulouse.
The Albi public prosecutor, Stéphanie Bazart, opposed the release, citing the defendant’s lack of “no address or job.” She also noted that there was no information about Abdelkader K.’s father and that checks showed no visits to his son since he was incarcerated.
She further stressed the risk of reoffending for the defendant, whose record is already “particularly extensive, particularly for sexual offenses.” The man has accumulated over 15 convictions since 2007, including violence, vandalism, theft, extortion, contempt, several counts of indecent exposure, and one sexual assault.
The court rejected his request for release, ruling that he will remain incarcerated until his trial.
A 28-year-old Afghan man is on trial before the Landshut Regional Court in Bavaria, accused of attempting to murder his three-year-old daughter by placing a bag of rat poison in her mouth in an alleged plot to avoid paying child support.
Prosecutors say the man, identified as Elias G., planned the crime for at least a month in late 2024 after separating from the child’s mother. He is accused of inserting a plastic wrap seal containing 560 milligrams of aluminum phosphide — a highly toxic pesticide used to kill voles — into his daughter’s mouth.
According to the indictment, cited by Die Zeit, he wanted to make the girl’s death look like the mother’s fault and later handed the still-living child over to her.
Shortly afterward, the girl vomited violently and expelled the poison bag. She was rushed to a children’s hospital, where she survived without lasting injuries. “He pursued unbridled and ruthless gain at any cost, including the loss of a human life,” prosecutors said of the defendant.
The child’s mother recalled smelling garlic on her daughter — a distinctive sign of aluminum phosphide poisoning. “I was afraid of him,” she told the court, describing a strained relationship with the Afghan national that had involved violence and even a restraining order. The defendant’s relatives, however, insist he is innocent, describing him as “a loving father.”
Defense lawyers rejected the accusations entirely, claiming their client is being framed. They alleged that the mother orchestrated the poisoning to pin the blame on their client, criticized the police investigation as inadequate, and questioned the evidence.
In a twist, Bild later reported that paramedics testified that they suspected the poison bag had been placed in the vomit after the fact, and the defense claimed the child may never have swallowed it at all.
The trial also heard that an anonymous letter written in broken German had been sent to police, alleging that Elias G. was planning to harm his wife and might attempt to smuggle illegal substances upon his return from a November 2024 trip abroad.
The defense questioned the child’s mother about the letter in court, but she denied any involvement, despite having described details from it during her emergency call.
The prosecution maintains that the poison package recovered by police proves the defendant’s intent to kill.
Several further hearings are scheduled, and a forensic pathologist is expected to testify on the key evidence. A verdict is expected in early November.
A petition has been submitted to Poland’s Chancellery of the President, in which the author proposes that childless women should retire at the age of 65 – “just like men,” writes Do Rzeczy. The portal notes that despite being forwarded to the legal department, this in no way indicates support for the proposal from the Chancellery or President Nawrocki himself.
The author, who remains anonymous, argues that women live longer on average than men, and the lack of social reasons, such as raising children, does not justify early retirement — although by the time a woman retires in Poland at the age of 60, she is most certainly no longer raising children.
The document was forwarded to the legal department – this is standard procedure and does not imply support for the proposal.
According to the petition, the reform would be implemented in stages: the first stage would extend the retirement age for childless women to 65, followed by a gradual extension to other groups of women (which remain unspecified), once “society has become accustomed to the new rules.”
The petitioner justifies the proposal, among other things, by the growing burden on the pension system and the declining birth rate. Currently, the difference in pensions between women and men averages approximately 1,500 PLN (€353) per month, to the detriment of women. This is primarily due to the earlier retirement age and shorter contribution record.
The proposal, or any advancement of it, is sure to hit a nerve among Polish women — at least a good many of them. According to a 2023 Ipsos poll, some 68% of Polish women supported legal abortion in all or most cases. Poland’s top court, under the previous conservative PiS government, passed far more restrictive abortion laws, resulting in mass protests in many cities. PM Tusk has since attempted to ease some of the “burdens” on women, but has also admitted that his government does not have the majority needed to reverse course and fully legalize abortion.
As a Catholic nation, Poland is home to some staunchly religious groups who are adamant that no form of abortion at any stage is ever allowed. Combined with Poland’s low fertility rate, hitting an all-time low of 1.1 children in 2024, one of the lowest in the world, the pressure is on for women to make more babies — and this proposal is clearly following this thinking.
At stake are the pensions of retirees today and most certainly those in the decades to come, as fewer and fewer Poles are paying into the system.
Sramatic forecasts regarding future benefits are increasingly common. According to data cited a few days ago by “Rzeczpospolita,” in 20-30 years, the average pension will amount to just 30 percent of the final salary.
“If someone earns PLN 6,000 gross today, they can count on about PLN 1,800 in retirement. This amount will be enough to cover bills and basic purchases for at most 10 days,” says economist Dr. Anna Rybicka from the Warsaw School of Economics.”
There is also good reason to be concerned about just how prepared Poles are or will be for this reality.
Only 25 percent of Poles regularly save money, with the same percentage having no savings at all. As many as two in three don’t use any retirement savings programs – such as Employee Capital Plans (PPK), Individual Pension Accounts (IKE), or Individual Pension Security Accounts (IKZE).
This has inevitably led to more and more Poles being forced to work later to supplement their pension, especially with inflation taking its toll on the cost of living.
Perhaps the best stat is the following: 15 of Poles hope to win their retirement money by gambling.
“The problem isn’t a lack of awareness, but a lack of planning,” comments Jarek Bartkiewicz, CEO of Prudential Polska. “Postponing ‘until later’ has become a national habit. And later may be too late.”
A 17-year-old Ukrainian boy was stabbed to death in a frenzied knife attack at an Irish refugee center just four days after arriving in the country, police confirmed.
Vadym Davydenko was killed on Wednesday morning at emergency accommodation provided by the Irish Child and Family Agency (Tusla) in the Grattan Wood apartment complex in Donaghmede, north Dublin.
He was stabbed multiple times in the head, eyes, and chest with a kitchen knife during the attack, which also left a female staff member injured as she tried to intervene, according to the Daily Mail.
A Somali teenager, currently under medical supervision in a Dublin hospital, has been identified as the prime suspect in the investigation. Irish authorities said his injuries are not life-threatening, but that he cannot be questioned yet due to his condition.
“It will be a number of days before the investigating gardaí can talk to the suspect to try and piece together why this happened because he’s going to be under medical supervision for a while,” a police source noted.
The Somali youth was one of four teenagers housed at the Tusla facility, which accommodates minors who arrived in Ireland unaccompanied by adults. Vadym, who had fled Ukraine in search of a better life and education, was due to move to accommodation designated for Ukrainian refugees.
The Kyiv Post reported that two other teenagers were also attacked, though one managed to fight off the assailant.
A female care worker also suffered injury and was hospitalized after attempting to stop the assault. “I came home to chaos,” a resident of the apartment complex told the Irish Times. “There were people running around everywhere, some of them covered in blood. The guards were asking them if they were injured. The first thing I saw was the Emergency Response Unit running into the apartments, and then chaos. One of the women, she looked like a care worker, had blood on her hand and she didn’t realize she was stabbed until she washed her hands.”
The Ukrainian Embassy confirmed it is in contact with Vadym’s family and Tusla and is making arrangements for his body to be repatriated to Ukraine. “We express our deepest condolences to Vadym’s family and loved ones during this time of profound grief,” a spokesperson said.
Plans are being made to repatriate Vadym’s body to Ukraine.
The authorities confirmed they are not seeking anyone else in connection with the incident and are “following a definite line of inquiry.”
Several Ukrainians who fled war in their homeland have been murdered or attacked in their Western refuges.
Iryna Zarutska, 23, was stabbed to death on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, in August, as horrifying surveillance footage showed the moment the young woman was brutally attacked with a pocket knife by a repeatedly convicted Black man named Decarlos Brown.
This was Liana.
She was 16.
She was on her way home from her dental assistant apprenticeship when she was pushed in front of a freight train in Friedland, Germany, on Aug. 11, and killed.
An Iraqi migrant claiming to have schizophrenia has been arrested. His DNA was recovered… pic.twitter.com/NaHeQmU4QL
Also in August, 16-year-old Ukrainian, Liana, was pushed in front of a freight train in Friedland, Germany. An Iraqi migrant claiming to have schizophrenia was arrested in connection with the fatal attack.
While in February, a 19-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was tried in Frankfurt, Germany, for attacking a Ukrainian woman with a box cutter in broad daylight back in June 2024. The man, identified as Mohammad Zaman A., stabbed her multiple times in the head and neck before fleeing.
An Iraqi migrant, Ayad A., is accused of murdering his 37-year-old mother of seven, Laila A., whose children are aged six to 16, on May 12, which also happened to be the same date as their 16th wedding anniversary.
The event, which occurred in the middle of a residential area in Varel, Lower Saxony, is being prosecuted as malicious murder. The last words a witness heard Laila’s eldest daughter say were: “Daddy’s just left.” Seconds later, Laila was dead.
The marriage was deeply troubled. After 16 years, Laila separated from Ayad in April 2025 following a complaint that he had beaten and strangled her. He was under a restraining order that forbade him from approaching his wife. Despite this, he suddenly appeared, and a witness reported that an argument ensued.
The final, fatal moments saw Laila walking home before her husband rapidly approached in an Opel Meriva. Though it was a 30 km/h zone, he was recorded driving at 71 km/h (44 miles per hour). The car struck Laila with full force, throwing her onto the hood before her head smashed against the windshield. She died at the scene.
Ayad A. is also said to have dragged his lifeless wife’s body behind the nearby construction fence before first responders arrived.
The husband’s defense is already in question.
In court, Ayad A. pleaded not guilty to intentional murder, having his statement read out for him due to his limited German.
The statement read: “I didn’t intentionally run her over. I was coming home from work, I was tired, and I was taking pills. I dropped my cell phone; I probably accidentally stepped on the gas. I was driving at a normal speed.”
Laila’s sister, Lamia, is a co-plaintiff and sat weeping in the courtroom, where the judge told her: “Take care of yourself. You can leave the room at any time.” Lamia has moved from Stuttgart to Varel to care for the seven orphaned children.
She told Bild newspaper about the situation: “None of us are well. The little ones cry a lot; they miss their mom every day. It’s a catastrophe.”
The trial will resume on November 4, with Ayad A. facing life imprisonment.
Remix News has reported on a wave of femicide involving foreigners in Europe in recent years.
A Swiss-Tunisian scholar and political Islam activist, Saïda Keller-Messahli, addressed the topic earlier this year. After Switzerland reported a surge in domestic murders, with 15 femicides recorded in the first half of 2025, she wrote in a commentary for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung that offenders disproportionately often come from Muslim countries and that the role of Islam in shaping attitudes toward women must be openly acknowledged.
“Reports of men killing their wives, ex-partners, or daughters because they don’t behave as they wish are increasing,” she noted.
She cited research by forensic scientist Frank Urbaniok showing that Afghans are reported for serious violent crimes five times more often than Swiss citizens, Moroccans eight times more often, and Tunisians nine times more often.
“The disproportionate crime rate has a lot to do with cultural influences. It is about how violence is dealt with, the image of women, or the role of the rule of law in these countries,” Urbaniok told the same newspaper in April.
Terror suspect Ayoub M., 23, who carried out a deadly stabbing spree at Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge last year, should be sentenced to prison and compulsory psychiatric treatment, experts have told a Dutch court.
They say there is a strong connection between his jihadist and extremist motives and his severe psychosis, and while he may have been of diminished responsibility at the time of the attack, he should still face prison to reduce the risk of reoffending.
On Sept. 19 last year, Ayoub M., an Amersfoort resident, attacked random passersby with meat cleavers near the bridge. Thirty-one-year-old German national Philipp Winter was killed, a 33-year-old Swiss tourist was seriously injured, and a third person was wounded before bystanders overpowered the attacker.
As reported by Algemeen Dagblad, the defendant told investigators he had been in a psychotic state and did not stab “fully consciously.” Nevertheless, prosecutors say there is clear evidence of a terrorist motive. He shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the attack, referred to the fatal victim as an “infidel” afterward, and performed a purification ritual before the killings.
At the time of the attack, then-Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb was criticized for claiming that many Muslims say “Allahu Akbar” “dozens of times a day,” describing the phrase as “filler.”
“Whether it has a meaning here in the context that you might be thinking of, terrorism, I do not know. That will be determined by the investigation,” he added.
Experts from the Pieter Baan Center, the Netherlands’ central forensic psychiatric observation clinic that provides psychological assessments of suspects accused of serious crimes, concluded that the defendant was of diminished responsibility at the time and warned of a high risk of reoffending. They recommend that he receive compulsory psychiatric treatment in addition to a prison sentence.
The case has raised serious questions about why Ayoub M. was free at all. On Feb. 3, 2022, he stabbed his own mother during a psychotic episode, claiming he acted on the orders of voices.
“The suspect attacked his mother with a knife and cut her neck and throat with it. She used all her strength to protect herself and tried to stop the suspect. Eventually, she managed to grab the knife from the suspect, causing her to sustain cuts to her hand,” the Gelderland District Court in Zutphen ruled at trial.
He was ultimately acquitted of criminal responsibility for the attack, with a judge ruling he was completely insane and imposing a conditional psychiatric treatment order, allowing him to avoid detention in a forensic psychiatric clinic if he complied with treatment conditions.
Despite repeated warnings from healthcare providers about the risk of further violence, authorities judged that compulsory detention was unnecessary and that the conditions in place provided “sufficient guarantees” to limit the risk to the public.
However, in the months leading up to the Erasmus Bridge massacre, Ayoub M. repeatedly violated those conditions. He missed medical appointments, failed drug tests, and was arrested in Amsterdam for selling counterfeit drugs. The situation became so alarming that prosecutors and probation officials considered escalating his order to compulsory TBS – a measure that would have placed him in a secure clinic – but ultimately did not, enabling the Islamist to be free to travel to Rotterdam and commit the attack.
Apparently, parents and teachers — at least at one school — are not so happy about having the LGBTQ+ agenda forced on their kids and have decided to do something about it.
Activist Mateusz Sulwiński posted on his Facebook page that LGBTQ+ activists in the Polish city of Poznań are sorely disappointed over the cancellation of their planned “teacher training.”
Apparently, the teachers themselves protested the activity, “much to the activist’s surprise,” writes Do Rzeczy.
Sulwiński noted that most of these events are free, and everything for this particular training had already been arranged.
He then goes on to admit that both school boards and parent groups have “actively” stood in their way, but apparently, this is all the fault of the previous conservative ruling party.
“Experience has taught us that an invitation alone isn’t enough. From the first contact to the actual school visit, many things can get complicated. Under the Law and Justice party (PiS), it’s common knowledge that the biggest problems were caused by school boards,” he wrote.
“Parent groups actively working to prevent queer kids from accidentally improving their situation were problematic,” Sulwiński added.
Calling the teachers’ protest “a new development,” the activist then bemoans such an atmosphere where “staff isn’t even ready to discuss the existence of LGBT+ people” and then claims that such a stance shows “a lack of willingness to develop one’s own teaching skills,” which he says should raise concerns about the teachers’ professionalism and ethics.
Sulwiński declined to reveal which institution withdrew from the training, as it “wouldn’t have accomplished anything good at this stage.”
This past June, Poznań used PLN 400,000 (€94,000) of taxpayer funds to pay for an LGBT march, a new record amount of funding for the Equality March.
Poznań Pride 2025 also sponsored a performance by one of the world’s most popular drag queens. The city went all out, with discussion panels, film screenings, theater performances, and parties. There was even one very special event: a debate on “queer migrants.”
With parent groups and school boards standing up to such ideology, Poznań Pride may soon find it more difficult to use public funds for such shows.
BMW sales may be falling through the floor, but Cedomir R. has found a use for the luxury vehicle brand, with the defendant now facing an attempted manslaughter charge for allegedly purposefully running over a cyclist in Düsseldorf.
Not only did Cedomir R. strike the victim, but then screeched his tire and rolled over the legs of the cyclist after the initial impact.
The two individuals had earlier had an argument. The 24-year-old Cedomir R. and the victim, 19-year-old Karim M. had been feuding for weeks. After shouting insults at each other, Cedomir R. threatened to run the victim over, according to Karim M.
#Düsseldorf: Bereits Wochen zuvor hatte sich der Streit zw Cedomir R. (24) und Karim M. (19) hochgeschaukelt. Als Karim M. mit dem Fahrrad am Wagen vorbeifahren wollte, gab Cedomir Gas und schleuderte ihn vom Rad. Anschl überfuhr er d Beine seines Opfers.https://t.co/jBWq0a1sqTpic.twitter.com/XXDFzfvDJo
At 11:00 p.m. on the day of the incident, Cedomir R. was with three friends in Düsseldorf, driving a borrowed BMW 118i, when he saw Karim on a bicycle.
Karim M. tried to pass the back of the car, but Cedomir R. then quickly reversed into the victim while traveling at 25 kilometers per hour, sending the rider flying. Then, he quickly accelerated forward and ran over the legs of Karim M.
Karim M. was seriously injured and began crawling to the side of the road, where he managed to avoid being hit a third time by Cedomir R.
“I spent two weeks in the hospital afterward and am still suffering from my injuries,” Karim M. told Bild. “I still can’t exercise and will have to undergo another operation soon.”
Cedomir R. confessed to the crime in court through his lawyer, Nicolai Mameghani. However, he said he did not intend to kill his victim.
“My client wanted to fight, but then he hit the man while reversing, causing him to fall,” said Mameghani.
Cedomir R. is presumably a German citizen. If so, his crime will be recorded as a German national.
Cedomir is a Slavic name, which means the suspect likely has a migration background. In terms of measuring integration and cultural assimilation, and to gain a more accurate view of criminal statistics, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is calling for the recording of the migration background of suspects, which is the standard in Denmark.
The decision to bar Israeli fans from attending Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Europa League match against Aston Villa on Nov. 6 has sparked a political firestorm in Britain, with critics warning it sends a “shameful message” about antisemitism and public order in the country.
Aston Villa confirmed on Thursday that no away fans will be allowed into Villa Park, Birmingham, for the fixture following an instruction from the Safety Advisory Group (SAG), which issues safety certificates for all matches at the stadium. The club said the decision followed concerns from West Midlands Police about “public safety outside the stadium bowl and the ability to deal with any potential protests on the night.”
“The club is in continuous dialogue with Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local authorities throughout this ongoing process, with the safety of supporters attending the match and the safety of local residents at the forefront of any decision,” Aston Villa said.
The ruling follows weeks of campaigning by local Independent MP Ayoub Khan, who represents Birmingham Perry Barr. Khan, who had called Maccabi fans “violent” and argued the club should “not even be participating in European competition,” welcomed the SAG decision. “From the moment the match was announced, it was clear that there were latent safety risks that even our capable security and police authorities would not be able to fully manage,” he said. “With so much hostility and uncertainty around the match, it was only right to take drastic measures.”
I will do everything in my power to guarantee Jewish communities the security they deserve. pic.twitter.com/IceYvBXOvu
The decision has been widely condemned by political leaders. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who only hours earlier had pledged to Jewish communities that he would “do everything in my power to guarantee Jewish communities the security they deserve,” wrote on X that the decision was “wrong.”
“We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets,” he said. “The role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation.” However, Starmer offered no indication that the government would intervene to overturn the ban.
Former immigration minister and current Shadow Justice Minister Robert Jenrick was among the first to demand that West Midlands Police reverse the decision. “Use Public Order units. Use mutual aid,” he said. “We can’t be a country where the safety of Jews cannot be guaranteed in some areas. The Home Secretary must be clear that if this isn’t reversed, she’ll intervene and heads will roll.”
Last week I was attacked for pointing out that parts of Birmingham were a failure of integration.
But now Israeli football fans are banned from watching their team play at Villa Park as the police can’t guarantee their safety.
Jenrick linked the decision to his earlier comments about Birmingham’s integration challenges, remarks that were widely criticized last week. “Last week, I was attacked for pointing out that parts of Birmingham were a failure of integration. But now Israeli football fans are banned from watching their team play at Villa Park, as the police can’t guarantee their safety. Maybe I wasn’t wrong after all,” he said.
Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch called the development a “national disgrace.” “How have things come to this?” she asked. “Starmer pledged that Jews are welcome and safe in Britain, that he stands shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish community, and will use the full force of his government to prove it. Will he back those words with action and guarantee that Jewish fans can walk into any football stadium in this country? If not, it sends a horrendous and shameful message: there are parts of Britain where Jews simply cannot go.”
Aston Villa's have barred Israel's Maccabi Tel Aviv FC fans due to Muslim intimidation.
Astar Rashid, an Islamic preacher says when the Jewish team & fans arrive they will shown no "rahma" or mercy. pic.twitter.com/qzN1neyX6K
The controversy was further inflamed by a widely shared video of Birmingham Imam Asrar Rashid calling for attacks on visiting Maccabi fans. “We will show no mercy toward Maccabi Tel Aviv fans who will arrive in several weeks for the match against Aston Villa,” he said in a recent address to Muslims.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the decision “takes racial discrimination to a whole new level.”
Videos from the incident showed Jewish fans being beaten, thrown into canals, and even run over by vehicles, with one assailant shouting, “That’s for Palestine, motherfucker,” as he repeatedly kicked a victim lying motionless on the ground.
The Jerusalem Post reported that mobs attempted to storm buildings where Jewish supporters had barricaded themselves, and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett urged people to “act by any means” to save their lives.
Much of the German national media is in an uproar after Chancellor Friedrich Merz connected problems with Germany’s “cityscape” and immigration.
At a press conference in Potsdam, Merz spoke about migration policy and his party’s strategy against the Alternative for Germany (AfD), stating they are “very far along” in confronting the AfD on the issue.
However, then the remark came that has the left attacking him.
“But of course we still have this problem in the cityscape and that is why the Federal Minister of the Interior is now making deportations possible on a very large scale,” said Merz.
The pro-migration left jumped on the comment, calling him a racist. Green Party leader Felix Banaszak considers Friedrich Merz to be “dangerous“ and “unworthy of a chancellor.”
The Green Party MEP Erik Marquardt stated that “the chancellor should apologize for this racist derailment.” He added that “calling people of different skin colors a ‘problem in the cityscape’ is simply racism. The fact that such a statement simply slips out of his mouth makes it clear.“
Former Bundestag Vice President Katrin Göring-Eckardt, also with the Greens, only wrote on X: “Cityscape. I just can’t believe it.“
Green Party politician Andreas Audretsch wrote on X: “Friedrich Merz didn’t understand anything.” In a video, he stated that “Mr. Merz, you got stuck in another time.“
The Alternative for Germany (AfD), also a bitter rival of the CDU, comes at the issue from the totally opposite angle, blaming Merz for failing to fix the issues his party is largely responsible for. AfD politician Jörg Baumann stated, “Did Merz mean ‘this problem in the cityscape’”?
In a subsequent post, he said he was not writing to support Merz, and that he was in fact working to actively remove Merz from power.
Merz’s statement is being defended by some in his party as well as the news outlet Welt, which is considered close to the CDU.
“Anyone who considers this sentence from the chancellor to be an inadmissible exaggeration should take a walk through Duisburg, where the post office in the White Giant’s high-rise development temporarily stopped delivering parcels – for security reasons. Because the authorities do too little to combat crime and violence between different ethnic groups, some residents have decided to arm themselves. The Green Party leader Banaszak, who himself comes from Duisburg, apparently has the talent to close his eyes to these undesirable developments,” wrote Welt columnist Jan Philipp Burgard.
He continued, writing that “public order is not as eroded everywhere as in Duisburg, but all over Germany people are discussing changing the image of their city at the dining table, conference table or regulars’ table. Some seasoned men avoid walking home from the pub. Some women no longer go jogging in the park. According to the opinion research institute Ipsos, concerns about immigration will arise for the twelfth time in a row in September 2025 at the top of the ‘worry barometer.’”
PM Viktor Orbán: 🇭🇺🇩🇪 "Now, Germany is no longer Germany. It’s a colorful, changed multicultural world, where migrants coming in are no longer guests in this country… They are not here as guests of the native Germans, but in their own right. It is now their country, too." pic.twitter.com/yjjArFvYNA
A poll from last year found that 72 percent of respondents say it is right to carry out asylum procedures outside the EU’s external borders, while only 16 percent say the measure is wrong. The poll also showed that Germans are not only against illegal immigration, but want lower levels of all immigration, including legal immigrants. The poll shows 69 percent of respondents would like (rather) less migration to Germany, while only 11 percent would like (rather) more migration.
In other words, Merz’s “cityscape” comments are not far off the mark from what a majority of Germans think on the issue.
Jan Philipp Burgard writes for Welt: “There are still around 220,000 people who live illegally in Germany and would have to be deported – the result of a historic loss of control that began 10 years ago and whose collateral damage is obvious. Foreigners in Germany are more than twice as involved in violent crime as Germans. Perpetrators from Muslim countries from Algeria to Afghanistan are particularly well represented in crime statistics.”
However, even deporting 220,000 illegal migrants is not necessarily going to seriously change the ongoing demographic transformation of Germany at a time when schools are in shambles, the German economy continues to teeter, and crime continues to soar. In addition, German citizens with a migration background are often the very children in classes causing serious problems, and they are often the suspects in serious crime case. This group cannot just be “deported away,” yet finding solutions to these difficult problems remains no easy task.
Merz, like Macron, may be throwing “red meat” to the right with such proclamations. His CDU is now losing out to the AfD in all major polls, which means he has to present a tough face on the issue of immigration — an issue that is not going away, regardless of how much the left screams “racism.”
U.S. President Donald Trump will be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest for peace negotiations on the Ukraine war.
The news comes after a “productive” call between the two leaders. It could represent a significant development in the brutal war, which has been dragging on for almost four years, and also highlights Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s push for peace.
Orbán posted on X: “I just got off the phone with President @realDonaldTrump. Preparations for the USA-Russia peace summit are underway.” Hungary is the island of PEACE!
I just got off the phone with President @realDonaldTrump. Preparations for the USA-Russia peace summit are underway.
Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó posted: “Fantastic news that @realDonaldTrump and Vladimir Putin have spoken again, and even more fantastic that they will soon meet in Budapest. The road to peace leads through negotiations. War cannot be solved on the battlefield.”
Zoltán Kovács, the international spokesman for the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister, celebrated the news by saying: “@realDonaldTrump will meet President Putin in Budapest. Great news for peace-loving nations! We’re glad and ready to host this historic meeting.”
Trump is expected to meet today with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House to discuss his conversation with Putin and the details of a possible peace deal.
Senior advisers from the U.S. and Russian governments will meet next week at an undisclosed location. The U.S. delegation will be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump and Putin will then meet in person in Budapest; there is no set date, but Trump indicated it should take place within two weeks.
As for Zelensky, he is still fervently on the war path, noting on X: “Already in Washington. Today, I am having meetings with representatives of defense companies – producers of powerful weapons that can definitely strengthen our protection. In particular, we will discuss additional supplies of air defense systems.”
“The language of strength and justice will inevitably work against Russia as well. We can already see that Moscow is rushing to resume dialogue as soon as it hears about Tomahawks,” he added in a lengthy post.
Trump has also leveraged strong rhetoric over the past few weeks to exert pressure on Russia, indicating the U.S. may send Tomahawk missiles and that any Russian aircraft that strays into NATO airspace must be shot down immediately.
Anton Bendarzhevsky, director of the Hungarian Oeconomus Economic Research Foundation, told Magyar Nemzet that this historic meeting was made possible partly by pressure easing in the Middle East, with the peace agreement just signed in Egypt.
He says the U.S. will now focus its full attention on ending the war in Ukraine so that it can then finally turn to the issue of restoring its international dominance under threat by China.
Bendarzhevsky noted that an additional factor that has brought about this meeting is Moscow’s failed summer offensive, which did not lead to the capture of certain key Ukrainian cities, such as Pokrovsk or Kupyansk. With winter fast approaching, there is little more Putin can do for now.
Often, there is not enough real racism to go around, so it has to be created out of thin air. Now, a Moroccan teacher from the French city of Libourne has been convicted and sentenced to prison for aggravated fraud and false reporting after it was revealed she was behind racist death threats, which she then reported to the police.
Notably, her death threats sent the entire school into disarray, and led to a number of false accusations against individuals within the school.
The teacher, from the Jean Monnet high school, was sentenced to 13 months in a suspended sentence by the Libourne court.
The 43-year-old woman, described as having a “psychologically fragile” disposition due to past traumas (accidents, sexual assault, etc.), faces significant professional consequences., according to a report from media outlet France Bleu.
She is banned from working as a teacher for five years, must undergo psychological treatment, and will be required to compensate the education authority for the resources deployed to protect her. Despite her issues, the psychiatric assessment confirmed she is “responsible for her actions” and suffers from no mental illness.
The job, which she claimed was “my whole life,” is now lost. She collapsed in the courtroom after the verdict, an act that her colleague Thierry Crespin, a boilermaking teacher, dismissed as potentially staged:
“She’s already had this kind of reaction in high school, where she supposedly fainted. I don’t believe it for a moment,” said Crespin.
The woman, who is of Moroccan origin, apologized to the police, the education authority, and her colleagues during the hearing.
While she confessed to sending the final, threatening text message in April 2025—which she did only after video evidence showed her buying the SIM card—she maintains she did not write the three preceding handwritten letters.
The public prosecutor asserted she was caught “in the spiral of her lie,” “in her victim persona.”
The teacher claimed, “I don’t know what went through my mind,” explaining that she fabricated the evidence to jumpstart the investigation, which was on the verge of being closed.
Her lawyer, Séverin Djè, supported this, arguing, “The investigation management regularly told her that her investigation was over because there was no new evidence, and that without it, it would be closed. This explains this mistake of fabricating evidence.”
This defense, however, did not convince the court.
The revelation left colleagues feeling deceived. Corinne, a lab technician, shared her deep sense of betrayal: “I was always her confidant in the lab when she had problems. She would come to my house to cry, I would take her to the lab, and I would talk with her. I felt cheated. She gave her own version of events to everyone, and we never all had the same version. So, in conclusion, we realize we were all cheated.”
Edwige, a management teacher, expressed profound personal distress, saying: “I’m devastated because I supported her so much. I was on the phone with her constantly. Learning it was her devastated me.”
She also highlighted the long-term impact on the high school community, noting that the affair “has undermined the school’s educational community. There are still many tensions. Students have been suspected, teachers have been suspected, and school staff have been suspected. Students have been taken into custody. There are people who no longer speak to each other. It has left its mark on the school. As soon as you type ‘Jean Monnet Libourne High School,’ it’s the first thing that comes up. It’s a shame.”
While some hate crime hoaxes go viral, such as the Jessie Smollett case, many feature little in terms of reporting. In fact, numerous studies have shown has many hate crimes are actually hoaxes, up to one in three, according to the Manhattan Institute. However, the number may be much higher, as many who participate in hate crime hoaxes are never discovered.
The Danish People’s Party (DF) has set out one of the most hardline immigration platforms in Europe ahead of a general election expected next year, pledging mass repatriations, sweeping citizenship reviews, bans on Islamic practices, and a fundamental reversal of four decades of immigration policy.
In a detailed manifesto published this month, the party declares that Denmark must “remain Danish” and warns that mass immigration from the Middle East and North Africa has brought crime, parallel societies, and cultural change.
DF argues that immigration from countries such as Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia has caused “the largest demographic change in Danish history” and is responsible for “ghettoization, ethnic conflicts, radicalization, clan culture, honor-related crimes, social control, persecution of Jews and sexual minorities, infiltration of public authorities, Islamic censorship and gender segregation.”
“Immigration from the Middle East and North Africa in particular brings a lot of crime and is fundamentally changing our country,” the manifesto states. “If you do not want to adopt Danish culture and Danish values, the Danish People’s Party will work to ensure that you stay somewhere else.”
The party says the proportion of people with a non-Western background has risen from 1 percent in 1980 to 10.1 percent today, with more than 500,000 people of non-Western origin now living in Denmark. It argues that Danish culture is “being replaced by Islamic culture” in several areas and says “Middle Eastern conditions must be pushed back so that everyone in the country can feel at home.”
The manifesto goes far beyond existing policy, calling for a comprehensive “immigration” program to send back those “who should never have been here in the first place.” Proposals include a review of all citizenships granted in the past 20 years and reconfirmation of those granted in the last eight through new language and citizenship tests, with those failing to pass losing their citizenship. Citizenship would also be revoked for anyone convicted of a crime, and Denmark would seek to withdraw from or amend international conventions, such as the Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, that limit such measures.
REMIGRATION OG HJEMSENDELSER NU! ✈️
Siden Mette Frederiksen blev statsminister, er den islamiske masseindvandring steget med svimlende 124%.
Faktisk har hun lukket hele 40.000 islamiske udlændinge ind i vores land, siden hun satte sig på magten i 2019.
The party also wants permanent and strengthened border controls, the withholding of development aid from countries that refuse to accept deported nationals, and the imposition of economic sanctions on such states. Migrants who accept repatriation support would be banned from re-entering the country, and DF proposes establishing a dedicated Ministry of Repatriation to oversee policy.
In domestic policy, DF calls for a ban or heavy tax on halal products, a prohibition on foreign funding of mosques and religious associations, and the withdrawal of state recognition for Islamic religious communities. It also wants to ban the Islamic call to prayer, prohibit the wearing of the hijab in public institutions, close Muslim independent schools, abolish permanent residence permits except for people of Danish descent, and deport foreign nationals listed by police as gang affiliates.
Party leader Morten Messerschmidt has sharpened his rhetoric in recent weeks, calling for sweeping repatriation policies and accusing Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of presiding over what he calls “the great immigration failure.”
“We must have Denmark back. A Denmark where there are no scarves in schools. Where Danish is spoken in nursing homes. Where the Danes are masters of their own house again,” Messerschmidt posted on social media last week. “The most important issue of all is the issue of repatriations. That is why we need a remigration policy.”
In another statement shared online, he said: “REMIGRATION AND HOME SHIPMENTS NOW! Since Mette Frederiksen became Prime Minister, Islamic mass immigration has increased by a staggering 124 percent. In fact, she has allowed as many as 40,000 Islamic foreigners into our country since she came to power in 2019.”
DF has seen a sharp rise in support over the past six months. After polling around 5 percent in May, the party now averages around 9 percent in most surveys and reached as high as 12 percent in a recent Epinion poll — a level that would make it the joint second-largest party in the Folketing alongside the Green Left (SF).
The governing Social Democrats of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen remain ahead of their rivals, polling at around 20 percent, but their support has slipped by three to four points since the spring.
A general election is required to be held in Denmark no later than the end of October next year.
An African migrant has been arrested for stabbing a 25-year-old man to death, Melvin Mendy, on Friday evening last week. The incident occurred after Mendy and other residents asked the man to leave the area near his 19th arrondissement building in Paris. Local residents denounce what they say are major security flaws in the area including a persistent issue with dangerous squatters.
The parking lot in the area still features large bloodstains from Mendy, according to a report from Le Parisien. It was on the sidewalk at Rue Mathis that Mendy was stabbed in the stomach on Oct. 10. Police say Mendy and other residents of the building approached the African migrant, who was sitting in a chair in their parking lot. They asked him to leave, at which point he punched one of the neighbors and charged Mendy with a knife.
Melvin went into cardiorespiratory arrest due to the stab wounds and was treated by the Paris Fire Department. Later, despite efforts to save his life, he perished at the La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital the next day.
Families and friends flocked to the small apartment in the area, with many of them there to support the grieving mother. Le Parisien reporters indicated that the mother’s cries could be heard throughout the building. Notes from neighbors were posted to the family in the building, with one message reading: “Strength to you.”
The paper reports that, unlike many other buildings, there is a warm atmosphere among neighbors, with many residents knowing each other. The residents are currently struggling to understand how such violence could happen to someone from their community, describing Melvin as an “adorable” young man.
Melvin, who had lived in the building for a few years, was described as a “great kid’ by one of the neighbors. “He was discreet, he always helped me carry the groceries. It was a shock.”
While the suspect, who is from Guinea-Bissau, has been arrested and charged with murder, there are questions about whether he will see any prison time. As is the case again and again in Europe, a source told Le Parisien the man allegedly suffers from “psychiatric disorders” and has recently been released from a specialized psychiatric facility.
The mother of the 28-year-old suspect was the one who alerted police about the stabbing attack, which led to his arrest.
Residents say that entering the building is not hard. Even the garage door to the underground parking lot has not closed properly for weeks.
Le Parisien reporters said they easily gained access to the buildings, where they saw trash piled up and were hit with the strong smell of urine in the stairwells.
“It’s a mess,” said one neighbor, who was close to Melvin. “There’s no security here. Look, we can open it however we want,” he said while showing Le Parisien reporters how easy it was to open the door.
All residents spoke of intruders who routinely gain access to the underground parking garage, where they squat. A number of young squatters routinely show up and have “settled” inside the parking garage.
It still remains unclear whether the man was a part of this squatting group. However, there are concerns that these squatters could eventually kill more residents. In May, a fire broke out in the parking garage of the building, and the reporters indicated that five months later, the smell of the fire is still present.
“No one has come to clean it up,” said one tenant.
European countries like Germany continue their education downfall, with students now performing worse and worse on key subject areas, according to a new study. Experts are pointing to a number of key factors, including mass immigration, digital distractions, and lingering effects of the Covid-19 lockdowns.
According to the “IQB Education Trend 2024,” which Humboldt University in Berlin presented today, and which were leaked to Bild newspaper, “fewer and fewer of the 48,000 students tested are achieving the standard standards and are failing the minimum requirements more often than in 2012 and 2018.”
These tests focus on math, biology, chemistry, and physics, considered key areas that underpin Germany’s technology and industrial edge.
Bild reports that in 2024, almost 9 percent of all ninth-graders failed to reach the minimum standard for a math certificate for a Hauptschule. The German school system is broken into different types of “schools,” with a Haupschule considered the “vocational school.” In other words, many students are even failing to reach the minimum math standards for the much lower standards expected in the “vocational track.”
Furthermore, those students who go on to high school are increasingly failing to receive the Mittlere Reife (MSA) in 10th grade, equivalent to a high school diploma in the United States. The study found that a whopping 34 percent fail to reach the minimum standard in math for this certificate.
Nearly a quarter of students (24 percent) aiming for this school-leaving certification (MSA) completely fail the math requirement, and another 25 percent fail in chemistry. In physics, this figure reaches 16 percent, and in biology, it is 10 percent.
This all marks worse scores than in past studies, showing a 5 percent higher number of students failing the biology exam, 9 percent more failing the chemistry exam, and 7 percent more failing the physics exam.
Many Gymnasium students, considered to be the best students in Germany, are also falling short of these standards.
Mass migration, a driver of education failure
Although there are a number of factors driving this collapse in the German education system, mass migration continues to be a major factor, if not the most definitive factor.
The study from Humboldt notes that the children of foreign nationals and refugees continue to perform worse in all subjects, including math, chemistry and physics, than classmates without a migration background.
The Humboldt study offers the same “solutions” that nearly every other researcher has offered for years, including better language support. This mantra has been repeated while the German education system continues its free fall. Notably, there is no suggestion for immigration restriction.
They also call for fewer career changes, such as teachers leaving for a new school. The problem is that many of the migrant-heavy school districts feature high-stress environments. In schools across Germany, violence is growing, in large part due to foreigners and students with a foreign background. Teachers point to violence in their schools, harassment of women, and conflict between different ethnic groups.
Last month, the new education monitor from the German Economic Institute (IW) and the New Social Market Economy Initiative (INSM) documented the increasingly dire state of the education system. The study’s author, Axel Plünnecke, said the already bad situation has “further deteriorated slightly compared to 2024“ and noted the “situation in Germany’s schools remains bad.“
Plünnecke’s study found that there have been massive drops in the quality of the education system since 2013 compared to 2025. His large-scale study found that “integration and educational opportunities” saw a 43.7-point drop, while school quality saw a 28.2-point drop, and educational poverty rose by 26 points.
He points to 2015, the same year that Angela Merkel opened the border to mass immigration, as the turning point, describing it as a “watershed.”
The main reason? “Excessive demands due to high migration,” wrote Plünnecke.
He noted that many more children arrived in schools than the education ministers thought would be coming.
“In 2015, the school system was overwhelmed and no quick answers were found to the challenges of increased refugee migration,” he wrote.
🇩🇪🚨German classroom nightmare
Teachers mocked, lessons disrupted, and even physical assaults.
"I am no longer in control of the situation. I feel like a failure. The children here are just 12 years old."
The decline in test scores and educational achievement has long been predicted by figures like Thilo Sarrazin, the former Bundesbank board member, who wrote in his 2010 book “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (“Germany Is Abolishing Itself”) that test scores, including in PISA, would continue to fall due to mass immigration.
Recently, Sarrazin stated that his predictions of educational decline have proven accurate, arguing that international benchmarks such as PISA now show a marked drop in student performance across the board, a trend he attributes largely to immigration-related demographic changes. While acknowledging that digital distractions like mobile phones also play a role, he maintained that the growing share of students from lower-performing backgrounds is the primary driver.
“The fact is not only that the decline of primary education has progressed much further than I expected, but also that there remain roughly the same differences in performance between groups of pupils based on their background,” he said.
Other considerations
Mass immigration is not the only factor, however, driving falling educational achievement. The Humboldt study noted that a drop has been seen across the board, regardless of social or family background.
Nevertheless, a significant gap still remains between students with a migrant background and those without.
The study notes that students are increasingly suffering from mental and social problems at school, and many girls are distracted by war and climate change issues being promoted on social media. The study found that girls complain about social and mental problems on average more than boys; however, these are self-reported results.
The researchers point to the coronavirus years as a potential reason for continued issues in school.
“This disruption could have severely impacted their development and continue to have an impact four years later,” they note.
However, as many other researchers have noted, these downward trends were already in place before the coronavirus crisis, and the issue of mass migration has only accelerated since then.
France’s demographic landscape is shifting rapidly, with new official data showing that more than one-third of babies born in 2024 had at least one parent born abroad — and nearly one in five were born to two foreign-born parents.
According to figures released by the national statistics agency INSEE, out of 660,787 babies born in France last year, 225,591 – or 34.1 percent – had at least one parent born outside the country. Of these, 125,440 babies – 19 percent of all births – were born to two foreign-born parents, the highest level recorded to date.
Within that group, 114,325 births were to parents who were both born outside the European Union, while a further 7,434 were to parents both born in other EU countries. Another 100,151 babies were born to couples where only one parent was foreign-born.
By contrast, babies born to two French-born parents accounted for 435,196 births, or just 65.9 percent of the total — a share that has been steadily declining over the past two decades.
A total of 71.8 percent of babies born in France in 2013 had two parents born in the country, as evidenced in the table below from the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), citing INSEE data. By 2015, that share had slipped to 70.4 percent, falling below 70 percent by 2016 and reaching 66.9 percent by 2023. Over the same period, the share of babies born to at least one foreign-born parent rose from 28.2 percent in 2013 to 33.1 percent in 2023.
The trend is likely to continue. INSEE data published earlier this month revealed there are now a record 6 million foreigners living in France, close to double the 3.6 million residing in the country back in 2006.
The majority of newcomers are not Europeans — just 22 percent of those arriving in the last five years did so from another European country. The continent of origin with the most arrivals was Africa, with 59 percent.
A Dutch town is on edge as plans to build two asylum reception centers within two kilometers of each other have sparked fierce protests, political backlash, and warnings of deepening community divisions.
Residents of Uithoorn, a town southwest of Amsterdam, have taken to the streets over proposals that would see one 250-person asylum center built in their town and another 280-person facility constructed just over the municipal border in Amstelveen. The proximity of the two sites has triggered widespread anger and fears that the town is being asked to shoulder more than its fair share of the burden.
“Many people came with the best intentions,” 55-year-old resident Sandra told De Telegraaf, who joined a protest near the town hall on Tuesday evening. The peaceful demonstration quickly turned violent when a group in the crowd started throwing fireworks and eggs at police officers, leading to four arrests.
Residents have since resorted to flying the Dutch national flag in peaceful protest at the move, mirroring a movement taking place in the United Kingdom, but authorities have been quick to take them down, citing intimidation.
Local officials acknowledged the anger felt by residents. “We had the impression that the asylum seekers’ center in Uithoorn was largely supported, but since the plans in Amstelveen, a tipping point has been reached,” said Petra van Leeuwen, chair of the Gemeentebelangen party on the local council.
Uithoorn had already agreed to host an asylum center for 250 people, a decision taken by the city council in November 2024. “That wasn’t easy, but there seemed to be understanding,” Van Leeuwen said. “Until Amstelveen announced its plans. Then the mood changed.”
The new Amstelveen facility would host 280 asylum seekers and sit directly on the border with Uithoorn. Van Leeuwen said the impact would be felt almost entirely on the Uithoorn side. “The nearest residential area in Amstelveen is miles away. No one there notices anything, but here we do. We’re getting two asylum centers less than two kilometers apart. I completely understand that residents think that’s too much.”
“Tuesday’s demonstration showed how high emotions have run. That’s okay, but we will not tolerate threats, violence, or disrupting the democratic process,” a spokesperson said. The council warned of “growing division” and urged residents on both sides of the debate to express their views peacefully. “Everyone should feel safe to express their opinion, whether you’re for or against.”
The municipality of Amstelveen said it “understands” the concerns but insisted the new center was within its rights and obligations. “We informed Uithoorn from the beginning,” a spokesperson told the Dutch newspaper, adding that the location was chosen because Amstelveen already hosts two other reception sites.
Many Dutch municipalities have previously said they are struggling to cope with national asylum demands and insist they have little choice but to comply with government orders on migrant quotas. An objection can still be filed against the permit COA has applied for to renovate the Uithoorn site.
The unrest in Uithoorn reflects a broader backlash against asylum reception across the Netherlands, driven by concerns over safety, social cohesion, and public finances. A survey by broadcaster AT5 this year found that seven in ten Amsterdam residents, for instance, now avoid parts of the city because they feel unsafe — a figure that rises to 85 percent among women, with half reporting harassment, intimidation, or assault.
Amsterdam, which was ranked Europe’s safest city by The Economist as recently as 2019, has seen public confidence erode sharply.
In Berlicum back in March, a protest against another proposed asylum center saw fireworks thrown at a town hall, eggs hurled, and pigs’ feet hung on a fence. “My 25-year-old son has been trying to find a place to live for years, but there’s nothing available,” one resident said. “Yet housing for people from far away appears overnight. How is that fair?”
Fears about safety have been heightened by high-profile crimes involving asylum seekers. In January, five underage asylum seekers were convicted of gang-raping a 31-year-old homeless woman in a park in Helmond.
Other problems have arisen near reception centers. The Dutch railway operator NS has considered removing the Maarheeze station from its service routes due to harassment, fare evasion, and other incidents linked to a nearby asylum facility. In 2024 alone, 2,700 incidents were reported there, forcing NS to spend €2.3 million annually on security, including fences, cameras, and five full-time guards.
The strain on the asylum system is also financial. At the beginning of this year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) paid a record €36.8 million in penalty payments to migrants last year due to delays in processing their applications — more than triple the previous year’s figure. Nearly 30,000 asylum seekers successfully sued for compensation, with payouts of up to €7,500 each. A recent ruling by the European Court of Justice could see those costs surge beyond €100 million if the Dutch state is found liable for thousands of more overdue cases.
Meanwhile, the government is spending billions on temporary accommodation, including housing thousands of asylum seekers in hotels and even cruise ships. Rates paid by the state have exceeded €300 per night in some cases, with more than 100 hotels and ship operators profiting from the arrangement.
Geert Wilders, the leader of the right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV), has vowed to suspend asylum applications and implement far stricter measures. His party is expected to win the upcoming snap election at the end of this month, but without a majority in parliament, it is unlikely that he will have the power to follow through on his election promises.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has announced that Hungary’s Paks expansion will soon qualify as a nuclear power plant under construction according to the standards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
His comments came during the Russian Energy Week international forum, where he detailed how the first concrete will be poured for Paks II this coming February, according to the Index news portal.
According to a statement from the Hungarian trade ministry, following his meeting with Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev, Szijjártó said that both parties are extremely committed to the success of the Paks expansion.
“Hungary needs this nuclear power plant, as it will increase the share of nuclear energy in meeting domestic electricity demand to 70 percent. Hungary is a landlocked country, it has no oil fields, no natural gas fields, so nuclear energy is the best way to improve security of supply,” he said.
The minister said that they would like to connect both new reactor blocks to the grid by the beginning of the next decade.
“We have reviewed the schedule, which states that the first concrete for the fifth unit will be poured into the ground no later than early next February,” he continued.
Szijjártó emphasized that Hungarian families today pay the lowest gas prices in the European Union, and that in order for this to remain the case, the new Paks nuclear power plant will be necessary in the long term.
As Hungary’s economy grows, so does its energy needs, he explained, and to keep its energy costs low, nuclear capacities need to be expanded. This will also guarantee Hungarian families continue to pay the lowest gas prices in Europe in the long term.
“This is a strategic issue for us, we will not allow any international pressure to force us to increase the price of natural gas for families. Reducing utility bills is one of the most important issues in Hungary today, and we will protect the results of reducing utility bills at all costs,” he emphasized.
Szijjártó also gave an update on the TurkStream pipeline and its importance to Hungary. Highlighting his meeting with Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar, he stated: “Energy is not a political or ideological issue. With@aBayraktar1 we confirmed that keeping TurkStream operational is a shared interest of Hungary and Türkiye. As two NATO member states we agreed that cutting off a reliable & affordable energy source is unreasonable & dangerous.”
Meanwhile, the Hungarian foreign minister has taken more heat for this latest visit to Moscow, this time to take part in the Russian Energy Week international forum. However, Hungary has and continues to make clear that diversification is key to their energy security strategy, and this includes Russian supplies, i.e., those running through Ukraine via the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline that is continuously targeted for destruction by Kyiv.
“Cutting one of our two oil pipelines is not diversification. It’s insanity. Our decisions on energy supply will always follow one principle: the Hungarian national interest,” he posted along with footage from the event on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Szijjártó also took direct aim at Brussels for undermining the EU economy, calling for a new economy policy.
“What Europe needs instead is lower taxes, stronger cooperation between companies, and more authority for Member States,” he posted on X after a meeting of EU trade ministers in Denmark.
Former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki believes that current Tusk government “is pursuing the interests of foreign countries,” specifically pointing to Germany and France, “but also the Benelux countries and Austria.”
He also had some pointed comments about the ruling coalition’s disastrous impact on the state budget.
After being asked during a Facebook Q&A if he believes that Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government’s policies are serving the interests of countries other than Poland, Morawiecki had a definitive and damning answer.
“Yes, I believe this government is subordinated not to the Polish raison d’état, not to Polish interests,” he stated, according to Do Rzeczy.
“It is a government that floats like a willless leaf on a river, pursuing, either consciously or sometimes out of stupidity or because it allows itself to be outwitted, the interests of foreign countries, primarily the richest and most powerful countries of Western Europe, particularly Germany and France, but also the Benelux countries and Austria,” the former prime minister told viewers.
“I’m an optimist by nature. We’ll be able to save Poland because I never give up. Good people never give up, the fight goes on until the end, we move forward, despite defeats and sometimes mistakes. (…) Not everything was perfect, but only those who do nothing make no mistakes,” Morawiecki continued.
He also took aim at the budget, noting how Tusk’s ruling coalition had trashed the state’s finances. “Repairing the state budget after these scumbags will now take one to two years, because I see what they’re ruining, what tightening measures will need to be installed, implemented, IT systems implemented, and the National Revenue Administration (KAS) trained,” he explained.
Two years after the current government took power, “Super Express” decided to find out how many of the voters who supported the current ruling coalition back then would still vote for them today.
The results of the poll, commissioned by the Pollster Research Institute, indicate that a significant portion of its then-voters have drifted away within two years. While 65 percent of respondents answered “yes,” 22 percent said they would not vote for the current government again, and 13 percent of respondents had no clear opinion on the matter.
“Rzeczpospolita” noted that 22 percent would represent 2,551,800 people who voted for Tusk’s coalition, which amounts to some 8.7 percent of Poland’s 29,363,722 eligible voters.
Brussels has failed to pass its latest sanctions package against Russia due to holdouts Slovakia and Austria.
The 19th sanctions package was set to be passed yesterday, only to face hurdles from two member states, each for their own reasons. Last week, Hungary dropped its opposition to LNG imports being included.
Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico had already made it clear to the head of the European Council, António Costa, that prioritizing Ukraine over the EU economy was simply not an option for him.
“I am more and more convinced that by constantly discussing Ukraine, we in the EU are covering up our inability to deal with our most fundamental challenges and problems,” he began his long entry on X.
“I repeatedly reminded A. Costa that I am not interested in dealing with new sanctions packages against Russia until I see, in the conclusions of the EC summit, political instructions for the European Commission on how to address the crisis in the automotive industry and the high energy prices that are making the European economy completely uncompetitive,” he wrote.
I AM MORE AND MORE CONVINCED THAT BY CONSTANTLY DISCUSSING UKRAINE, WE IN THE EU ARE COVERING UP OUR INABILITY TO DEAL WITH OUR MOST FUNDAMENTAL CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS.
As part of the preparations for the European Council (EC), I had a long phone call with the President of the… pic.twitter.com/vZKdVhuqlU
According to Pravda Euronews. Vienna is demanding that Brussels unfreeze the assets of the Russian company Rasperia Trading so that it can pay compensation of €2.1 billion to the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) after losing a court case in Moscow earlier this year. So far, the EU has refused to do so.
Raiffeisen has been under the spotlight as the biggest lender in Russia not under sanctions and has facilitated Putin’s war effort by acting as a conduit for his energy sales. Back in 2023, Austria only lifted its block of the 12th sanctions package after Ukraine removed the bank from its list of “international war sponsors.”
Just this month, Raiffeisen failed yet again to sell its Russian subsidiary to a local buyer due to a block from the Russian government, which fears the unit will then face sanctions under Russian ownership. Meanwhile, Russia is also preventing Raiffeisen from repatriating billions of profit made by the subsidiary.
A mother of young children will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair after a brutal knife attack allegedly carried out by her Ghanaian former partner, a court in Bremen, Germany, heard this week.
Marie G., 33, was left with life-changing injuries after prosecutors say she was stabbed in the neck and back, beaten, and dragged by her hair through her apartment by 39-year-old Raymond Richard King A. in the early hours of April 24 this year.
As reported by Bild, prosecutors allege that the attack was triggered by Marie’s decision to end the relationship. The defendant, they say, entered her home in Bremen-Hastedt without warning at around 3:10 a.m. and attacked her as she slept. Armed with a 19-centimeter knife, he is accused of stabbing her in the neck, a blow that sparked Marie to wake up covered in blood and try to flee.
However, the court heard how Marie was punched repeatedly in the face and dragged into the living room, where prosecutors say she was stabbed again in the back. Her lawyer, Christina Walter, told the German tabloid, “Her young children had to witness parts of the crime.”
In a desperate attempt to escape, Marie jumped from a second-floor window, landing legs first. She survived but suffered multiple fractures to her nose, foot, bones, and leg in addition to the stab wounds. “My client is not doing well at all,” Walter said. “She sustained severe injuries, could only be saved by an 11-hour emergency surgery, and has been paralyzed ever since.”
Speaking to RTL, Walter described the assault as “extremely brutal” and said it was “gender-based violence” and an “attempted femicide.” It is also, however, yet another incident of brutal violence by a foreign national in Germany.
“The defendant could not and would not accept that she was separating from him and would rather see her dead than separate from him,” Walter added.
The prosecution is seeking the maximum possible sentence. “We are dealing with gender-based violence here, with an attempted femicide. We demand the maximum penalty,” she told Bild.
Court spokeswoman Henrike Kull noted that “the law generally provides for life imprisonment for murder. Since the alleged crime remained an attempt, the sentence can be reduced.” The maximum sentence for attempted murder in Germany is 15 years.
The defendant’s immigration status has not been made public.
Poland has reached its capacity when it comes to accepting Ukrainian refugees and must instead concentrate on integrating those already living in the country, Marcin Przydacz, head of Poland’s Presidential Office of International Affairs, has said.
“Poland cannot constantly accept Ukrainian refugees because Warsaw should focus on the integration and adaptation of people already staying in Poland,” Przydacz said in an interview with RMF24.
Currently, about 1.5 million Ukrainian citizens live in Poland, but only 26,000 have received Polish citizenship over the past five years. He warned that Poland’s capacity to integrate newcomers is being stretched and that “separate migrant districts” are already forming.
“When the scale exceeds the capacity of inculturation, problems begin. We don’t want such problems in Poland. I think we’re already at the limit – we can’t accept any more,” Przydacz added.
A new study published this week by Germany’s Ifo Institute drove home the challenge facing European nations that have accepted large numbers of Ukrainians, with polling showing a tiny fraction realistically plan to return home after the conflict.
A new study warns that the vast majority of Ukrainian refugees living in Europe may never return home unless Ukraine regains its territory and secures Western security guarantees.
Just 3 percent of Ukrainian refugees in Europe would return to their home country in the most pessimistic post-war scenario, the study found, with respondents regarding territorial integrity and security guarantees as the most decisive factors when weighing up their decision.
While nearly half of refugees (46.5 percent) would return if Ukraine fully restored its 1991 borders, joined NATO, cut corruption, and boosted incomes, this hypothetical is not politically realistic while NATO members like Hungary oppose its accession.
Just 2.7 percent would do so if Russia retained most occupied territories, no peace deal was signed, security guarantees were absent, and the economy worsened.
Przydacz also urged NATO to strengthen its deterrence posture in response to Russian provocations on the eastern flank. He said the alliance’s reaction so far had been “appropriate,” but called for more troops and advanced equipment, “especially anti-drone equipment.”
Referring to reports of “little green men” on the Russian-Estonian border, Przydacz warned that Moscow “will constantly test our reaction and our internal cohesion” and said similar incidents could occur on the Polish-Belarusian frontier, where a border wall built by the previous government had proven effective.
The presidential adviser also commented on public frustration with the current government, citing a new Opinia24 poll showing that 80 percent of Poles see no improvement since the change of power, with only 12 percent saying their lives are better and 31 percent saying they have worsened. “This government was supposed to bring hope,” Przydacz said.
Discussing the situation in the Middle East, Przydacz welcomed a newly signed peace agreement with “cautious optimism” and said that “violations of international and humanitarian law have certainly occurred” in Gaza, which should be “assessed in an appropriate manner by experts.”
New data shows that foreigners account for a substantial share of people living in absolute poverty in Italy, even as the poverty rates of families with two Italian parents drops. One director of La Verita newspaper, Maurizio Belpietro, has run an opinion piece in his newspaper lamenting that Italy is “importing poverty.”
“We are importing poor people. Of the total immigrant population, 35.6 percent live in absolute poverty. This rate is five times higher than that of Italians,” writes Belpietro, who is an influential voice in Italian politics with 360,000 followers on X.
He further notes that although foreigners make up a small percentage of the population, they represent a huge share of the number of people living in poverty.
“Of the 2.2 million households living in poverty, i.e., do not have enough income to support a minimum standard of living, 1.5 million are Italian and 733,000 are foreigners. This means that, despite being less than a tenth of the population, poor non-EU citizens are one third of the total,” he wrote.
The data, from the Italian government’s Istat, shows that for those families with one Italian and one foreign parent, the absolute poverty rate is only slightly lower, at 30.4 percent.
Claims that mass immigration would “save” European pension systems are increasingly running into reality.
Citing the article, Italian commentator Francesca Totolo wrote on X: “No, immigrants do not pay pensions to Italians. The absolute poverty rate among families of only foreigners is 35.2%, while among families of only Italians it is 6.2%. This means that it is and will be Italians who have to pay for assistance, subsidies, housing, and pensions to foreigners without resources.”
No, gli immigrati non pagano le pensione agli italiani.
Il tasso della povertà assoluta
👉 fra le famiglie di soli stranieri è pari al 35,2%
👉 fra le famiglie di soli italiani è pari al 6,2%
Ciò significa che sono e saranno gli italiani a dover pagare assistenza, sussidi,… pic.twitter.com/MqxL8XnN5K
This finding has been replicated in many other countries, which shows that the left’s promise that foreigners would feed into the pension system falters when confronted with the data. Notably, there are substantial differences between EU and non-EU foreigners, with EU foreigners often boosting GDP and contributing to the tax base, in particular those from certain EU countries.
According to a landmark study from the Netherlands, the report found that migrants had cost the state €400 billion between 1995 and 2019.
In Germany, the estimated cost of migrants is currently at €50 billion a year, including social benefits, housing, integration, education, and child allowances.
In 2021, French author and academic Jean-Paul Gourévitch said in an interview with Radio Sud that employment data show that it is a myth that immigration to France has economic benefits.
“I have studied this topic extensively and today everyone in France, from the left to the right agrees that immigration costs more than it brings in,” Gourévitch said. “There is a major difference between left and right (oriented) economists regarding the costs: the leftist economists say the deficit is six to ten billion [euros per year], while those on the right say it is 40 to 44 billion. My own scientific research shows that the deficit is 20 to 25 billion [euros],” he said.
As Remix News recently reported, the rapid economic progress of China in relation to the EU — despite China’s extreme immigration restrictions policy — has blown up the myth that foreigners are needed to fuel the wave of future innovation and support the pension system.
Germany is a case example, with China dominating the nation in a wide range of industries, including green technology and automobile manufacturing.
