Poland’s nationalist and right-wing parties could be within reach of a parliamentary majority after the next election, according to a new OGB poll that shows Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition leading the race but increasingly isolated from viable coalition partners.
The survey, conducted between April 28 and May 11, 2026, places Civic Coalition (KO) first on 36.9 percent, down 0.7 percentage points. Law and Justice (PiS) remains in second place on 26.6 percent, despite falling 2.8 points.
However, the more striking finding is the strength of the parties to PiS’s right. Confederation is polling third on 13.1 percent, down only 0.1 points, while Confederation of the Polish Crown has surged to 11.2 percent, up 2.9 points.
Taken together, Law and Justice, Confederation Freedom and Independence, and Confederation of the Polish Crown account for 50.9 percent of support in the poll, suggesting that Poland’s nationalist and conservative forces could have a plausible route to a parliamentary majority if the result were repeated at an election. This percentage would translate to a larger majority of seats when parties that fail to make the threshold to enter parliament are removed from the picture.
Such an outcome would mark a serious threat to Tusk, whose party remains the strongest individual force but whose governing camp appears badly weakened. The only clear left-wing or liberal ally shown entering parliament is the New Left, which stands at 6 percent after gaining 1.4 points.
Beyond that, the picture for Tusk’s allies is bleak. The centrist Polish People’s Party and Poland 2050 are polling at just 2.1 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively, and the left-wing Together Party stands at 2.5 percent. On those numbers, all three would fail to enter the Sejm.
That raises the prospect of Civic Coalition winning the popular vote among individual parties but still failing to secure the numbers needed to govern. The poll suggests that Tusk’s party could be left as a large but isolated force, while the right benefits from a broader and more electorally viable spread of parties. Whether an alliance could be formed between the three right-wing parties, however, remains to be seen.
The result would be particularly damaging for the political model that brought Tusk back to power. His current majority depends not only on Civic Coalition’s strength, but on the survival of smaller centrist and left-wing partners. If those parties collapse below the electoral threshold, their votes could be wasted, potentially handing a decisive seat advantage to larger parties and blocs.
The growing support for Confederation of the Polish Crown, led by hard-right Polish lawmaker Grzegorz Braun, is also notable. Its 11.2 percent result puts it just behind the main Confederation grouping and makes it one of the biggest movers in the poll. Together, the two Confederation-linked forces are polling at 24.3 percent, almost level with PiS.
A future right-wing majority would still depend on whether Law and Justice and the nationalist parties could cooperate in government, but the OGB survey suggests that the parliamentary arithmetic may be moving in their favor, while Tusk’s room for maneuver is shrinking.
Poland’s next parliamentary election must be held by Nov. 11, 2027, unless an early election is called. On the current numbers, a snap election is highly unlikely, and while Tusk’s Civic Coalition would begin that contest as the leading party, the wider nationalist right could be better placed to form the next government.
Labor Minister and Social Democratic Party (SPD) co-leader Bärbel Bas (SPD) says nobody is immigrating to Germany to take advantage of its social welfare system. However, she has received substantial pushback directed at her claim.
Bas’ comment came during a session of the Bundestag, when AfD MP René Springer asked Bas why she wasn’t cutting spending on immigration due to the current budget crisis, given the clear burden it is putting on social welfare, a situation that is making German taxpayers increasingly angry.
“Immigration into the welfare state threatens social cohesion! The fact is: More and more immigrants are pushing into our social welfare system – and are bringing the system to its limits and to the brink of collapse,” CSU Member of Parliament Stephan Mayer told Bild on Tuesday, as quoted by Junge Freiheit.
Bas, in return, has called this notion a lie from “right-wing extremists.” Her goal, like many proponents of mass immigration is to link it to eliminating Germany’s skilled worker shortage. “We have a skilled worker shortage in this country, which many companies are addressing by saying, ‘We need everyone who is here in the country and can work.’”
Mayer, and many others before him, shot her down. “Every statistic refutes her. The immigration into Germany’s social systems is verifiably documented and one of the main reasons why the Federal Republic is heading toward state bankruptcy,” Springer posted on X last week.
Bärbel Bas hat ein weiteres Zitat für die Geschichtsbücher geliefert. Nach Norbert Blüms „die Rente ist sicher“, Kohls „blühende Landschaften“ im Osten, Merkels „Wir schaffen das“ zur Grenzöffnung und Scholz' „Doppel-Wumms“ zur energiepolitischen Irrfahrt setzt die… pic.twitter.com/7etME3lddg
“There is less and less money for those in need because the wrong people, who have never paid into the system and never will, are being supported by us,” he told Bild.
Remix News has reported extensively on migrant abuse of the German welfare system. In November 2024, data from the federal government revealed that 64 percent of those receiving benefits have a migration background, despite making up a much smaller share of the overall German population. The cost of providing this social welfare rose to €12.2 billion the previous year, but in total, Germany spent nearly €50 billion on immigrants and protecting its border in 2023.
And yet, in August 2025, Germany’s Federal Employment Agency is actively promoting the country’s “citizen’s benefit” (Bürgergeld) to young migrants, with one critic noting: “Germany is so generous that it not only explains to immigrants from abroad how to get a job, but also how to make ends meet in Germany without one.”
That same month, two SPD chiefs in the German state of Thuringia broke with their party, calling for most non-EU migrants — including asylum seekers and recognized refugees — to receive social benefits only as interest-free loans, repayable once they find work, in an effort to break reliance on the state.
Bas, however, has, in turn, said Springer is simply ignorant of the facts. “You’ve probably never heard of it, because you’re probably not out and about in the country, visiting companies,” she told him.
Alice Weidel, the AfD parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, reacted to this with her own input: “The SPD’s denial of reality is symptomatic of the federal government’s inability to act—a government that doesn’t want to change a thing. A political turnaround is only possible with the AfD!” she wrote on X.
According to Günter Krings (CDU), deputy leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, “there are too many people who come to us from other EU countries and only work a few hours a week, receiving social assistance for the rest of their time,” the MP told Bild, noting that the German social system is “a magnet for many EU foreigners.”
Former Bundestag member Joe Weingarten (SPD) described Bas’s statement as “a completely unrealistic assessment.” He added that she “is largely alone in this view, even within the SPD.” Weingarten also told The Pioneer, “Any responsible local politician could provide her with enough examples from their own city to prove the opposite.”
A migrant was awarded German citizenship after stabbing German comedian Nikita Miller five times inside the Bremen central train station in an attack that Miller nearly did not survive, according to a German media interview with Miller.
During the interview with Express newspaper, Miller conveyed disbelief that the migrant who nearly killed him not only received German citizenship but was also released the same night as the bloody stabbing attack.
“He was released that same night and now has German citizenship. The justice system is kind of strange,” said Miller.
The stabbing attack occurred on Nov. 11, 2023, but Miller has opened up about the attack since then, including an interview with German public news outlet SWR.
🇩🇪🔴 A migrant was awarded with German citizenship after stabbing this German comedian 5 times inside the Bremen central train station.
Nikita Miller expressed disbelief that the migrant who nearly killed him received German citizenship. Not only that, but he was released on the… pic.twitter.com/NcxMabWeIO
“Nothing has been done so far. The perpetrator was released the same night with the statement: ‘He no longer poses any danger,’” Miller told SWR.
During the interview, Miller describes the incredible logic deployed by the German justice system, which argued that since Miller did not die, it was not attempted murder. Miller told the court that he only survived because he successfully fought back during the random attack. The suspect’s charge was dropped to the less serious charge of bodily harm.
During the 20-second fight, Miller suffered 5 serious stab wounds, including a head stab wound that was 15 cm (6 inches) long and required 12 stitches.
“It escalated. He pulled out the blade. We’re standing on a narrow staircase, I’m trying to flip him back, throw him down the stairs. When he came to me, I could still kick at him. It was a 20-second fight and he gave up, but he got me with the knife five times in those 20 seconds. He wanted to get to my throat and got me in that area four times…and I was stabbed in the back of the head because I was still crouching,” he said during the Express interview.
The suspect’s nationality has never been released, but now he has German citizenship.
He psychologically dealt with the knife attack through therapy, but could not stand the thought of something happening to his family.
In addition, he also stated that he has left Germany due to the attack, moving from the city of Cologne to Norway, because he said he could not deal with the justice system a second time, especially if something happened to his family.
“I thought, if something happens to my wife or my family and I have to struggle with this justice system again, I won’t survive it a second time. And then I said, ‘We have to move.’”
Since his move, he said he is extremely happy.
“I always wanted to live in Scandinavia. I like this weather, unlike Germany, where it’s way too hot in summer. Twenty-five degrees is my pain threshold. After that, I pull down the roller shutters, eat ice cream, and watch mafia movies until fall begins. And the knife and justice thing accelerated that. Then, my tax statement came, and I asked myself: What am I paying taxes for if the justice system doesn’t ensure justice?” he told Express.
However, Miller is far from the only one who has expressed a desire to leave Germany as of late, with famed Youtuber “Radical Living” telling his 2 million subscribers why he was leaving Germany, which also included concerns over insecurity and mass immigration.
🇩🇪🔴"I'm leaving Germany."
Famous German Youtuber "Radical Living" with 2 million followers explains why he is leaving his country.
"Once you have children, you also think about where you want to raise them, especially if you have a daughter. I don't think Germany is a good… pic.twitter.com/GQQQvxgUs5
Miller has worked as a stage comedian since 2016 and has won the Cabaret Prize in 2023. He has made appearances on NDR Comedy Contest, “NightWash,” and on Dieter Nuhr’s show.
A majority of those contributing to Sweden’s organized crime crisis are people with migrant backgrounds, according to a new national assessment that exposes the scale of criminal networks active across the country’s economy.
The report, published by Sweden Against Organized Crime, identified a core group of 50,165 individuals assessed by the Swedish Police Authority and the Acta Publica database as being part of organized crime in Sweden. This figure rises to 224,390 when expanded to account for accomplices and those aiding or abetting suspects.
The report finds that organized crime is no longer confined to street gangs or isolated criminal incidents, but is instead deeply interwoven with legal companies, public money, welfare flows, the labor market, and state institutions.
Around 30 percent of the organized crime study population were foreign-born, while 49 percent had two foreign-born parents, and 60 percent had at least one foreign-born parent. This is despite first and second-generation migrants comprising around 27 percent of the Swedish population.
The report states that organized crime “cannot be reduced to migration background” alone, with 40 percent of the core group born in Sweden to two Swedish-born parents. However, it also states that migrants are disproportionately represented in the organized crime study population, making it a relevant factor in understanding the composition of Sweden’s criminal networks. Sweden Democrats MEP Charlie Weimers, commenting on the report, also noted that those classified as Swedish for the report’s purposes could also be third-generation migrants or further back.
New official report exposes the true scale of Sweden’s organised crime problem – and a recent incident in Poland shows why the “Swedish” label often hides the reality.
There are 50,165 people in the inner core of Sweden’s organised criminal networks. This group is linked to 23%… pic.twitter.com/NBPr8IbvEF
“Many who are labelled Swedish in statistics and media have no real Swedish background – only Swedish citizenship,” he wrote on X.
The wider organized crime environment can be linked to around 40 percent of all registered suspected crimes between 1995 and 2023. The offenses include drug crimes, violent crimes, theft, fraud, economic crime, and firearms offenses.
The report stresses that these figures relate only to registered and detected criminality, warning that the true scale is likely to be greater because organized crime is adaptive, opportunistic, and often geared toward avoiding detection.
The assessment also found that organized crime has a major foothold in Sweden’s legal economy. “Companies and formal economic structures have become important interfaces between organised crime and the legal economy,” the report noted.
Around 18 percent of the core group had corporate involvement between 2015 and 2023, and the group was linked to more than 20,000 companies. The authors warned that companies can provide criminals with legitimacy, premises, vehicles, labor, transaction opportunities, public contracts, and formal roles. This provides ways to avoid detection as well as launder money, turning proceeds of crime into legitimate, taxable income.
The networks were also linked to vast sums of public money. The core group received around SEK 27 billion (€2.5 billion) in registered benefits and allowances between 2015 and 2024. When the wider network is included, that figure rises to around SEK 178 billion. The report cautions that these payments are not automatically fraudulent, but says they show extensive contact between organized crime actors and Sweden’s labor market, tax system, welfare system, and public transfers.
These figures are significantly higher than the findings of a government review earlier this year, reported on by Remix News, which revealed that around SEK 3.6 billion (€327.5 million) had been paid to individuals known to police for gang affiliation over the last few years.
The assessment also found organized crime actors present in sensitive professions, including care, security and surveillance, social work, healthcare, banking and finance, and public administration. “The corporate form can provide legitimacy, economic room for maneuver, labor, premises, vehicles, transaction opportunities, public contracts, and formal roles,” it noted.
In some cases, individuals in both the inner and outer organized crime circles also appeared as elected representatives. The report says the numbers are limited relative to the size of the groups, but strategically serious due to the access and power such a position of authority can provide.
Weimers said the report exposed “the result of decades of uncontrolled mass immigration and failed integration. It has created a parallel criminal society living off Swedish welfare.
“The time for excuses is over. We must stop asylum immigration completely. We must deport foreign criminals immediately. We must end the welfare magnet and put Swedish citizens first,” he added.
Syrian asylum seeker Mohamed K., who stole stuffed animals from the memorial site of two dead children, Jeffrey and Emma, is now also suspected of a stabbing attack in the Dutch city of Winschoten.
Of the eight suspects in the violent conflict in Winschoten at the beginning of this month, two are still in custody. One of them is the 21-year-old Syrian, who sparked outrage in the Netherlands when he dishonored the memorial site of the murdered children Jeffrey and Emma. A video of the horrific moment was captured on video and went viral.
🇳🇱‼️ Absolutely disgusting video from the Netherlands.
Migrant youths steal stuffed animals from a memorial created to pay tribute to Jeffrey and Emma, two children who died.
In the latest incident, three people were injured with stab wounds during an intense clash in the Lekstraat in Winschoten a week ago.
Police deployed at least four vehicles in response to the mass brawl and stabbing attack. In addition to 21-year-old Mohamed K., who officially lives in Leeuwarden but often stays with his parents in Winschoten, seven more people were arrested from Winschoten, Leeuwarden and Oude Pekela. Among them are the three injured, including one minor.
Besides Mohamed K., only a 52-year-old man from Winschoten is in jail. A spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service does not want to say what this person is suspected of, while the others have been released, according to Dutch news outlet De Telegraaf.
In May last year, Mohamed K. stole stuffed animals from the memorial site of the murdered 10-year-old Jeffrey and 8-year-old Emma with two Syrian companions from the asylum seeker center in Winschoten. The young victims’ father, from Beerta, had deliberately driven himself and his two children into the canal with both of them in the car in Winschoten, killing all three victims.
Flowers and cuddly toys were left on the quay in Winschoten where the all three lost their lives. When the children went missing, it made national news, and hundreds of officers and volunteers searched for the victims. When the public learned what happened, there was an outpouring of sympathy for the murdered children, and the site of the tragedy became a large memorial for the two victims.
However, Mohamed K. filmed himself picking up stuffed animals and tossing them with the other two thieves. They stuffed many of the stuffed animals in their vehicle and uploaded the video to Snapchat.
In the Snapchat footage published online, the suspects can be heard urging each other to hurry while laughing and making light of the children’s deaths. “Take this one, bro. Quick,” one says. “They are dead and we are working here,” another adds, as cheering can be heard in the background.
The horrific theft sparked public outrage.
“This video has had a huge emotional impact,” police said in a statement at the time, urging the public not to take matters into their own hands and to share any information directly with authorities. Mayor Cora-Yfke Sikkema of Oldambt echoed that appeal, saying, “We all saw the sad images of people removing cuddles from the quay. That makes us all very sad.”
As reported by Algemeen Dagblad, the family of the victims described the theft as “horrible,” with a spokesperson for a support group adding, “They can’t imagine what possessed the young people. They hope that people treat each other and the memorial site with respect.”
Mohamed K. and the other three suspects were sentenced to community service for their actions. However, now Mohamed K. may be facing more serious charges for his role in the latest stabbing attack.
A fire was started in bushes outside an asylum center in the Dutch town of Loosdrecht on Tuesday evening, prompting a major police response after weeks of local protests against the facility.
Protesters threw flares and fireworks onto the grounds of the building, which is located at the town hall on De Rading.
Footage shared on social media appeared to show rioters initially blocking firefighters from reaching the blaze. After Mayor Mark Verheijen of Wijdemeren issued an emergency order, riot police intervened, and firefighters were able to quickly extinguish the fire.
One person has so far been arrested on suspicion of arson and is awaiting questioning, De Telegraaf reported, citing a police source.
BREAKING: 🇳🇱 The asylum center in Loosdrecht is on fire.
Firefighters are reportedly being blocked from the scene.
The Dutch town has been protesting the arrival of asylum seekers for the past month with multiple demonstrations by residents. pic.twitter.com/4AzsAxhGVY
The opening of the center had also been delayed after officials said they could not guarantee the safety of the asylum seekers.
Local residents have argued that their own concerns about safety have been ignored. Last month, hundreds of women marched through the town carrying a banner that read, “Does our safety not matter anymore?”
— Ongehoord Nederland TV (@ongehoordnedtv) May 12, 2026
Ongehoord Nederland TV reported on Tuesday that the first asylum seekers were due to move into the accommodation that day, which had prompted a large demonstration outside the building.
“In Loosdrecht, the first asylum seekers were housed today. The residents are seriously concerned about what consequences this will have for their safety. That is why they are gathering en masse tonight to demonstrate,” the broadcaster wrote.
After the fire started, residents at the scene told the broadcaster’s reporter, “We’re fed up with it, we haven’t been heard. This isn’t a democracy.”
The local mayor condemned the scenes, claiming it to be a deliberate attack on vulnerable people. “A line has been crossed,” Verheijen said. “You may disagree with democratically made decisions, but you do so with words, not with fireworks and violence.”
Protesters argue that the decision has been anything but democratic and that their words have fallen on deaf ears.
Loosdrecht has been a melting pot for some time. The latest unrest follows earlier clashes between protesters and police, including footage that circulated on social media showing officers using baton charges against demonstrators. At least one protester was filmed last month lying unconscious on the pavement.
Former MEP Robert Roos previously criticized the police action, writing on X, “A baton may only be used in cases of necessity, proportionately, and aimed at less vulnerable areas (arms/legs). Striking someone until they are unconscious raises serious questions: was there really acute danger, or has the boundary been crossed here?”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had high hopes that Ukraine would join the EU in 2027, initiating all six stages of EU accession negotiations by the end of June. Unfortunately for him, some member states are standing in his way.
According to Radio Svoboda, Kyiv wants to complete the process before the end of Cyprus’s presidency of the Council of the European Union. The European Commission supports the opening of the first stage by the end of June, but France, Germany, and Poland want to postpone the opening of the remaining five stages until the fall, with German Chancellor Merz calling 2027 accession “impossible.”
Previously, it was Hungary, under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, that sought to block the negotiation process for Ukraine’s accession to the EU. The new government in Budapest, led by Péter Magyar, has reversed this position but still considers accelerating Ukraine’s accession unrealistic.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski made it clear back in April that an accelerated membership process will not be possible, as Ukraine must fulfill all conditions for membership in the bloc, and there can be no exception to this. France’s Minister Delegate for Europe, Benjamin Haddad, has also backed a gradual integration, ruling out any “shortcuts” or fast-track process.
Zelensky has long pushed to become a part of the Union as fast as possible to achieve greater security, as well as economic stability and growth.
However, EU Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos sees no possibility of this happening this year.
“Everyone in this room knows that Ukraine will not be able to join the EU on January 1, 2027. First, we need peace—that’s important—and then we need to implement reforms. Investors, as we know, will only come to Ukraine when they can make money from it and their investments are safe,” she explained, according to Do Rzeczy.
German Chancellor Merz has also weighed in on the war, indicating that Kyiv may need to give up part of its land in exchange for peace, paving the way to join the EU.
“At some point, Ukraine will sign a ceasefire agreement. At some point, hopefully, a peace treaty with Russia. Then it may turn out that part of Ukrainian territory will no longer belong to Ukraine,” the German Chancellor said on Monday during a meeting with students of the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Marsberg.
Meanwhile, Zelensky has shown no desire to cede land and continues to push for victory on the battlefield, leveraging closer ties to both Europe and NATO to do so. After posting about Moscow’s violation of a recent temporary ceasefire, as well as its “cynical” drone attack on a residential building that was “devoid of any military sense,” the Ukrainian president wrote about the country’s progress on the anti-ballistic front.
“We are steadily advancing the issue of anti-ballistic capabilities production in Europe – we are forming an anti-ballistic coalition. This is something worth doing, and right now we are closer to a result than ever before. Thirteen countries and the Office of the NATO Secretary General were represented at today’s meeting at the level of NSAs on anti-ballistic solutions. Overall, Ukraine’s positions right now – on the frontline, in our long-range sanctions, and in our joint results with partners – are the strongest they have been in years,” he posted on X.
Meanwhile, despite its opposition to fast-track EU membership for Ukraine, Poland’s foreign ministry believes Kyiv is in a stronger position than ever before against Moscow, especially in the wake of Orbán’s loss to Magyar. While Magyar has made it clear that Budapest seeks diplomatic relations with Putin, the cozy alliance he enjoyed with Orbán, who relentlessly blocked sanctions against Russia and aid for Ukraine, is over.
“It is important for the adversary to know that Ukraine is ready to continue the fight, and we are ready to continue supporting it,” stated Sikorski.
Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyński has vowed to sue U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer personally after the Home Office cancelled his permission to travel to Britain ahead of a major patriotic rally in London on Saturday.
Tarczyński, a conservative Polish politician and outspoken critic of mass migration, published an image on X showing an official Home Office message informing him that his U.K. Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) had been cancelled ahead of the event.
The notice stated, “Your UK ETA has been cancelled from 12 May 2026. This means you cannot travel to the UK without a visa.”
It added that the decision had been taken because his presence in the country was “not considered to be conducive to the public good,” and said he had no right of appeal.
Tarczyński responded, writing on social media, “This is what communism looks like in the 21st Century. I have just been denied entry to the U.K. in order to speak at the largest patriotic event in Europe.”
This is what communism looks like in the 21st century. I have just been denied entry to the UK in order to speak at the largest patriotic event in Europe.
Starmer will be sued by me. Not the government, not the Home Office but Starmer personally. Once you lose the next election,… pic.twitter.com/foAcqWOA0D
— Dominik Tarczyński MEP (@D_Tarczynski) May 12, 2026
“Starmer will be sued by me. Not the government, not the Home Office, but Starmer personally. Once you lose the next election, communist, we’ll meet in court!” he added.
The Polish MEP had been due to speak at the “Unite the Kingdom, Unite the West” rally organized by Tommy Robinson on May 16.
He is the latest conservative figure to be barred from entering Britain before the event. Belgian politician Filip Dewinter, a member of the Flemish Parliament, also said he had been blocked after receiving a similar Home Office message stating that his presence would not be “conducive to the public good.”
Other figures reportedly barred from entering Britain include U.S. commentator Joey Mannarino, MAGA influencer Valentina Gomez, and Spanish political commentator Ada Lluch. The Guardian reported that seven foreign speakers linked to the Robinson rally had been stopped from entering the country.
The row comes after Starmer used a speech on Monday to promise that “far-right agitators” would be kept out of Britain ahead of the rally. The prime minister claimed the event was designed to “confront and intimidate” the country’s diverse communities.
The intervention also came as Starmer faced the gravest crisis of his premiership, with more than 70 Labour MPs and senior figures calling for him to resign after disastrous local election results and a poorly received attempt to reset his leadership. Several government ministers also resigned as pressure mounted inside the parliamentary party.
The decision to block foreign conservative speakers from entering Britain is also likely to intensify criticism of Starmer’s approach to free speech.
His government has previously defended Britain’s free speech record, including during the latest visit of U.S. President Donald Trump, who had expressed concern about the country’s direction after several high-profile cases involving citizens being jailed for social media posts.
The Home Office has repeatedly relied on the same “not conducive to the public good” justification when barring right-wing commentators and politicians from entering the country, including Dutch conservative commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek earlier this year.
If the National Rally (RN) candidate wins in the French presidential election next spring, far-left mayor Bally Bagayoko of multi-cultural Saint-Denis has said it will be invalid, calling for a “popular insurrection” if this were to occur.
One social commentator on X, Alain Weber, posted frankly about the reality France is facing: “Contrary to what the Democrats of this country thought, the danger will not come from Jean-Luc Mélenchon but from Bally Bagayoko, who is the calm face of the civil war being prepared in the suburbs.”
Attached to his post was an interview of Bagayoko with Jean-Michel Aphatie on LCI Direct in which he tells the shocked host that if RN wins the election next year, they will never have “popular legitimacy,” only what he calls “institutional legitimacy.”
The mayor also said that those who attempt to “normalize the far right” are “dangerous,” adding that “if the far right comes to power, which we do not want, we will do everything so that it cannot happen.”
During another interview on Oumma.com, a Muslim community media outlet, the mayor of Saint-Denis also attacked President Emmanuel Macron, the Bolloré group’s media outlets, and even certain left-wing parties, according to Le Figaro.
Blaming Macron for the rise of the far right, Bagayoko stated: “Under Macron, the far right has never been so strong. We’re now at almost 140 racist members of parliament,” calling them all “guardians” of RN’s history and doctrine, according to the portal.
Returning to the theme of inevitable insurrection, Bagayoko told the host: “It’s either us or them… that is to say, the far right,” adding later that he was “firmly convinced that the people will rise up” if RN wins next spring, while ignoring the fact that an RN victory would indicate voters exercised their democratic will.
Warned to “be careful” by the host, lest he “be accused of inciting insurrection,” the Saint-Denis mayor doubled down: “All the important reforms in this country have been achieved through popular uprisings,” he said, citing the storming of the Bastille and the Yellow Vest movement.
As noted by Weber, the danger of Bagayoko is real. “He is manufacturing the psychological conditions for a refusal of alternation, that is to say, quite simply, the conditions for a cold civil war, then hot.”
It is shocking to witness the rise of the far-left LFI mayor and the influence he now wields, when, in fact, he received just 13,506 votes out of approximately 64,000 registered voters in Saint-Denis. However, his voice calling for justice for the wrongs committed against those he sees as having been oppressed by France for centuries has been capturing headlines since his election in March.
In a recent example, Bagayoko drew ire from the local state prefect when it was revealed he had removed a photo of Macron, traditionally on display as a sign of respect, relegating it to a corner of his office and, by some accounts, turning it upside down.
“The portrait will remain in its place until the state fulfils its obligations under the Republican Pact, particularly toward the residents of our territory,” he said, presumably referencing Saint-Denis, a town with a population of some 150,000, as their territory.
Whose territory? That, we can suppose, would be of the Blacks and other minorities, as he has called the city “la ville de Noirs.”
We know that when Bagayoko speaks of “eliminating inequality,” any past colonial oppression and slavery are high up on his list, as he sees these as part of today’s problems. However, as pointed out point-blank by Marion Maréchal, president of Identité Libertés, in a recent interview, “Monsieur Bagayoko has a greater chance of being a descendant of slave traders than I do.”
Her comments came in the wake of the cancellation of an event commemorating the abolition of slavery in Vierzon, an RN stronghold. The town, which has only been holding the event since 2006, says the move is due to budget cuts, while many are predictably calling out RN for refusing to honor the importance of ending slavery.
In fact, the issue for many on the right is more complex. “The memory of slavery must not concern only Europeans. The Arab-Muslim slave trade: 17 million victims. The intra-African slave trade: 14 million victims,” Maréchal noted to viewers. She and many others would prefer a commemoration that addressed all wrongdoers, not simply Whites and Westerners.
In March, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that designated the Atlantic slave trade and its involvement in the slavery of Africans as “the most serious crime against humanity.” According to a UN statement, it seeks an order that “confronts historical truth while building mechanisms for equitable futures.”
But many want to know why the issue of African enablers, middlemen, and traders is never called out. “Since the beginnings of the trans-Saharan slave trade in the 7th century, Africans had been selling slaves to Arab Muslims,” and as demand grew from the New World centuries later, ethnic Africans happily met it, wrote Marie-Claude Mosimann-Barbier for Le Figaro last month, in a piece covered by Remix News.
“Long before the arrival of Europeans and the development of the Atlantic slave trade, internal slavery was a structural reality in most African societies,” she wrote.
The question for today is why anyone is welcoming the cries for insurrection from an activist mayor who has shown zero respect for the existing Republic of France — and zero interest in its continuation?
Massively popular German Youtuber “Radical Living,” known for his comedic shorts about expat life and European countries, has opened up in a video about his decision to leave Germany, with crime and immigration playing a major role in his decision.
Incredibly, “Radical Living” even addresses the idea that Germany is not a democracy anymore, due to its efforts to ban the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and exclude it at all levels of government participation.
The video has already garnered 1.7 million views.
“Once you have children, you also think about where you want to raise them, especially if you have a daughter. I don’t think Germany is a good place to raise a daughter anymore because women, in general, don’t feel safe walking down the street at night,” he said in the 36-minute video, which was published for his 2 million followers.
🇩🇪🔴"I'm leaving Germany."
Famous German Youtuber "Radical Living" with 2 million followers explains why he is leaving his country.
"Once you have children, you also think about where you want to raise them, especially if you have a daughter. I don't think Germany is a good… pic.twitter.com/GQQQvxgUs5
“You don’t have to take it from me; there are public petitions in all major German cities. Women want vouchers for free taxi rides at night, and in Berlin, they want women-only subway wagons. The stories you hear about what women have to endure in Berlin public transport are just messed up.”
“If a woman can’t walk down the street at night and feel safe, you have failed as a society. It’s ridiculous that every time something happens, politicians just say we have a ‘knife problem’ or suggest women should dress differently.”
However, “Radical Living” is far from the only German feeling this way. Polling from the prestigious Allensbach Institute showed last year that 81 percent of Germans say there are too many refugees and that 58 percent of Germans believe there are too many foreigners in general. The survey also showed that the number of Germans who feel safe in their own country has dropped by one point since last year, falling to 60 percent, a new record low.
“You can also see the decline in small things. You can’t go to the supermarket anymore without feeling like we’re living in a crime-polluted society.”
“Even in Prenzlauer Berg, one of the best neighborhoods in Berlin, you go into a drugstore like DM and have to ask the cashier to unlock basic products like shampoo or cream because they get stolen so much. Even in a normal supermarket like Edeka, they are locking up alcohol and Red Bulls—things that cost only €1.50—with security tags. What kind of society is this becoming?” he asks.
“Last year, several were canceled because they couldn’t afford the ‘terror defense’ anymore. It costs millions of euros to put those barriers up. If Christmas markets—a place of joy that people look forward to in December—get canceled because they can’t afford terror defense, many things have gone wrong in this country.”
However, he appears to try to soften the blow of his statements, saying: “Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to blame this solely on migration. Migration isn’t a bad thing per se, but there are always going to be a few people who do stupid things, and you have to filter them out. Germany is doing an extremely bad job at that.”
Still, the comments section reveals what his real opinion is. He “hearts” two comments in particular, which indicate that he was trying to self-censor in order to avoid being censored or canceled.
One comment he liked was from user @92Vucgy, who wrote: “The sentence ‘We have a problem with knives in Germany’ just means we aren’t allowed to criticise the people carrying those knives cause of political reasons.”
The other comment he liked is: “I don’t want to blame it on migration ” TRANSLATING —> ‘if i say the truth I’ll get cancelled and possibly sent to jail for hate speech so I’m going to keep a low profile without being controversial even though I can’t express my real opinion on an obvious problem ‘ Man Europe really is falling apart… sending much love to you and your family.”
Despite his video touching on numerous topics, such as the country’s worsening economy, exploding welfare costs, and better options elsewhere, the most popular comments in the comments section appear to focus on mass immigration.
This comment received 701 replies, nearly all of them in agreement.
“Radical Living” discusses the AfD and freedom of speech
“Just last year, a major bridge collapsed in the city of Dresden. So infrastructure in Germany is falling apart. They don’t have enough money, but they’re supporting other countries, which is a good thing. If you have the money, you should support other countries to your living standards. But if that comes at a cost of your own living standards, I’m not sure if that’s a good idea anymore. You should be only financing what you can afford. You shouldn’t spend money you don’t have.”
“Despite all this, people keep voting for the same two parties over and over again. For decades, two parties have been ruling this country CDU and SPD. They decided the future of Germany. That’s what we got from it. And apparently people don’t want to learn, especially for those two parties. Most people voting for them are over 60. They’re retirees, they have voted for those parties their whole lives and they’re not going to change it, most of them. And because Germany is such an aging country, the majority of people are actually above 60. They’re the biggest voter group, apart from people voting for the same parties over and over again,
Germany itself is not really a democracy anymore. I wouldn’t call it that because there’s this other party, AfD, and they are the second biggest party right now. But no other party will talk to them, vote with them, or discuss anything with them. They are just pretending they don’t exist, they have always done that. And they’re even trying to ban this other party, which doesn’t sound very democratic to me. They’re always accusing the AfD party of being undemocratic, but by not even talking to them, not letting them be part of the conversation, basically, they are being the undemocratic parties.”
“Radical Living” then makes a call for “discourse.”
“And in Germany, there is no discourse, not between the parties. And if you say anything that stands in the view of what this party represents, people will exclude you from society, or at least they will try to. And this is also a very dangerous situation because it’s creating an isolation for different groups of people in a society. And if certain groups of people feel isolated, they become more radicalized in both directions. And that is not good for a democracy. So Germany saying, ‘Oh, we are the most democratic country in the world.’ It’s absolute bullshit. It’s just not true.”
He says he believes other European countries have more democracy, such as Austria and the Netherlands, which have also had right-wing parties in parliament.
“You know, they are in talks with other parties, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s what a democracy is. So I would say Germany calls itself a democracy, but it doesn’t act like one. That’s also the reason why the AfD has become so popular among a fifth or more of German voters, because there are old parties, and they won’t address the issues that have arisen in the last two decades. So that’s why the party was formed, right? Because people are unhappy with politics,” he said.
He goes on to note that Germany’s left has promoted violence against the right instead of compromise or debate.
“But in Germany, things are so divided between the people that the left is calling for violence against the right. The most absurd thing about this is that political actors from the left spectrum are encouraging this and saying, ‘Yeah, this is a good thing.’ Neither side should choose violence just to silence the opposition. That’s stuff from authoritarian countries.”
He also addresses the many house raids directed at people who have posted political memes or insulted politicians.
“And in general, I don’t see Germany heading in a good way when it comes to free speech. People are getting arrested for posting memes on the internet, literally. Five years ago, you could have only imagined this from authoritarian countries in Africa or the Middle East or something like that. That would have been unimaginable in Europe. But now the UK is mass-arresting people. Germany is following suit. Comedy is over. Memes are over. Critical thinking is not allowed on the internet anymore. Nowadays, people even get arrested for stating facts. It’s kind of ridiculous.”
Are there really better options?
Other comments focused on what many users say is a problem across the West, with users from Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Belgium all saying the problems are the same in their own countries.
As for his own choice, “Radical Living” states that he is currently living in Cyprus in his full 36-minute video and describes how it is now filled with German entrepreneurs and young people — all trying to escape the German system.
“From all the people I know, and I know a lot of freelancers and people who have small businesses. None of them wants to stay in Germany. They either have already left, are about to leave, or are planning to leave. I am here right now in Cyprus. I’ve gone to some meetups here, and it’s like full of German entrepreneurs that have all left, and they’re all leaving to not just here. You know, there’s tens of thousands of entrepreneurs living here with businesses. They just can’t take it anymore. The system in Germany, they come here, they go to Spain, they go to other places, you know, anywhere but Germany to do business.”
“Radical Living” has amassed millions of followers through his comedic takes, which are also popular with young people and left-wing viewers. As a result, this video, which has 1.7 million views, is sure to reach a wide audience. Many of his shorts have well over 100 million views.
His honest face-to-face monologue on his own channel also represents how the German media establishment in the country is increasingly unable to control the narrative, with podcasters, comedians, and influencers outside of the state-backed media complex speaking about the untouchable issues of immigration and the corruption of the current establishment parties. Many Germans are choosing to turn off their televisions and are turning to these alternative voices by the millions, which has only increased calls from the EU to censor platforms like X where these voices thrive.
As for Radical Living, he does not see a rosy future for Germany anytime soon, stating: “I’d love to help fix it, you know, but then you would have to go into politics and then you have to deal with all the people that are already there, which will drive you mad for the rest of your life. So the only option you have left is to leave. In the end, it all comes down to quality of life, and quality of life in Germany is degrading every year more and the pace seems to be accelerating. So I don’t think that country will be a good place to live in the foreseeable future.”
A 17-year-old Syrian refugee who entered Germany through a family reunification program has been arrested in Hamburg over allegations that he was planning an Islamic State-inspired terror attack using homemade explosives, Molotov cocktails, or a knife.
The teenager, who was already known to police, was living legally in Germany with a valid residence permit, according to the Hamburg Interior Ministry, cited on Tuesday by Welt.
The German newspaper reported that the suspect holds Syrian citizenship and was granted refugee status after arriving in Germany from Turkey on April 4, 2022, together with his mother. He was registered in Hamburg and had lived with his parents in a shared apartment in the city.
He is now being held in pretrial detention at the Hamburg juvenile detention center on the Lower Saxon island of Hahnöfersand.
Prosecutors accuse the teenager of preparing a terror attack and of financing terrorism. Investigators believe he intended to kill an unspecified number of “infidels” and had considered several possible targets in Hamburg, including a shopping mall, a bar, or a police station.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the suspect is alleged to have explored different methods of attack, including using homemade explosives, Molotov cocktails, or a knife. German media reported that he had been showing signs of mental illness in the lead-up to his arrest.
Bild reported that during searches, officers reportedly seized universal fertilizer, liquid barbecue lighter fluid, a balaclava, and a knife, all of which could have been used as part of an attack.
The teenager was arrested by Hamburg police special forces on May 7 following investigations involving several German federal agencies. He is believed to have been radicalized by Islamic extremist ideology, and had spoken of his attack plans on the Telegram messaging app.
He was already known to authorities for posting IS-related content on social media.
Greece’s Migration Minister Thanos Plevris has warned that around 550,000 migrants and refugees in Libya are seeking to reach Europe, as Athens braces for the possibility of more boats attempting the crossing toward Crete.
Speaking to ERT News on Sunday, Plevris said the central migration pressure facing Greece has shifted from the eastern Aegean to Libya, where smuggling networks are increasingly using routes toward the south of Crete and nearby islands.
He said Greece is working continuously with Frontex and the Libyan authorities to identify boats early, disrupt departures from the Libyan coast, and stop smuggling networks from turning Crete into a new frontline of Europe’s migration crisis.
Migration flows in the eastern Aegean have fallen by around 70 percent compared with 2025, according to the Greek government, which credited the decline to cooperation with the Turkish coast guard and increased surveillance. All eyes are now on Libya which is seen as the most urgent challenge.
The minister defended the government’s tougher approach to immigration. “There is no logic that Greece opens its borders and accepts people,” Plevris said, arguing that the country would “operate within the law, but will also reach its limits in order to protect the borders.”
He rejected allegations that the Greek coast guard is carrying out illegal pushbacks, saying: “We do not do pushbacks, but we do protect the borders,” adding that attempts to stop the boats were “absolutely within the limits of the law.”
“Anyone who is not entitled to asylum knows that they will be returned and we guard our borders,” he said.
Last summer, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced that “the path to Greece is closing” as his administration introduced a raft of legislative reforms to crack down on illegal immigration and asylum requests.
Athens announced the suspension of all asylum applications for three months for those arriving in the country from North Africa by sea, and established a closed detention center on the island of Crete, to which all arrivals would be taken to be processed and earmarked for repatriation.
“This sends a message to all traffickers and all their potential customers that the money they spend may well be entirely wasted,” Mitsotakis said at the time.
He also expressed the willingness of the Greek navy to assist the Libyan authorities in preventing the departures of small boats from the African mainland.
In November, Plevris revealed that tougher age verification checks introduced by the Greek government had found that over half of those still arriving after August, who claimed to be minors, were in fact over the age of 18 — 59 cases out of 104 — showing that some were still intent on trying to game the system.
At the weekend, Plevris insisted, however, that the new system of detention as a form of deterrence was working.
“Now, when it is likely that someone will not be granted asylum, they are not placed in a state of freedom but in a state of detention, so that if asylum is rejected, they can be returned,” Plevris said.
He said the number of unaccompanied minors had dropped from around 3,000 to roughly 1,500, adding that the government had reduced a series of benefits that had acted as an incentive for people to move to Europe.
Hungary’s incoming foreign minister has signaled a major break with the country’s previous confrontational approach to Brussels, saying the new government intends to allow asylum applications at the border in order to end daily EU fines, play down the consequences of the bloc’s controversial migration pact, and stop using Hungary’s veto as a political weapon.
Anita Orbán, the foreign minister in Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s new government, made the remarks during a parliamentary committee hearing on Monday, where she was approved for the post by the European Affairs Committee with six votes in favor and two abstentions.
The hearing offered one of the clearest indications yet that Magyar’s government intends to move Hungary back toward the European mainstream after years of clashes under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. As reported by Portfolio, the new foreign minister said Hungary’s priority would be restoring trust with the European Union and NATO, while also seeking the release of billions in frozen EU funds.
Responding to questions on migration, Orbán said the government wanted to bring an end to the daily €1 million penalty currently imposed on Hungary over its asylum policies. The key practical change, according to the hearing, would be to allow refugees arriving at Hungary’s borders to submit applications for refugee status.
That marks a significant shift from the previous government’s hardline position, which repeatedly clashed with Brussels over asylum rules and border procedures.
Orbán also sought to play down the political significance of the EU’s migration pact, arguing that it should not be discussed as though it automatically meant mass immigration into Hungary. She said the pact was primarily about stronger border protection, improved digital systems, and greater cooperation between member states facing migratory pressure. She claimed that Hungarian adherence to the pact could result in the country accepting a limited number of migrants, providing financial assistance, or offering other forms of logistical or technical help.
The comments are politically sensitive for Magyar’s Tisza government, which has sought to present itself as more constructive toward Brussels while avoiding the appearance of surrendering Hungarian sovereignty on migration. Magyar had previously argued that Hungary did not need to accept a quota system and that the daily EU fine could still be ended.
Orbán also addressed Hungary’s use of the veto in EU decision-making, saying the previous government had turned the country’s blocking power into a form of political theater. She said Hungary would no longer behave like “a stick among the spokes” in European decision-making, but would instead act as one part of the wider mechanism.
“Ensuring access to EU funds will be a priority task. Hungary will once again be a cooperative partner in the European Union,” Orbán told the committee, as cited by Magyar Hírlap.
“Hungary’s interest is in a stronger Europe that coordinates better on security issues, capable of cooperating effectively with the United States. In the changing international environment, maintaining stable alliance systems is a top priority for Hungary,” she added.
The veto, she said, should still exist and could be used in justified cases, but not as a routine tool for pressure or domestic political messaging.
The foreign minister opened the hearing by rejecting what she called a malicious rumor that cooperation with the European Union required Hungary to submit to Brussels. She said the EU’s conditions for releasing frozen funds were tied to an independent judiciary, clean and auditable public procurement, transparent use of EU funds, and the protection of public money.
The hearing came shortly after Magyar was sworn in as prime minister, ending 16 years of rule by Viktor Orbán and returning the EU flag to parliament as a symbol of Hungary’s renewed European orientation.
As Indian enrollment at German universities reaches record highs, educational authorities and university representatives are sounding the alarm. Recent reports highlight a growing trend of “questionable business models” and deceptive placement agencies that are increasingly exploiting international students, as reported by Zeit.
Joybrato Mukherjee, president of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), warned in Zeit about “freeloaders” seeking to capitalize on the student boom. He specifically pointed to commercial brokerage firms in India that have turned university admissions into a lucrative, yet opaque, industry.
“These so-called placement agencies in India are a gray market—and a core of the problem,” Mukherjee stated. “In India, agency business has so far been unregulated, opaque, and characterized by many dubious providers.”
Remix News already last year that there has been a 1,059 percent increase in Indians in Berlin between 2015 and 2025, which mirrors the explosive growth of Indians in Western countries across the world. The article also explores many of the numerous negative effects this development has brought to the West.
The statistical rise of Indian students is massive, with nearly 60,000 Indians currently enrolled in German higher education, a fivefold increase from the 12,000 recorded just a decade ago.
According to the DAAD, Indiain intermediaries often operate without transparency, leaving students with high expectations that are frequently unmet upon arrival in Germany. Both the German Embassy in New Delhi and Indian authorities have reportedly begun monitoring these developments more strictly.
However, Mukherjee notes that German authorities have been aggressively recruiting Indian students in recent years, “also in connection with the shortage of skilled workers and demographic developments.”
The scrutiny is also turning toward Germany’s private education sector. Currently, about one in five Indian students is enrolled at a private institution, with IU International University hosting the largest share.
While Mukherjee acknowledged that there are “very reputable, high-quality private universities,” he raised serious concerns regarding state recognition and the quality of certain accredited programs. He noted that in some cases, there are “very questionable offers.”
The DAAD is now calling for more decisive action to protect the country’s academic standing, including stricter control and enhanced oversight of private university accreditation as well as a crackdown on providers with problematic business models.
In addition, Germany has to look out for its own educational reputation, which relies on it being a credible and prestigious “center of science.”
Seven alleged members of Dortmund’s so-called migrant Knappi Gang have gone on trial accused of attempted manslaughter after investigators uncovered a violent mobile phone video showing a group attack on several victims at a bus stop.
The defendants, aged between 16 and 20, appeared at Dortmund Regional Court on Monday to face charges including attempted manslaughter and aggravated assault. Several were brought to court in handcuffs after having been held in pretrial detention since police raids last December.
🇩🇪🔴The "Knappi Gang" of foreigners has been ruthlessly beating victims, including on video them film themselves, in the German city of Dortmund,
1 Syrian and 1 Eritrean were arrested by specialized SEK raid police. 3 Germans have also been arrested. However, the report from… pic.twitter.com/HqZVvKUaRf
The case centers on an attack last August in which prosecutors say five men were assaulted by members of the group. The young men are of German, Syrian, Afghan and Eritrean nationality.
A video of the attack, later found on a mobile phone, appears to show the late-night assault in which several young men surround victims on the ground. One victim can be seen lying defenseless as attackers crowd around him and kick him in the head. The gang is accused of pepper-spraying their victims, forcing them to the ground and kicking and punching them on the floor.
According to Bild, the alleged main perpetrators are Faiz G., 20, and Abdul-Kadir A., 18, who are accused of forcing victims to the ground. A 17-year-old, Abolfazl A., is alleged to have used pepper spray to incapacitate them.
Dortmund. „Fick seine Mutter, stech’ ihn!“, „Ey, lass mich auch!“
Eine brutale "Jugendbande" (u.a. Syrer, Afghanen, Eritreer) steht seit heute vor Gericht. Sie quälten ihre Opfer zu ihrer Feizeit Belustigung. Für am Boden liegende gab es Karatetritte gegen Kopf, Bauch und… pic.twitter.com/oa5h4ah37B
The video also captured the attackers cheering each other on. Bild reported that the teenager filming the assault could be heard saying, “He’s lying on the ground, f*ck his mother, stab him,” while another attacker shouted, “Hey, let me too!” as the assault continued.
The violence included punches to the face, kicks to the stomach and at least one attacker jumping onto an already injured victim’s back. The assault only stopped when a siren could be heard and blue lights appeared nearby.
The victim identified by Bild as Diego F., 17, attended the start of proceedings accompanied by his mother.
The investigation lasted around four months before police moved in. In December, special police units stormed several apartments in Dortmund and arrested the suspects.
WDR reported that investigators believe the Knappi Gang may also be connected to other attacks in Dortmund. Alongside the attempted manslaughter allegations, some defendants face additional charges.
One defendant, Maxim W., 19, is also accused of robbery and illegal possession of weapons. Bild reported that he is allegedly seen in the video delivering karate-style kicks to a victim’s head and stomach.
The victims are expected to appear as witnesses at the end of May.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced the imposition of new sanctions on Israeli settler groups and their leaders in the West Bank on Monday, as Israel continues to be seen as having aggressively moved forward with its settlement plans across the area to attempt to force annexation.
“EU Foreign Ministers just gave the go-ahead to sanction Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians. They also agreed new sanctions on leading Hamas figures. It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery. Extremisms and violence carry consequences,” Kallas posted on X.
EU Foreign Ministers just gave the go-ahead to sanction Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians.
They also agreed new sanctions on leading Hamas figures.
It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery. Extremisms and violence carry consequences.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot also lauded the move against Israeli extremists and Hamas.
“It is sanctioning the main leaders of Hamas, responsible for the worst antisemitic massacre in our history since the Shoah during which 51 French people lost their lives, a terrorist movement that must imperatively be disarmed and excluded from any participation in the future of Palestine,” he wrote, referencing the French citizens who were killed during the Oct. 7 attacks perpetrated by Hamas in Israel.
The sanctions had been delayed due to a veto by former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. However, newly elected Prime Minister Péter Magyar lifted Hungary’s veto, allowing the measure to finally pass.
Israel has also responded to the move, posting a message from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office via the “Prime Minister of Israel” X account:
“As Israel and the US are ‘doing Europe’s dirty work’ by fighting for civilization against Jihadist lunatics in Iran and elsewhere, the European Union exposed its moral bankruptcy by drawing a false symmetry between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists.”
Prime Minister's Office: As Israel and the US are “doing Europe’s dirty work” by fighting for civilization against Jihadist lunatics in Iran and elsewhere, the European Union exposed its moral bankruptcy by drawing a false symmetry between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists.
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) May 11, 2026
Claiming European politicians have caved to “radical constituencies,” the Israeli prime minister says “sanctioning Jews for living in Judea and Samaria is unacceptable.” He then adds that Judea, which along with Samaria comprises the West Bank, is the “ancestral homeland” of Jews and “Israel will always protect the rights of Jews to live” there.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also posted his shock that the EU would compare Israelis to Hamas terrorists: “Equally outrageous is the unacceptable comparison the European Union has chosen to make between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists. This is a completely distorted moral equivalence,” he wrote on X.
The West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, is home to 3 million to 3.3 million Palestinians and 670,000 Jewish settlers. There are also 45,000 to 50,000 Christians. Most countries have labeled Jewish settlements in the area as illegal, with the EU also previously imposing sanctions on settlers.
Earlier this year, 20 countries issued a joint condemnation of Israel’s plans to extend its control in the West Bank and confirmed their illegal status. It stated that Israel’s actions “to advance unacceptable de facto annexation” are “a flagrant violation of international law, including previous United Nations Security Council Resolutions and the 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice.”
Meanwhile, Israeli forces continue their bombardment on southern Lebanon, with Netanyahu expanding his operations there to repel what he says is a threat to Israelis from Hezbollah. Not helping Israel’s image in the Western world have been incidents of IDF soldiers desecrating Christian symbols in Lebanon, including Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
A 21-year-old woman fell victim to an attempted rape last night in Paris, according to the chief editor of Valeurs Actuelles, Amaury Brelet. A native of West Africa’s Ivory Coast is now under arrest for the crime. It is not known if he was on French territory legally.
The attack took place in the 19th arrondissement of Paris on the night of May 10, with 25-year-old suspect Ayouba S., born in the ivory Coast, found with his pants down and genitals exposed.
🔴 [Info @Valeurs] Une jeune femme de 21 ans a été victime d'une tentative de viol dans le 19e à Paris, cette nuit. Le suspect de 25 ans, Ayouba S., né en Côte d'Ivoire, pantalon baissé et sexe visible, a agressé la jeune femme en lui lançant "Je vais te baiser", puis a étranglé…
Shouting “I’m going to fuck you,” Ayouba S. then strangled the victim’s father, who had come running to her aid after hearing her screaming for help.
Police officers were called to the scene and arrested the offender, but not before local residents intervened and “nearly lynched the suspect” to ensure he was unable to flee the scene.
Cases involving brazen rapes involving Africans have plagued Paris in recent years, including the harrowing case of Claire Geronimi. In that case, Jordy Goukara confessed to raping both her and another victim in the space of just 45 minutes.
The case was shocking at nearly every level. The African, Goukara, already had 12 criminal convictions, including for sexual assaults, and had three deportation orders, none of which were executed.
The defendant, Goukara, has already confessed to the crime in the first day of court, saying that he has “uncontrollable sexual urges” and could not help himself from raping the women. He also stated that he masturbates 10 times a day.
Currently, the front runner for upcoming national election is National Rally (NR), which is promising to curb immigration and deport those illegally on French soil or found guilty of committing crimes while legally residing in France.
It appears, however, that the ruling establishment is looking to target Bardella as elections approach with the same type of case judges have used to remove Marine Le Pen as a candidate.
Meanwhile, France is having to deal with the recent measure by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to regularize what could end up being as many as 1.6 million illegals there, despite raging migrant crime, with concerns that those handed permits can then easily cross the border into France.
A 27-year-old Tunisian man in France illegally is in custody at the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) in Paris on charges of a planned violent attack against the Louvre Museum and an attack targeting the Parisian Jewish community.
The suspect was brought before the anti-terrorism court on Monday, according to Le Monde, after being arrested on May 7. According to the public prosecutor’s office, his formal charges include planning “a violent attack inspired by jihadism,” as well as considering joining the ranks of the jihadist group Islamic State (ISIS), either in Syria or Mozambique.
The accused, Dhafer M., was born in Djerba, Tunisia, and came to France in 2022 from Lampedusa, Italy, looking for work. He was arrested while driving with a fake driver’s license and taken into custody for possession of a forged administrative document. After realizing that he was in France illegally, with no valid residence permit, he was transferred to an administrative detention center.
After an analysis of his mobile phone, investigators found that the suspect had specifically mentioned his intention to attack the Louvre Museum and the Jewish community of the 16th arrondissement of Paris. No specific target has been identified regarding the Jewish community.
He also had numerous videos of jihadist propaganda as well as hundreds of photos of firearms and knives. On his social media accounts, his profile picture is an image of an ISIS fighter executing prisoners, taken from a video released by the terrorist organization.
A video was also discovered of him filming himself raising his finger as a sign of unity, a symbol of allegiance to jihadist groups, and crying out, “Allahu Akbar!”
Dhafer M. has also had conversations on secure messaging apps with several contacts abroad, possibly linked to jihadist groups, about plans for terrorist attacks. In one of these discussions, he explains that he knows access points to the Louvre and mentions manufacturing explosives that he could plant at the museum. A video showing the museum’s facade, with its French flags flying, is saved on his phone. In another conversation, he discusses making ricin, a poison, and his desire to attack Jews in the 16th arrondissement, the neighborhood where he usually works.
The accused has also messaged his contacts that he regrets having emigrated to France, calling it a country of “kuffar” (infidels), and expressed his desire to make his “hijra” to settle in Islamic lands.
Analysis of Dhafer M’s ChatGPT searches corroborated his intentions to carry out an attack. Police discovered searches such as “how to make a bomb,” or those related to finding precursors and chemical materials used in the manufacture of explosives. An exchange with the chatbot revealed that he was trying to find out about the damage caused by using approximately 100 grams of TNT—a question ChatGPT ultimately refused to answer.
The Tunisian man was also interested in jihadist groups in Syria and in African countries such as Mozambique and Niger.
After nine days in administrative detention following the traffic stop, the court ordered the release of Dhafer M., who had appealed his deportation order. The young man was, however, arrested immediately upon his release by officers from the DGSI, which had been alerted to the contents of his phone.
During his detention, Dhafer M. denied any terrorist plot, justifying his searches and discussions as mere “curiosity” and his desire to understand “the way of thinking” of ISIS sympathizers. His lawyer, Réda Ghilaci, declined to comment at this time, note Le Monde.
Sir Keir Starmer is fighting for his political survival after a desperate attempt to relaunch his premiership failed to stop a full-scale Labour rebellion, with dozens of his own left-wing MPs now calling for him to stand down, in addition to several resignations from the government.
The prime minister’s position deteriorated sharply on Monday after a speech intended to draw a line under Labour’s disastrous local election results instead appeared to deepen the sense inside the party that his time is up.
By Monday evening, LabourList put the number of Labour MPs calling for Starmer’s resignation at 77, while dozens of lawmakers have reportedly backed Labour backbencher Catherine West’s letter calling for him to set out a timetable for his departure.
Labour’s current working majority in the House of Commons is 165, meaning the rebellion is theoretically nearly at a point where it could wipe out the government’s majority, raising serious questions about whether Starmer can continue to govern with authority.
The revolt was triggered by Labour’s local election humiliation last Thursday, but accelerated after Starmer’s Monday speech, which had been billed as a chance to show that he understood the scale of the party’s crisis. Instead, he stood in front of the cameras reading from an autocue, delivering what critics say was another lifeless performance that seemed to encapsulate the criticism long levelled at him: dreary, procedural, and incapable of meeting a political emergency with either charisma or conviction.
Even sympathetic outlets described the speech as a last-chance saloon for Starmer that failed to land. Late on Monday, The Guardian and The Times both reported that senior cabinet ministers, including Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, had urged him to consider an orderly transition of power.
EXCLUSIVE:
Sir Keir Starmer has been told by Shabana Mahmood and other senior Cabinet ministers to consider setting out a timeline for his depature from Number 10
The Times has been told that Mahmood, the home secretary, is one of at least three cabinet ministers to suggest…
Earlier in the day, several parliamentary private secretaries, MPs who assist government ministers, resigned from the government after backing calls for Starmer to go, prompting Downing Street to rush through several late-night replacement appointments.
Starmer had hoped to present himself as the man who could halt the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and rebuild Labour’s connection with working-class voters. Yet one of the headline messages from the speech was a pledge to build a closer relationship with the European Union, including what he called a “new direction” at the next EU summit. Such a move is unlikely to reassure many voters who have abandoned Labour for Reform UK, the party that grew out of the Brexit Party and has now become Labour’s most dangerous challenger in many of its former heartlands.
The speech also contained a sharp law-and-order message aimed at Saturday’s “Unite the Kingdom” demonstration in London, organized by Tommy Robinson. Starmer said the government would block what he called “far-right agitators” from travelling to Britain for the event, with the Home Office already barring seven people from entering the UK.
Nationalists recently banned from Britain include Dutch influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek and Spanish political commentator Ada Lluch. The move contradicts the prime minister’s insistence during U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest visit to Britain, in which Starmer insisted that his government remained a champion of free speech.
They just cancelled my ETA to the United Kingdom.
What a coincidence it happened a couple of days after I privately confirmed with @TRobinsonNewEra I would attend the UTK rally on May 16th.
Call me crazy, but it certainly looks like they are trying to sabotage his rally. pic.twitter.com/KPd9P7NvMJ
The immediate backdrop to the crisis is Labour’s collapse in the local elections. The party lost 1,496 council seats and control of 38 councils in England, while Reform UK won 1,453 councillors and gained control of 14 councils. The Liberal Democrats gained 155 seats and one council, while the Greens gained 411 seats and five councils, underlining how Labour is being squeezed from several directions at once.
Labour also lost control of the Welsh Parliament, the Senedd, in devastating fashion, with Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru and Reform UK now the two largest parties, and Labour reduced to single figures. It is the first time since the parliament’s founding in 1999 that Labour has not held a majority.
Starmer has just admitted he banned me and other commentators from traveling to the UK because we would “set back communities.” Yet mass third-world migration doesn’t bother him as it only sets back the one community he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about: the White native population. pic.twitter.com/oIBdDdORD5
Reform emerged as the main beneficiary of Labour’s losses in many Brexit-voting and working-class areas, while the Greens advanced on Labour’s left, particularly among Muslim voters.
For now, Starmer appears set to dig in. He told the country on Monday, “I take responsibility for not walking away, not plunging our country into chaos, as the Tories did time and again, chaos that did lasting damage to this country. A Labour government would never be forgiven for inflicting that on our country again,” he said.
“I know that people are frustrated by the state of Britain, frustrated by politics, and some people are frustrated with me. I know I have my doubters, and I know I need to prove them wrong, and I will.”
Six countries could lose more than €700 million from the European Union’s growth plan for the Western Balkans if they do not meet the reform conditions necessary to draw on subsidies by June 30, according to the Croatian daily Jutarnji List.
The newspaper reported on Monday that Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia risk losing a total of €710.8 million, which represents nearly 12 percent of the €6 billion EU growth plan for the 2024-2027 period.
Among the nations involved, Bosnia and Herzegovina stands to lose the most significant amount, totaling €373.9 million. Serbia follows, potentially losing “at least €108.7 million, or even €135.8 million in support. Other potential losses include €97.7 million for Albania, €68.8 million for Kosovo, €49.2 million for North Macedonia, and €15.1 million for Montenegro.
The Jutarnji List emphasized that “the European Commission has warned that the payment of subsidies depends on the fulfillment of the undertaken reforms.” These mandatory conditions involve the “implementation of public administration reforms, respect for the rule of law and control of the use of EU funds.”
The report noted varying levels of success among the candidates, according to Hungarian outlet Hirado.
“Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia have so far been the most successful in drawing money,” whereas “Bosnia and Herzegovina has not even met the minimum conditions.”
Additionally, the European Commission is currently investigating whether Serbia has met the necessary benchmarks for new payments. Any funds that remain unutilized by the deadline can be redirected to countries that successfully fulfill their reform commitments.
Warning of the high stakes, Luigi Soreca, the EU Ambassador and Special Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, stated that the country could lose a significant portion of its allocated resources “if the authorities did not take urgent steps to implement the reform programme.”
Meanwhile, Serbian Minister of European Integration Nemanja Starović addressed local reports regarding the freezing of funds, clarifying that “the European Commission is investigating the fulfillment of the conditions for payments.”
Notably, the EU has been accused of wielding funds as a weapon against governments it wants to see out of power, as was recently seen in the case of both Hungary and Poland.
Last week, reports that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) is investigating France’s right-wing, anti-migration party National Rally (RN) for misallocation of EU funds made the rounds. At its core, the case involves a complaint filed last December by the association AC!! Anti-Corruption with the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) in Paris. These allegations have already been contested by RN, but the party must also now face scrutiny from Brussels, as the funds involved include EU money.
The charge is that the National Rally misused the funds by allocating money received for media training for its leader, Jordan Bardella, not for his work as an MEP, but with the aim of helping him to prepare for France’s 2027 presidential election. Other members of the party have also been named in connection with the same charge.
Bardella posted on X that the investigation is not news and certainly nothing new for the party, labeling the charges as politically motivated slander.
Nous n’avons strictement rien à nous reprocher. L’association à l’origine de la plainte est une organisation d’extrême-gauche revendiquée, dont les déclarations agressives laissent peu de doute quant à leurs intentions.
“We have absolutely nothing to reproach ourselves for. The association behind the complaint is a self-proclaimed far-left organization, whose aggressive statements leave little doubt as to their intentions. I filed a complaint several weeks ago for slanderous denunciation,” he wrote, while assuring that he and his party would fully cooperate with the EPPO.
National Rally has been in the top spot in recent polling, despite its former leader, Marine Le Pen, having been sidelined by a similar case last year. She is appealing that decision, but for now has made it clear that Bardella will run on the RN ticket for president.
The party’s popularity, with or without Le Pen, cannot be a surprise to its rivals, given the slew of issues France has been suffering from due to its policy of mass immigration and lax deportation: Elderly rape, minor prostitution, failing education, robberies, violent rape, concerns over sharia law, and murder. As the mother of 18-year-old Théo, who was stabbed to death by a Senegalese migrant who ended up avoiding prison, said: “You can kill in France with impunity.”
Meanwhile, the media and the left prefer not to draw attention to the link between increased migration and violence.
And yet, a new website and real estate browser extension for Chrome is offering data on immigration levels, insecurity, and Islamization rates of neighborhoods for prospective buyers in the latest sign that the French public is highly concerned about record-breaking numbers of immigrants.
According to a recent ifop poll, 60 percent of French believe there is “a replacement of the French population by non-European populations, mainly from the African continent.” The same poll found that 66 percent see it as a bad development. Only 9 percent noted it as good.
This is a major factor why the National Rally has been surging in the polls, and why left-wing parties and activist organizations will do anything to bring them down — first targeting Le Pen and now Bardella. Other party politicians and staff members have been implicated in both cases.
Such efforts are not unique to France, with efforts ongoing for years over in Germany to bring down the anti-migration AfD party, which has also seen a massive rise in popularity.
With reports indicating France is spending over €2 billion a year on housing and healthcare for asylum seekers and illegal migrants, RN’s rivals will need more than accusations of misappropriated funds to stop voters from exercising their desire for change.
A French youth, 9-year-old Matthéo, was severely beaten by five players on an opposing team, with video footage showing the youth being wheeled away by emergency medical workers to an ambulance. Given that Matthéo’s team was predominantly made up of White players while the opposing team featured minorities, the case has also taken on a racial element.
In the photos being released of Matthéo, he is seen proudly wearing the green and white jersey of AS Auchy-les-Mines. However, a day of what was supposed to be competitive sport turned into tragedy on Friday when his team played the final round of a tournament against AFC Creil.
After the final whistle blew, there was a minor clash, and Matthieu was knocked down. Once on the ground, five opposing players kicked him repeatedly in the chest and head. On the ground, the little boy lay motionless.
🇫🇷⚽️French football player Matthéo, a 9-year-old from Auchy-les-Mines, was thrown to the ground kicked in the head and chest chest by five young players from the Creil football team.
“During the final whistle, I was going to shake the other coach’s hand across the field, and I saw my kid curled up. They were hitting him, they pushed him. Five of them came at him, attacked him, beat him, knocked him to the ground, kicked him… So I ran to try to save my son because I saw my kid dying,” he said while speaking with RMC.
The aggression came about despite Creil having already won the game.
“An altercation like that at the end of the match, when they had won the tournament… I didn’t understand,” said Matthéo’s father.
While Matthéo suffered no fractures, he remains covered in bruises on his body, reports BFMTV. According to his father, the psychological impact has been severe, as his father explained that the previous two nights he woke up three to four times saying: “No, leave me alone, leave me, don’t hit me.”
In the aftermath, Matthieu has criticized the management of the opposing club for their perceived passivity and a lack of cooperation in identifying the specific attackers. He expressed his pain regarding the lack of empathy shown immediately after the assault, noting that the worst part is that “when my son was in the ambulance, they celebrated the victory.”
The president of AFC Creil, Sliman Layadi, has since condemned the event, telling BFMTV that “we condemn any form of violence that has no place on a football field.”
🇫🇷‼️ Brutal violence at French football match
30 to 40 masked youths stormed the pitch at Dammarie-les-Lys and attacked players from Meaux, including stabbing 1 victim who was seriously injured and flown away on a helicopter.
Given that the Creil team has a number of Muslim and minority players, many social media users pointed this fact out, which Creil did not appreciate.
“We also wish to firmly denounce the many hateful, insulting, and racist comments circulated for several hours on social networks. Nothing can justify such excesses. Responding to violence with hatred or racism is unacceptable and goes against the human and sporting values we defend,” wrote the club on Facebook.
In response, French commentator Pierre Sautarel wrote on X: “Matthéo’s club thanks Creil’s club and condemns the remarks targeting the latter, even as the supervisor of the attackers refused to communicate their identities. Thus, through the magical mechanism of anti-white anti-racism, the guilty parties end up being presented as victims.”
Le club de Matthéo remercie le club de Creil et condamne les propos visant ce dernier, alors même que l’encadrant des agresseurs a refusé de communiquer leurs identités.
Ainsi, par le ressort magique de l’antiracisme anti-blanc, les coupables se retrouvent présentés comme des… pic.twitter.com/NxQlAS8FNU
Matthéo’s father said the incident was not about racism, but emphasized that his pursuit of justice is about safety and accountability. Determined to prevent future tragedies, he announced his intention to file a complaint against the players and management of the other football club.
“I want this story to make noise. There must not be a child killed for us to act,” said the father.
AFC Creil has since issued a formal apology on Facebook, promising an internal investigation and stating that they condemn without reservation any form of violence, whether physical, verbal or behavioral, on and around football fields.
The club said it will take all necessary disciplinary measures against the persons concerned.
🇫🇷This is France.
Two football teams faced off in Paris, one from the Barbès neighborhood and one from the Porte d'Asnières neighborhood. pic.twitter.com/ju1I9pUigc
Denmark is on the verge of a power shift after Mette Frederiksen’s government formation talks collapsed. After an extremely close and fragmented election in March, the incumbent prime minister spent months trying to build a coalition but was ultimately unable to reach an agreement with potential partners.
Danish King Frederick X has now set a new course, asking the leader of the Venstre party (Liberals), Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, to begin negotiations to form a center-right government. This move effectively means that the king no longer sees Frederiksen as the next head of cabinet, and Poulson could become the next prime minister.
In a post on X speaking of the work at hand, he wrote: “I am focused on securing a political foundation that allows us to invest in our children, health, and elderly at the same time as we make it cheaper to be Danish.”
Frederiksen has led the country since 2019 and was preparing for her third term, but the election in March failed to hand her a governing majority.
As Remix News reported at the time, the Social Democrats won 21.9 percent of the vote and 38 seats, remaining the biggest party but down sharply from 50 seats in the previous parliament. Across the political spectrum, all three governing parties lost ground, including Poulsen’s own center-right Venstre party, which dropped from 23 to 18 seats, and the Moderates, which fell from 16 to 14.
The party that saw an increase was the Danish People’s Party, which won 9.1 percent of the vote and 16 seats, up from just 5 in the last parliament, after campaigning on a hardline immigration platform.
Immigration has been a key issue for voters, and Frederiksen tried to attract voters with promises of deportation reform during her campaign aimed at expelling more foreign nationals convicted of serious crimes.
In late 2023, Remix News reported on the massive proportion of non-Western foreigners perpetrating violent crimes in Sweden.
And just last October, it was revealed that 72 percent of all convictions under the gang clause involved individuals with non-Western roots.
In a harrowing case this past February, Remix News reported that an employee at the Municipality of Copenhagen went on trial on charges that he had illegally harvested personal data from Denmark’s national CPR registry and sold the information to criminal networks — predominantly migrant gangs — who allegedly used it to plan robberies, violent assaults, and an attempted contract killing.
Unable to sway enough voters and form a government, even Frederiksen admitted what the future holds. “This could even be the beginning of the formation of a center-right government,” she said on Friday, effectively predicting her own downfall.
Poulson noted in his X post announcing his work to form a government: “At the same time, we must be able to pursue a strict immigration policy, ensure clean drinking water, improve animal welfare, and strengthen Danish defense.”
Any government, he added must be based on “an offensive, economic reform foundation” in order to “strengthen the Danish economy, support our entrepreneurs, and bolster the competitiveness of our businesses.”
A 22-year-old Moroccan migrant, Aboubaker B., has been convicted of grievous bodily harm after stabbing a Tunisian migrant in his stomach and chest multiple times during a pre-arranged fist fight in Zwickau. However, Aboubaker B. faced a far lower sentence than expected after the judge determined that since the man stopped stabbing his victim at some point, the act did not amount to attempted murder.
The incident began as a physical fight on Oct. 26, 2025, at Schuhmannplatz when Aboubaker B. agreed with the Tunisian to meet for a fist fight. However, the incident ended in a life-threatening stabbing, with Aboubaker B. stabbing his victim multiple times once he fell on the ground, according to Tag24 outlet.
The incident escalated from a fistfight into a brutal attack when Aboubaker B. drew a knife on his 25-year-old opponent after the man had fallen. According to the indictment, he stabbed the victim “multiple times into the chest and abdominal cavity.” The court noted that “the injured party was seriously injured as a result,” requiring immediate surgery and leaving the victim with lasting physical consequences.
Predictably, the prosecutors charged Aboubaker B. with attempted murder due to the severity of the crime. However, despite the serious injuries the judge dropped the attempted murder charge, stating that “according to the testimony of the witnesses examined, the defendant voluntarily stopped stabbing him further, even though he could have easily done so – up to and including killing him.”
The judge argued that because the defendant chose to cease the attack of his own accord, he became eligible for a conviction on the lesser charge of grievous bodily harm.
With the lesser charge in place, the prosecution pushed for a sentence of three years and six months, and the defense argued for two years and six months. Judge Jörg Burmeister ultimately settled on a three-year prison term.
Several factors influenced the judge’s final sentencing. The defendant offered a full apology to the victim and admitted to the crime in court, allegedly showing significant remorse.
Furthermore, the court highlighted that “the defendant had no criminal record” prior to this incident.
However, the Zwickau Regional Court had to weigh these mitigating factors against the fact that the 25-year-old victim still suffers from the physical effects of the assault today. Aboubaker B. remains in pre-trial detention as the judgment is not yet final.
The case has some parallels with a case from last year, in which SPD Mayor Iris Stalzer was stabbed and tortured by her 17-year-old adopted daughter Zoe for hours inside their house. The case made national headlines, including for the prosecutor’s initial decision to not even pursue an arrest. Not only was the daughter not charged with attempted murder, but she was not even charged with bodily harm, despite nearly killing her mother. The argument was that although she could have killed Stalzer, she did not do so. Eventually, weeks after the incident, she was arrested and charged with grievous bodily harm.
A Bangladeshi national is under investigation in Venice after a 17-year-old compatriot accused him of raping her inside the Mestre home she shares with her husband and newborn child.
The alleged attack took place on Thursday evening while the girl’s husband, also Bangladeshi, was out of the property. According to the initial report, the suspect, described as a fellow Bangladeshi who lived in the same accommodation, allegedly waited until the husband had left before assaulting the teenager.
As reported by Il Giornale, the girl reportedly managed to break free and contact her husband, who then called the police. Officers attended the scene, took the girl’s statement, and began inquiries into the suspect, who has been identified and charged with sexual assault.
Politicians from the right-wing Lega party commented on the attack. Anna Cisint, a member of the European Parliament, and Alex Bazzaro, the party’s group leader on Venice City Council, linked the allegation to wider concerns about illegal subletting, abusive housing arrangements, and the treatment of women in some migrant communities.
“An unacceptable episode, a shameful rape that targeted a 17-year-old Bangladeshi girl,” Cisint said. “Another victim of the violence of radical Islam and probably of the rotten system based on hospitality. The same pattern I have already seen in Monfalcone. A Bangladeshi minor already with children: I wonder, a child bride?” she added, as cited by Leggo.
Bazzaro said the attack was partly due to a broken housing system he described as a “black market of illegal sublets and abusive bed spaces.”
“This is the pseudo-culture that the left wants to bring to the Venice City Hall. We believe these individuals must be repackaged and sent back to where they came from,” he added.
Authorities have not confirmed any wider investigation into the girl’s marriage, housing situation, or immigration status.
The criminal investigation into the sexual attack is ongoing.
Former Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro and his former deputy Marcin Romanowski have reportedly left Hungary for the United States after Péter Magyar was sworn in as Hungary’s new prime minister, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year tenure.
Ziobro, a senior figure in Poland’s conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, flew from Hungary to the United States on Saturday after securing a US visa, according to wPolsce24 television and wPolityce.pl. Notes from Poland also reported on Sunday that Ziobro had arrived in the United States after leaving Hungary, where he had been granted political asylum.
wPolityce later reported, citing its own sources, that Romanowski had also landed in the United States. Earlier, wPolsce24 editor-in-chief Jacek Karnowski said Romanowski’s legal position was different from Ziobro’s because a European Arrest Warrant had been issued for the former deputy justice minister.
Romanowski was granted asylum in Hungary in 2024 after Polish prosecutors accused him of misuse of public funds. Warsaw issued a European Arrest Warrant for him in February 2026, while Hungary refused to surrender him, arguing that the case was politically motivated and that he could not expect a fair trial in Poland.
Ziobro was later granted asylum in Hungary. Polish prosecutors accuse him of 26 offenses, including abuse of power, misuse of public funds, and involvement in an alleged criminal group. Ziobro denies wrongdoing and says the case is a political vendetta by liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government.
The reported departures come after Péter Magyar’s Tisza party defeated Orbán’s Fidesz party in Hungary’s parliamentary election, raising questions over the future of the asylum granted to the two Polish politicians.
Magyar had repeatedly signaled during the campaign that Ziobro and Romanowski would no longer be protected once his government took office. “If they’re still here when the Tisza government is formed, we will extradite them on the first day,” Magyar said at the time.
Romanowski had warned after Fidesz’s defeat that Hungary’s election result represented a major setback for conservatives in Europe. “This conservative wave that has been sweeping across Europe in recent months — and I hope it will continue — has suffered a certain breakdown,” he said.
He also argued that voters had chosen change without necessarily considering the consequences, saying, “The Polish example may not have taught them enough that change for the sake of change is not good.”
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has secured a symbolic local victory in Brandenburg after René Stadtkewitz became the party’s first directly elected full-time mayor in the eastern German state.
Stadtkewitz won the snap mayoral election in Zehdenick, a town north of Berlin, with 58.4 percent of the vote, according to the preliminary result. His nearest challenger, FDP candidate Stephan von Hundelshausen, finished far behind on 28.6 percent, while independent candidate Wolf-Gernot Richardt took 7.8 percent and Dennis Latzke of the Party of Progress received 5.2 percent.
The result makes Stadtkewitz the first full-time AfD mayor in Brandenburg to win office directly as an AfD candidate. Brandenburg previously had a full-time mayor who later joined the party, Arne Raue in Jüterbog, but Raue had won his elections in 2011 and 2019 as an independent before joining the AfD in 2024.
Stadtkewitz is a former CDU member of the Berlin state parliament who split from the center-right party in 2010. He later founded Die Freiheit, a party he led nationally until 2013, before joining the AfD in 2024. He has also spoken at a Pegida demonstration, where he described Islam as a violent and intolerant “ideology.”
The Zehdenick election followed the removal of the town’s previous mayor, Alexander Kretzschmar, who had defeated Stadtkewitz in a runoff election last year. Kretzschmar was later voted out of office after going on sick leave just 11 days after taking up the post and remaining absent. Since then, deputy mayor Marco Kalmutzke had been overseeing the town’s administration.
“I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your trust,” Stadtkewitz wrote in a message on Facebook late on Sunday. “I will be mayor for all people of Zehdenick — regardless of whom you voted for today. The time has now come to leave the election campaign behind us and get to work together,” he added.
Unser Kandidat René Stadtkewitz setzte sich mit 58,4 Prozent der Stimmen durch. Er ist somit der erste hauptamtliche AfD-Bürgermeister in Brandenburg, der direkt gewählt wurde. Immer mehr Bürger erkennen, dass es eine Politikwende nur mit uns gibt!#Bürgermeister#Wahl#AfD… pic.twitter.com/v3dDNkPI8p
AfD figures celebrated the result as evidence of the party’s growing momentum. AfD MP Martin Hess wrote that Stadtkewitz had prevailed with 58.4 percent and was now “the first full-time AfD mayor in Brandenburg to be directly elected,” adding that more citizens were recognizing that “a change in policy is only possible with us.”
Dr. Gottfried Curio, an AfD MP and domestic policy spokesperson, called the result “a strong signal for the upcoming elections in Berlin” — the neighboring state is heading to the polls later this year.
The victory comes as the AfD continues to post strong numbers in polling at both the state and federal level. In Saxony-Anhalt, an Infratest dimap poll recently put the party on 41 percent, well ahead of the CDU on 26 percent, with Die Linke on 12 percent and the SPD on 7 percent.
The numbers suggest that forming a government without the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt could become increasingly difficult, particularly if the CDU maintains its refusal to cooperate with the party.
Nationally, the party has also reached record highs. An Insa poll for Bild am Sonntag recently put the AfD on 28 percent, ahead of the CDU/CSU bloc on 24 percent. The SPD stood at 14 percent, the Greens at 12 percent, and Die Linke at 11 percent, while both the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance and the FDP were below the 5 percent threshold required to enter parliament at 3 percent.
A separate YouGov poll also showed the AfD ahead, placing the party on 27 percent compared with 23 percent for the CDU.
Despite the AfD’s polling strength, Germany’s other major parties continue to rule out coalition deals with it. That means the party’s rising support could result in a significant democratic deficit in Germany, with voters of the largest party not represented in government.
Poland’s Ordo Iuris Institute is arguing that rulings last week by Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court ordering the registration of same-sex marriages performed abroad are illegitimate and politically motivated.
Specifically, the institute stated via a post on X that the rulings violate Article 18 of Poland’s Constitution and its Family and Guardianship Code, with “activist judges” rewriting the law instead of interpreting it.
The May 7 rulings related to three marriages, two of which were concluded in Portugal and one in Germany.
🚨 Judicial putsch in Poland. Yesterday, Poland's Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) issued rulings in three new cases, ordering the transcription of same-sex "marriages" contracted abroad into Polish civil registries — in direct defiance of the Polish Constitution and the will… pic.twitter.com/ZbwpT9S00Z
— Ordo Iuris International (@OrdoIuris_Int) May 8, 2026
At the center of their argument is the fact that both the constitution and legal code define a marriage as strictly between a man and a woman. However, the judges instead turned to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which has issued its own ruling that member states must recognize marriages performed in other EU countries.
When the CJEU originally made its ruling, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had been clear that Brussels cannot pressure Poland into anything, especially regarding such a controversial topic. However, his government has now responded to the NSA ruling with enthusiasm.
“Today, three more couples won their case before the Supreme Administrative Court regarding transcripts. Behind the verdicts, letters, and procedures are real people, their families, and stories of longing for happiness, love, and safety. You simply deserve all of this! There’s no point in waiting. It’s time!” Katarzyna Kotula, Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and Government Plenipotentiary for Equality, wrote on X.
Ordo Iuris has slammed the CJEU’s ruling as judicial overreach by Brussels, comparing it to the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in the United States, “over the expressed democratic will of dozens of states.” The group then referenced Justice Antonin Scalia calling the move a “judicial Putsch” in his dissent.
“Democracy cannot survive when courts appoint themselves as its masters,” the post reads.
President Karol Nawrocki submitted a motion to the Senate to hold a nationwide referendum concerning the EU’s climate policy and rising energy prices.
In a recording posted yesterday on X, Nawrocki recalled that in February 2025, while still a presidential candidate, he signed an agreement with Solidarity. In it, he declared that he would take action to curb the negative effects of the European Green Deal, including, in particular, submitting a motion to the Senate to hold a referendum on the implementation of EU climate policy.
The referendum question, proposed by Karol Nawrocki, is to be: “Are you in favour of implementing the EU climate policy, which has led to an increase in the cost of living for citizens, energy prices and running a business and agricultural activity?”
Nawrocki, an independent who was backed for president by the conservative PiS, has been demonized by the left-liberal coalition that rules under Prime Minister Donald Tusk but has rallied to support right-wing causes, such as destructive green policies, opposing the Mercosur trade deal, and other initiatives conservatives feel make Poland too reliant on the EU.
Adrian Zandberg, co-chair of the Razem Party, criticized the president’s proposal during a press conference in Toruń, stating, according to Do Rzeczy, that referendum questions have a “very ugly and bad tradition” in Poland.
According to Zandberg, the question posed by Nawrocki is insulting to the Polish intellect and does not serve to build the state’s authority. He went so far as to say that it may discourage citizens from engaging in public life.
According to the latest polling, Razem fell from 4.9 percent to 3 percent support, meaning it would fail to enter the Sejm in Poland’s parliamentary elections next year.
Prof. Antoni Dudek, political scientist and historian, also commented on the head of state’s initiative on Thursday on TVN24.
“This is proof to me that the president is launching a spring offensive. He started it on May 3rd with his famous speech, appointing the Council for the New Constitution, and now we have the next step,” said the lecturer at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University.
He added that he believes “there will be no referendum” because the motion will not find support in the Senate. “This will allow the president, along with PiS’s candidate for prime minister, Mr. Czarnek, to claim that the president and prime minister in question wanted to protect Poles from the high prices caused by the Green Deal, and that Tusk’s misguided government and the coalition prevented this,” he stated.
Meanwhile, on another front, despite Nawrocki’s earlier veto, Poland has gone ahead and officially approved the SAFE loan agreement today. EU Commissioners Piotr Serafin and Andrius Kubilius, as well as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz and Minister of Finance Andrzej Domański signed off on it.
Nawrocki, as well as Law and Justice (PiS) and the Confederation, all opposed the loan, which will hand Poland €43.7 billion in low-interest loans from the EU’s SAFE program. Their purpose is to fund the purchase of military equipment from European manufacturers for the Polish Army.
On Thursday, President Nawrocki also posted an interview on X, informing viewers of the government’s attempts to bypass him in matters related to Polish security.
A former kindergarten director, formerly associated with the Polish People’s Party (PSL), led by Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz since 2015, has been detained by police on charges of pedophilia.
The arrest of 54-year-old Paweł C. was made as part of Operation Hellfire, which targeted pedophilia last month across the country, writes Do Rzeczy. The District Prosecutor’s Office in Tarnobrzeg, along with officers from the Central Bureau for Combating Cybercrime, participated in the operation.
Two other people were also detained in Tarnobrzeg and charged, including “a Border Guard officer and a member of the management staff of a local government institution,” investigators said in an official statement.
Investigators accuse Paweł C. of recording and disseminating pornographic content involving minors, as well as possessing nearly 100 image files and over 150 video files containing pornographic content involving minors.
As part of the operation, a search was carried out in the residential premises used by the above-mentioned persons, during which IT devices and data carriers containing paedophilic content were seized.
“Furthermore, a camouflaged camera was found in the bathroom of a 54-year-old resident of Tarnobrzeg, with which the suspect was recording members of his family while bathing. At the request of the prosecutor, the District Court in Tarnobrzeg imposed a preventive measure in the form of temporary arrest for a period of three months against the suspect, a 54-year-old resident of Tarnobrzeg,” the statement read.
“Tygodnik Nadwiślański” claims that the detained 54-year-old Paweł C. was a kindergarten principal and then worked as head of the Education, Health, Social Affairs, and Promotion Department at the Tarnobrzeg County Office, which was governed by the Polish People’s Party (PSL).
In 2019, he also allegedly ran for the Sejm on the PSL ticket.
Pawel C. is in pre-trial detention for three months and, if found guilty, will face up to 15 years in prison.
“I’m shocked; this is the most disgusting crime I can think of. We haven’t officially received any information from the authorities. I hope his work at the preschool will be investigated and we’ll be informed of the findings. I’m convinced that the children at the preschool are under the constant supervision of teachers; it would be difficult for them to engage in any criminal behavior without attracting attention,” said the mayor of Tarnobrzeg, Łukasz Nowak, in an interview with Tygodnik Nadwiślański, as quoted by wPolityce.
Paweł Bartoszek, starost of Tarnobrzeg from the Polish People’s Party, told Tygodnik Nadwiślański: “This is a huge surprise and shock for us. He was our employee for a short time, less than two months. The police searched his room and seized his computer equipment. For the sake of the injured parties and the ongoing investigation, we cannot say anything more.”
Khalid Al-Hail is a defector from the Qatari ruling establishment, the president of the Qatar National Democratic Party, and the country’s most prominent opposition spokesman. Now living in exile in the United Kingdom, he is a successful international businessman and the leading advocate for democratic reform in Qatar, known for exposing the regime’s state-backed influence operations and media manipulation abroad.
I can’t believe how petty this sounds, but I really think western socialists are frightened that the fall of the Ayatollahs will split their vote base. Why on earth else would people whose hearts bled for Palestine be back out in the streets supporting a regime which has matched the death toll of Gaza in just a few months? The clue is in the prevailing ideology of the Western intelligentsia. The signs have been visible for years.
In 2022, a socialist political network within the European Union became embroiled in the so called ‘Qatargate’ scandal, involving cash bribes to close down debate about Qatar’s Human Rights abuses.
As Qatar’s democratic opposition in political exile, I was encouraged by a recent campaign to call the European Union’s attention to this and other abuses of Qatar’s governance in the West. Billboards decried the Al Jazeera Propaganda network, the human rights violations of Qatar’s indentured foreign workforce and Qatar’s constant support for proscribed terrorist organisations including the Taliban, Hamas and Al Qaeda – all of which has been going on for decades.
This is a message to the West and to my European friends!
The Al Thanis, Qatar's ruling family, are funding terrorism, subverting and corrupting the West, promoting Islamist propaganda, and committing human right abuses.
— خالد الهيل KHALID AL-HAIL (@Khalidalhail) May 8, 2026
But the synergy between borderless, European socialism and Qatar’s radical Wahhabi Islamism runs deep.
The reason left liberals stand shoulder to shoulder with Islamist causes is that both ideologies create the same problems for themselves, which can be explained away with the same PR.
Both respect ideology more than nationhood, so they naturally collaborate to attack any society with a strong cultural identity. Both share a Tabula Rasa concept of humanity, resenting freedom of the individuals to express Petit Bourgeoisie or Haram political values. Both interpret justice through the lens of doctrine and revelation, so neither can accept equality under the law. Both are therefore incapable of building or sustaining societal contracts and wealth. Both are in denial about that fact and cover their failures by taking what free societies have built and pretending that they created it themselves. Finally, they both have to silence anybody who exposes the obvious failures of their ideologies. The natural enemy of both is the individualist, independent, thinker who does not wish the state to interfere with his life.
What is unusual about Qatar is that it has a lot of money (I shall avoid saying ‘wealth’ – their resource of natural gas was handed to them by the British along with their state in 1971) so, unlike other Islamist regimes, they can buy strategic influence in the West. I’m not just talking about celebrities and broadcasters like Tucker Carlson. Qatar, a radical Wahhabi State and among the most extreme Islamist societies on Earth, sees that socialist political movements are equipped with idealistic students, newspapers and think tanks – so they have become a generous benefactors of universities, media networks and think tanks – their proteges forming a united front against Israel.
Qatar also backs terrorist groups, colludes with the Muslim Brotherhood and houses Hamas operatives in Doha while securing exclusive reportage rights for Al Jazeera from the Gaza Strip. Al Jazeera’s Arabic language channel, which meets all the criteria under which RIA Novosti and Russia Today are banned, enjoys the same immunity in the EU as it appears to in the USA. That’s what expensive lobbying can do in democratic societies.
Recent events, however, threaten to break this uneasy Islamist-socialist alliance.
The 1979 revolution in Iran marked the first and only time an ancient, civilised and educated, country was totally subverted by radical Islam. When the Ayatollahs fall and the whole story of the long dark decades which followed is told in the West, it will strike a shattering blow to the marriage of convenience between the liberal left and Islamism.
I suspect that some more cynical Western political actors always knew this day was coming but just kept hoping that it wouldn’t arrive on their watch. Some are determined to ride the alliance into the ground and are now mobilising in full support of the Iranian Islamic regime which has killed tens of thousands of its own citizens in the last few months.
Spotted among a recent pro-Iranian regime march in London were Jeremy Corbyn – the former leader of the UK Labour Party – and Mothin Ali, the deputy leader of the Greens. Meanwhile Zohran Mamdani, the Mayor of New York who appealed to Brooklyn LGBTQ liberals on a pro Palestine platform, has also expressed his disgust at the shaking of the Ayatollahs – as has the Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez who recently naturalised 800,000 illegals. When people complained that the foreigners bring crime to Spain, the far-left Más Madrid spokeswoman Tesh Sidi breezily retorted that they are no longer foreigners but now Spaniards.
Would these figures of the radical left ever apply their own logic to the new arrivals in Israel in 1947? No – obviously they couldn’t – which is to say that the union between those who are all giving of the shared Western inheritance and those who are all taking for Political Islam is now openly inconsistent with its own values.
The shaking of the Ayatollahs in Tehran will be an informative moment in the history of Western self-determination as well as Iran’s. As we saw with East European Communism, as we will see in Gender theory and much of the Net-Zero green agenda, an ideology truly collapses not because of its military defeat or political sabotage but because of its inability to justify its own excesses any further. A recent comment made by Qatar’s ex Prime Minister makes me realise how desperate the game is getting to keep the radical left and Islamists together.
‘As soon as we declare war on Iran, America will withdraw from the conflict, sell weapons to both sides and use our resources to defeat both sides and expand the Greater Israel Project.’
This level of paranoid insanity will always appeal to a few lunatics – but is surely too much, even for the socialist Eurocrats, academics and journalists who take Qatari cash bribes.
According to the latest CBOS poll, the Civic Coalition (KO) widened its lead over Law and Justice (PiS) in May, while support for the right-wing Confederation also increased compared to the mid-April survey. Meanwhile, Grzegorz Braun’s Korona party would also enter the Sejm.
The ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk polled at 30.8 percent, a drop of 1.2 points from its April showing. And in what the Do Rzeczy news portal called “disastrous” results for PiS, the party led by Jarosław Kaczyński saw a slight increase in support, from 18.2 percent to 19.6 percent, but still lags KO by over 11 points.
The largest increase among the major parties was recorded by the Confederation of Freedom and Independence (“Confederation”), with an increase in support from 13 percent in April to 15.3 percent in May. Meanwhile, Grzegorz Braun’s Confederation of the Polish Crown saw its ratings decline 8.7 percent to 8.1 percent.
The New Left received 4.7 percent in May, compared to 5.8 percent in April, and the Razem party fell from 4.9 percent to 3 percent. The Polish People’s Party (PSL) and Poland 2050, which together formed the Third Way coalition, also remain below the electoral threshold at 2.2 percent and 1 percent, respectively, pushing them out of parliament — and Tusk’s ruling majority alliance — entirely.
If the parliamentary elections were held in early May, 76.6 percent of Poles eligible to vote would take part.
The main issue recently facing PiS has been constant rumors that former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is planning to form his own party, fueled by his establishment of the Rozwój Plus Association, although he insists it is not meant ot challenge Law and Justice as a party.
“Yes, I confirm the Rozwój Plus Association has been established. Our goal is to create additional space for dialogue, exchange of experiences, and initiating activities supporting Poland’s social and economic development,” Morawiecki told journalists at the time.
Former PiS Prime Minister Beata Szydło told Radio Zet that she saw no risk that Morawiecki would leave PiS. She also noted that there is no PiS ban on such associations, while also adding that their “activities must be consistent with and support our political work, not be in opposition.”
Still, PiS leadership was clearly threatened, with spokesperson Rafał Bochenek announcing in April that anyone who fails to resign from Mateusz Morawiecki’s association will face disciplinary action.
As of now, no formal disciplinary actions appear to have been taken, and there are unverified reports that some sort of compromise was reached, or the party has simply been assured that Morawiecki will not be leaving PiS to set up his own party and pursue his own political ambitions.
However, with PiS continuing to lag Tusk’s coalition, tensions will remain.
Poland will hold its next parliamentary election in the autumn of 2027.
The residents of a peaceful neighborhood in Cologne are currently reeling from a horrific discovery made over the weekend. A 93-year-old man was found beaten to death in his bungalow in Neubrück on Sunday by his adult children, an event that authorities later characterized as a fatal robbery.
According to a joint statement released by the police and public prosecutor on Tuesday, investigators believe that unidentified attackers entered the home on Böhmweg sometime between Friday and Sunday, according to the police report.
The crime apparently went unnoticed by neighbors until the discovery of the body, which showed serious injuries that indicated “massive violence.”
Following the assault, the perpetrators are believed to have fled the scene with stolen goods. An autopsy has since confirmed that the victim succumbed to these specific injuries.
A homicide squad is now searching for suspects in the case.
So far, no potential information has been released about the background of the suspects.
Home burglaries increased by 5.7 percent in 2025, but cases involving a burglary that turns into a murder are very rare. In 2025, there were 2,453 recorded cases of murder and manslaughter across Germany. This represents a 6.5 percent increase compared to 2024.
When it comes to homicides, nearly all cases are solved, reaching 94 percent in 2026. This compares extremely favorably to the United States, which is only at 61 percent.
Another IDF soldier has decided to attack Christianity, this time the Virgin Mary, with a photo that has gone viral on social media of the Israeli putting a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary in a Christian village in southern Lebanon. Once again, the move has infuriated Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski.
The Polish Foreign Ministry also expressed its “outrage,” citing Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ provision that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski also chimed in: “IDF soldiers, however, require training in respect for other religions and cultures. Further casualties in the Gaza Strip and settler excesses in the West Bank are also unacceptable. As an ‘occupying power,’ Israel is responsible for the treatment of the people it controls.”
Żołnierze IDF jednak wymagają szkolenia w szacunku do innych religii i kultur. Kolejne ofiary w strefie Gazy oraz ekcesy osadników na Zachodnim Brzegu też są niedopuszczalne. Jako 'occupying power' Izrael odpowiada za traktowanie ludzi nad którymi sprawuje kontrolę. https://t.co/8NFpD9BmSG
— Radosław Sikorski 🇵🇱🇪🇺 (@sikorskiradek) May 7, 2026
Sikorski has been highly critical of Israeli actions as of late, especially following photos of an Israeli soldier taking a sledgehammer to a Jesus statue in Lebanon recently. In that case, the IDF soldier in had apparently posted the image on his own social media profile.
Sikorski wrote at the time on X: “It’s good that Minister Sa’ar apologized quickly; there was something to apologize for. That soldier should be punished, but lessons should also be drawn regarding the way they are being trained. IDF soldiers themselves admit to war crimes. They killed not only civilian Palestinians but even their own hostages.”
This new incident coincides with Israel’s launch of a campaign to improve its image in the eyes of Christians around the world, notes Do Rzeczy.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry posted that “the IDF views the incident with utmost severity and emphasizes that the conduct of the soldier completely deviates from the values expected of its personnel.”
Just two days ago, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, presumably as part of its campaign to boost the image of Israel with Christians, posted an incident of violence by Muslims against Christians in the West Bank, stressing that IDF soldiers sought “to protect civilians and respect the sanctity of the holy site.”
“Too often, violence against Christians in the Middle East is ignored. Yesterday it happened again in Judea and Samaria,” they wrote. They may want to keep a closer eye on their own soldiers.
Péter Magyar’s government has not yet been formed, but one of the ministerial candidates has already had to resign — in fact, it is his brother-in-law, Márton Melléthei-Barna. Magyar’s had initially tried to appoint him head the justice ministry.
As Remix News reported last week, Lászlo Toroczkai, leader of Hungarian right-wing party Our Homeland, had expressed his shock that Magyar was committing the same nepotism he had attacked Fidesz for. What’s more, Melléthei-Barna is a former employee of Oppenheim Law Firm, which represented Meta against Toroczkai when he sued the Marc Zuckerberg-owned tech behemoth for alleged rampant censorship he and his party faced on both Facebook and Instagram.
However, he was not the only person outraged by the appointment. According to the Mandiner news portal, it was the head of the European People’s Party (EPP), Manfred Weber, who demanded the change of course in Magyar’s cabinet, as Tisza is a member of the EPP, calling the naming of his brother-in-law “completely unacceptable.”
Given that the EPP has repeatedly attacked the Orbán government, saying that its decisions are determined by strong nepotism. In light of this, the demand makes sense.
Of course, Weber has the weight of Brussels behind him, with leadership watching Magyar’s every move closely. They also know they can apply pressure as they please, given the €10 billion in funds they are sitting on that Hungary desperately needs released.
As it stands, it does not look like Magyar will be able to bring home the entire amount of €10.4 billion, with Politico even writing an article yesterday entitled “No blank check for Magyar,” with commentary such as “the heat is on” and saying the situation is “starting to get real.”
The European Commission is urging Magyar to take the €6.5 billion in grants, but leave behind €3.9 billion in loans, which would need to be repaid, as there is simply not enough time for Hungary to clear all hurdles required for a full release.
For Magyar, anything less than the full amount is tremendously poor optics for the landslide election victor, as many Hungarians believe Magyar will give them this win.
For now, Magyar has no funds. He also had to show his brother-in-law the door.
As for Toroczkai, he has made no comment on the dismissal. He has, however, updated his case regarding election interference here in Hungary, indicating that a Supreme Court ruling has rejected Our Homeland’s request to review the election results, but that the issue of interference may be able to be reviewed by the Constitutional Court, as the court stated that “the substantive and procedural rules of the Election Act, but also, in a broader sense, the fundamental rights provisions defined in the Fundamental Law” may have been violated.
In the meantime, Toroczkai has drawn attention to yet another battleground for Magyar and Tisza: the border. Tisza has made it clear that border protection will remain a top priority, but cracks are already beginning to show. Brussels imposed a daily €1 million fine on Hungary over its refusal to accept illegal migrants under Viktor Orbán back in June 2024, and while there is no word on what will happen on this front, the migrants continue to come.
“In recent days, the number of illegal migrants breaking into our country has once again sharply increased at the Hungarian-Serbian border,” the Our Homeland leader posted on X. Yesterday morning, six Turkish nationals and two Syrians breached the border fence, with one subsequently falling ill and having to be hospitalized.
Ez bizony nem "álprobléma": A magyar-szerb határon az elmúlt napokban ismét durván növekszik a hazánkba betörő illegális migránsok száma.
Ásotthalomnál is napok óta folyamatosan érkeznek kisebb-nagyobb csoportokban, ahol a rendőrség, a helyi polgárőrség és az ásotthalmi… pic.twitter.com/NcwRQfQ14P
Péter Magyar is being attacked on two fronts: Brussels from the north and migrants from the south. He will officially form his government tomorrow, May 9, to great fanfare. It should be an interesting summer.
The night between Wednesday and Thursday saw another round of riots from predominantly multicultural youths, who also happened to target a famed French photographer’s exhibit celebrating diversity. The irony of the incident, however, appears to be lost on the photographer, Yann Arthus-Bertrand.
Bertrand’s “Living Together” exhibition was located at the Place de la Concorde, which, according to Le Parisien, was designed to “celebrate the fraternity and diversity of France.”
However, following the victory against Bayern, rampaging PSG supporters attacked police, destroyed property, and set a number of vehicles on fire. The PSG supporters during these routine riots are predominantly non-White individuals with a migration background, as countless videos have shown year after year.
🇫🇷🔴During riots last night in Paris, PSG football supporters destroyed photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand's pro-diversity exhibition on "Living Together."
The exhibition was meant to celebrate diversity and fraternity in France.
“This is how I discovered my exhibition on living together in the Place de la Concorde. Clearly, the PSG fans loved the exhibition,” he said, with “irony tinged with bitterness.”
In an interview, he stated: “It was something meant to bring people together, to show the beauty of our diversity. Seeing it destroyed like this is heartbreaking. We wanted to celebrate unity, but instead, we are faced with this. I hope we can understand that respect for art and for each other is fundamental.”
He complained that the “perpetrators pounced” on his photographs. While the photos were battered, he remained defiant: “They’re still visible; they’ll be fixed, but they’re still there. What’s important is that the meaning of the exhibition is still there.”
Arthus-Bertrand said that of the 180 photos on display, about 100 were damaged.
🇫🇷🔴Absolute chaos in Paris:
PSG football supporters charge the police in front of the Eiffel Tower.
The damage represents “three years of work wiped out in one night.” Arthus-Bertrand said the project involved nearly 90 photo studios across the country to create a “vast collective portrait of contemporary France.”
Notably, unlike many of the people who were injured in this riot and past ones, or the storefronts and cars burned or vandalized, Arthus-Bertrand has access to thousands of followers that he can leverage on social media in just a moment.
Une résidence prise pour cible par les supporters du PSG : Sabrina Medjebeur raconte l’irruption d’une bande de jeunes et les menaces de viol proférées devant les grilles.
— Fdesouche.com est une revue de presse (@F_Desouche) May 7, 2026
Bertrand used his Instagram account to call on these followers, describing “an unexpected surge of solidarity.”
The response was immediate. “There are 30 or 40 people who arrived immediately to give us a hand. In my opinion, we’ll reach 300 given the calls we’re receiving. People are a little shocked to see this, but above all they want to help us,” the photographer said.
He even ended up crying.
“In the end, I was crying last night, and now I’m very happy. It’s a beautiful moment of solidarity, and the very meaning of this exhibition is all the stronger for it. Everyone is arriving, little old ladies from everywhere.”
He then posted: “Long live football… long live photography and above all, long live ‘Living Together.’ We invite you to come and restore this exhibition with all the help of willing volunteers. Join us now, with your gloves and screwdrivers!”
While past riots have led to many injured and many storefronts destroyed, those small business owners and residents cannot simply hop on Instagram and have 300 people come to fix their property or donate money. Unlike a world-famous photographer, these individuals often have no social media reach whatsoever and are left to pick up the pieces in anonymity.
The human cost of the evening was significant. According to the report delivered by the Minister of the Interior, there have been “127 arrests in the Paris metropolitan area and 34 injured, including 23 police officers slightly injured.”
Journalists were also attacked from the conservative CNews station, leaving one cameraman in a neck brace.
Une équipe de @CNEWS /@Frontieresmedia était en train de couvrir les violents débordements qui ont eu lieu hier soir à Paris, lorsque @Guillaume_fcqt a répondu qu'ils étaient de Cnews, la bande de racailles a mis au sol le caméraman et l'un d'entre eux l'a violemment frappé à la… pic.twitter.com/wtr4JuHohH
— 🇫🇷 fred le gaulois 🇫🇷 Uniondesdroites 🐱🐱 (@FredGaulois) May 7, 2026
Given the context of the violence at the event, Arthus-Bertrand represents the undying religious belief in diversity that has gripped the West, especially his boomer generation in France. Notably, in previous elections, the anti-immigration National Rally dominated among the 25-49 age group, while the 65+ demographic has consistently acted as the “firewall” for the French establishment. While more and more older voters are flipping to a National Rally led by Jordan Bardella, this trend of older voters supporting pro-migration parties has been a trend for the last decade.
As for Arthus-Bertrand and his celebration of “contemporary France,” what is contemporary France anyway? Of course, it is not just propagandistic photos that represent a frozen moment of “diversity.”
It is sexual assaults rising 86 percent on French public transit over the last 10 years, fueled by mass immigration.
It is the testimony of French women who point out the fact that migrants are the ones predominantly harassing them, catcalling them, and even trying to sexually assault them.
🇫🇷🚨 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)
Bertrand makes his living producing propaganda, but the majority of the French public has a decidedly different view on what “Living Together” means. In fact, polling from this month showed that 60 percent of voters believe France is witnessing “a replacement of the French population by non-European populations.” The majority also see this as a bad development.
A hotel in the Austrian city of Salzburg is defending its refusal to allow two women to use its pool while wearing burkinis, arguing that the decision was based on hygiene concerns rather than discrimination.
The case is now before the Salzburg Administrative Court after the operators of the hotel in Pongau appealed fines imposed by the district authority, according to Salzburger Nachrichten.
Boshra and Jasmina Amasha, two sisters from Upper Austria, had booked a short wellness break at the hotel on Oct. 25 last year. They arrived early with the intention of using the swimming pool before going hiking.
The dispute started at reception when one of the women mentioned that she was going to retrieve her burkini from the car. Staff told her that burkinis were not allowed in the hotel pool, a decision that was upheld after a phone call with the hotel manager.
The hotel manager later confirmed in court that women wearing burkinis were not welcome in the pool. She said the policy was linked to hygiene, arguing that longer fabric could carry bacteria into the water.
She acknowledged that she did not have scientific evidence to support that concern, but said the hotel also operated as a spa and had to place particular emphasis on cleanliness, especially because many older guests used the facilities.
The hotel’s co-manager also told the court that there was no formal written swimwear policy, but said long swimwear could have a negative effect on water hygiene. He added that the hotel had also previously asked guests wearing long swimming shorts to change.
The sisters reject the hygiene explanation. Jasmina Amasha said the phone conversation was not presented to them as a technical discussion about pool standards, but instead included remarks such as, “Here in Austria, we have to adapt,” and, “We could go swimming in Saudi Arabia wearing a burkini.”
She also claimed they were told other guests did not like seeing women in burkinis.
Their lawyer argued that burkinis are made from similar material to standard swimwear and are not less hygienic than bikinis. She also cited a parliamentary inquiry to the Ministry of Health and said the garment could reduce the amount of hair and skin flakes entering the water.
After the confrontation, the sisters left and booked another hotel. The court heard that the original hotel covered the additional costs, but Jasmina Amasha said the experience had been “extremely humiliating and discriminatory.”
The hotel operators are appealing the penalty imposed against them, and the court is expected to issue a written ruling in the coming weeks.
Bagayoko has struck again, this time at France’s centrist president, Emanuel Macron, who loves to see himself as a unifier and representative of the masses, much to the chagrin of those on the right, who have continuously felt he has sacrificed the ideals of La République on the mantle of wokeism.
Besides complaints that L’Élysée has long ignored the massive issue of crimes perpetrated by foreigners, including those under OQTFs (deportation orders), there was that 2024 Paris Summer Olympics opening ceremony, an ode to anything woke that left many either horrified or simply scratching their heads.
But for all his attempts to appease the left wing, Macron has now found himself in the crosshairs of the newly elected far-left mayor of multicultural Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko.
The mayor has become a far-left celebrity in France, with some even preferring him to run in the 2027 presidential election, representing La France Insoumise, instead of its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has indeed announced himself as the official candidate.
But Bagayoko caused waves after his election when he immediately called for police to be disarmed, effectively telling those who are not on board with his agenda to leave. Already, one local councilwoman has resigned after seeing the new mayor conversing with the man whom she says organized an attack on her.
Then there was the illegal rap video-turned riot he was in the middle of, at the end of which Bagayoko seemed to question why the police ever intervened at all.
Most recently, the Frontieres portal has come forward with further allegations regarding the mayor’s connection to local drug dealers. They also posted a video from 2020, allegedly showing Bagayoko as part of a mass intrusion on a city council meeting, where he was up front, yelling aggressively. One member of the hoarde actually pulled out a knife.
🔴🇫🇷 𝗙𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗛 𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗢 — Une vidéo exclusive datant de 2020 montre Bally Bagayoko accompagné de dizaines de personnes forçant l’entrée de l’Hôtel de Ville de Saint-Denis pour perturber le conseil municipal.
Lors de cette intrusion, un homme a sorti une arme blanche.
Then-Socialist mayor, Mathieu Hanotin, described it as “an attack against republican institutions.”
Bagayoko has called the reporting by Frontieres racist. Meanwhile, in his latest move, he has decided to take aim directly at President Macron by, according to one account, removing the photo of the president from its normal place at the town hall, while other accounts say he not only put it in a less visible corner somewhere but also turned it upside down in a show of utter disrespect.
According to CNews, Bagayoko said the photo will remain in the corner until “the advent of a radical left and a new president.”
Another news portal had a different version of the mayor’s comments. “The portrait will remain in its place until the state fulfils its obligations under the Republican Pact, particularly toward the residents of our territory,” the mayor said, according to Caliber.
Frontières vous a révélé des preuves exclusives de liens entre les équipes de Bally Bagayoko et le trafic de drogue. Voici les profils d’individus liés à ce trafic et proches des équipes du maire de Saint-Denis, ou fréquentant les mêmes lieux ⤵️
Bagayoko has reportedly called his treatment of Macron’s photo a “symbolic gesture” and said he would not restore the portrait “until the Republic eliminates inequality.”
Meanwhile, the state has not remained silent, issuing a call to Bagayoko to please respect the traditions of France:
“The prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis has taken note of the recent remarks by the Mayor of Saint-Denis, in which he announced that he had taken down the portrait of the President of the Republic in his office at the Saint-Denis town hall.
“The presence of this portrait in public buildings, and in particular town halls, is part of the republican tradition.
“The Prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis has therefore asked the Mayor of Saint-Denis today, by letter attached, to reconsider his decision and return to this republican practice.”
Unfortunately, “returning to republican practices” is clearly the furthest intention of the far-left mayor, who has called Saint-Denis the “city of Blacks,” or “la ville des Noirs,” a play on its traditional nickname of “la ville des rois,” as its Basilica served as the burial place for French kings and queens. In a recent post, he has also called on France “to wake up.”
LFI’s Mélenchon has stated: “We are destined to be a Creole nation and so much the better.” Bagayoko may not be running for president in 2027, but he is very much the driver of the campaign.
Police in Germany are searching for an Algerian migrant convicted of attempted manslaughter who escaped from a psychiatric hospital in Baden-Württemberg and is considered potentially dangerous.
Sofiane Ouandjli, 26, fled the Emmendingen Psychiatric Center on May 1 and had still not been found five days later, according to reports by Bild and Welt.
Authorities have issued a public appeal for information and warned members of the public not to approach him.
According to Bild, Ouandjli had been allowed into the park area of the psychiatric center for a walk but failed to return to his ward. Police reportedly began an intensive search shortly after his escape, following several leads before making the case public.
A police spokesperson told Bild the public appeal was launched after investigators were unable to locate him through other avenues.
“As far as we know, the escapee did not return to his ward after a period of leave in the park of the Emmendingen Psychiatric Center,” police spokesman Özkan Cira told the German tabloid. “The police pursued several leads. Because he could not be located, a public appeal for information has now been initiated.”
Welt reported that Ouandjli was convicted by the Freiburg Regional Court in July 2025 after an attack at a refugee accommodation in November 2024. He stabbed a fellow resident with a knife and injured a police officer before he was arrested.
Instead of imposing a custodial sentence, the court ordered him to be placed in a psychiatric hospital, although the reason for that placement was not immediately clear.
The incident will reignite the controversy surrounding dangerous foreign nationals avoiding prison time in favor of psychiatric treatment under the proviso that secure psychiatric units possess the same degree of safety to the public.
Police have described Ouandjli as about 1.80 meters tall, slim, with short curly dark brown to black hair and dark brown eyes. At the time of his escape, he had stubble and was wearing a dark baseball cap and a black tracksuit.
Authorities said there was no indication that he was carrying a weapon, but warned that he may pose a danger to others.
With just one more point on election day, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is closing in on producing a political earthquake.
According to a recent poll by Infratest dimap, the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt is pushing its lead even further, now at 41 percent.
The poll also shows that for the CDU, establishing a government is becoming more difficult, especially since any realistic option besides the AfD appears to be a minority government.
There are just four months until election day, and much could change until then, but the AfD appears to be only gaining momentum, not only in the state, but also nationwide, where it just hit a record of 28 percent in the latest Insa survey.
In the “Sachsen-AnhaltTREND” survey, which was conducted by Infratest dimap on behalf of the Magdeburger Volksstimme, the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, and Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, the AfD hit 41 percent. Meanwhile, its closest rival, the CDU, lost 1 percentage point compared to the previous week and sits at 26 percent.
Compared to an Infratest poll from last September, the AfD has increased its support by 2 percentage points. Following the CDU are Die Linke at 12 percent and the SPD at 7 percent.
🇩🇪🎄The German Christmas market in Magdeburg has been suspended over security concerns, sparking a nationwide debate.
The question: Why are Christmas markets in Germany being canceled while countries like 🇵🇱Poland and the 🇨🇿Czech Republic have no serious terror threats at their… pic.twitter.com/MUW5fofh5w
Both the Greens and the BSW are polling at 4 percent. These two parties, along with the FDP, would currently fail to enter the state parliament. The FDP, a current member of the state government with the CDU and SPD, was not listed individually in the results because of its low figures. All other parties combined represent 6 percent of the total.
If all the current values of the other parties held, then just one point more for the AfD would allow the party to rule with an absolute majority. However, if other parties, such as the Greens, were to pass the 5 percent threshold on election day, this would complicate the math for the AfD.
In addition, a majority of respondents are unhappy with the state government, with 62 percent stating they are only slightly or not at all satisfied. Only 33 percent expressed that they are very satisfied or satisfied with the government’s performance. Furthermore, 82 percent of people have little to no confidence that the state is generally fulfilling its duties, and the same number, 82 percent, assess the current economic situation as “less than good” or “poor.”
Only 14 percent rate the economy as “very good” or “good.”
Four Turkish nationals have been remanded into custody after a shooting in the center of Giessen left two young men seriously injured, including one who was shot in the head.
The four suspects, aged between 21 and 26, are accused of attempted manslaughter, aggravated assault, and violations of drug and weapons laws following the attack on Sunday night at Lindenplatz in the Hessian city.
According to Junge Freiheit, Chief Public Prosecutor Thomas Hauburger confirmed that all four suspects are Turkish nationals. Prosecutors declined, however, to disclose their immigration status, telling the outlet that this was not relevant to the case.
The victims were a 24-year-old Turkish man and a 20-year-old Algerian man, both of whom were initially in critical condition. Investigators say the suspects had gone into central Giessen to confront the 24-year-old over a long-running dispute.
The confrontation escalated into a physical fight before the 20-year-old Algerian, who police say had no personal connection to the other men involved, stepped in to help the 24-year-old and used pepper spray.
Two members of the group then allegedly opened fire, discharging at least three shots. The 20-year-old was hit in the head, while the 24-year-old was struck in the leg. Both men are no longer in acute danger, according to investigators.
Police launched a major operation after the shooting, involving more than 170 officers from several Hessian police headquarters, including special units. Investigators said telephone surveillance helped them track the suspects, who were arrested in Bad Wildungen.
During a search of their accommodation, officers seized one kilogram of cannabis and three loaded pistols.
All four suspects were already known to police for previous offenses, including aggravated assault and drug-related crimes. Authorities also said they had previously been recorded for violations of Germany’s Residence Act. It is unclear whether they had the right to be in Germany at the time of the shootings, and if not, why they were at liberty.
Several mainstream German media outlets reported on the shooting and arrests, but omitted the fact that the suspects were Turkish nationals.
At the time of writing, reports by outlets including Tagesschau, Welt, and Stern had not updated their coverage to include that detail.
An African migrant with an incredible seven deportation orders stabbed Italian father Santo Re to death last year, but the family is now opening up to the media about the horror they have to live with and the fact that they feel the state has failed them. In fact, they went so far as to sue the Italian government over negligence in the case.
The 30-year-old Santo, who was headed to work on May 30, 2025, as a pastry chef at Quaranta bar on Catania’s Ognina seafront, had parked in front of the highly popular pastry shop when he was approached by 37-year-old undocumented migrant Akbahue Innocent, from Zimbabwe. Innocent was working as an unauthorized parking attendant. The foreigner stabbed the victim six times after the pastry chef refused to pay for parking.
Remarkably, it was revealed after the murder, that the two men knew each other and Santo had reportedly offered the man assistance on several previous occasions.
🇮🇹🔴An African migrant with an incredible 7 deportation orders stabbed Italian father Santo Re to death. Santo leaves behind a 4-month-old baby girl.
Santo's family says that 37-year-old undocumented migrant Akbahue Innocent, from Zimbabwe, should have been removed from the… pic.twitter.com/asFSOpV9cG
“Santo was a father. Many times when I see dads accompanying their daughters, taking a walk together, or going to get ice cream, I know that she will never be able to do that,” said Santo’s partner.
Santo’s sister also spoke out, saying: “It is something I cannot and do not want to accept, because my brother died because of a person who should not have been in Italy. He had seven orders, seven! Not one, but seven! Seven deportation orders from the national territory, three of which with forced accompaniment to the border, but not a single one was ever executed.”
In fact, due to the extraordinary nature of the case, in which the illegal migrant suspect had seven deportation orders, the family sued the Italian government, which is run by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Specifically, they targeted the Italian Interior Ministry, arguing that the government failed to take action against Innocent, which directly led to the death of Santo.
The legal team argued that the Interior Ministry was responsible, stating that “if Akbahue had been expelled, Santo would not have died.” They contended that because the ministry “allowed and tolerated the permanence on national territory of a subject qualified as dangerous,” the ministry is liable.
Despite the legal action, the courts found that the interior ministry was not liable to compensate the family of Santo. The Catania Assize Court issued this ruling, rejecting a request from the legal representatives of the victim’s widow and relatives.
The lawyers had sought to summon the ministry as civilly responsible in the murder trial of Santo R, reported Italian newspaper il Giornale.
In its decision, the court ruled that “The responsibility of the public administration is not covered by legislation.” This ruling is considered a significant precedent as it establishes in writing that the ministry cannot be held responsible in such cases, even when the government fails to protect its own citizens. The court specifically determined that the public administration is not liable for criminal actions committed by an illegal immigrant even when the government has failed to expel that migrant a total of seven times.
However, the courts have ruled exactly the opposite in other cases when the plaintiff is a migrant. For example, previous cases ordered the Interior Ministry to compensate migrants for delays in authorizing disembarkation from NGO vessels, or for the transfer and detention of individuals in facilities in Albania.
The criminal record of Innocent shows he had seven deportation orders in Italy between 2007 and the present day, three of which were issued in Catania starting in 2017. He was also banned from accessing the city’s downtown. In July 2019, when Innocent worked as an illegal parking attendant on Ognina’s seafront promenade, in Piazza Mancini Battaglia, he attacked two police officers who were trying to fine him and punched and kicked them before being stopped by the Carabinieri. He was arrested for intentional bodily harm and resisting and insulting a public official.
One of the two officers was hit in the face and taken to the emergency room for treatment. He was imprisoned for this crime.
This Saturday, Hungary will get a new government under Péter Magyar, the leader of the Tisza party that was elected into power with a landslide victory, winning an unprecedented 141 mandates in the Hungarian National Assembly.
The city of Budapest is expected to turn into a veritable street party this weekend, especially around Kossuth Square, the site of parliament, where the newly elected MPs will convene and elect Magyar as their prime minister.
Since the election on April 12, support for Tisza has grown even more, with the divide between decided voters now 70-23 in favor of Tisza. Last month, with 80 percent voter turnout, 53.18 percent voted for Tisza and 38.61 percent for Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz. A year before the election,
Further analysis prepared for HVG by Median shows that 61 percent of the entire voting age population would vote for the Tisza Party in an election this Sunday, while 21 percent would support Fidesz, a steep fall from the Fidesz election result just a month ago.
The difference is even greater among sure party voters, where 70 percent would support Tisza.
This huge shift in support, which is often seen following elections, is called the “winner’s effect,” and has been seen following elections time after time. The public, even if the voted for the losing candidate, will often shift their support to the winner. Such shifts, however, often quickly dissipate, sometimes very quickly, after the winner assumes office and many of their campaign pledges fail to develop, scandals arise, or the economy fails to improve.
However, poll respondents also appear to have soured on Orbán extremely quickly, with 59 percent of respondents no longer considering him suitable as prime minister and 72 percent considering Péter Magyar a suitable leader.
As to retribution for any alleged misdeeds by Orbán, two-thirds of Hungarian society believes that the former prime minister should be held accountable for his actions in court. Even some Fidesz voters would support such a move.
The perception of the future has also improved dramatically since the elections: 63 percent of those surveyed believe the country is heading in the right direction, while 23 percent see it as heading in the wrong direction.
Péter Magyar also reacted to the results of the research. He wrote on his social media page: “There are no words. TISZA: 70% – Fidesz: 23%. Unprecedented numbers, unprecedented responsibility. The real work begins on 9 May.”
There are no words. TISZA: 70% – Fidesz: 23%. Unprecedented numbers, unprecedented responsibility. The real work begins on 9 May. pic.twitter.com/uGyziWcuzF
— Magyar Péter (Ne féljetek) (@magyarpeterMP) May 6, 2026
Certainly, Magyar will have a full plate. While many on the ground in Budapest have expressed a sense of general relief and hope over the removal of Orbán, there is still a palpable level of skepticism over what the future holds.
With war in Ukraine and Iran, stagnant economies, soaring energy prices, and continued negative repercussions from the mass migration of the last decade, Péter Magyar will have to live up to the expectations and demands of a wide spectrum of people and agendas — starting with Brussels. Notably, his coalition that he built to defeat Orbán is made up of a hodgepodge of ideological camps, and many of them come from the left and far-left.
A young woman, who was intoxicated, was followed into a public toilet in the 18th arrondissement of Paris and assaulted at 5 a.m. on May 3. A police patrol had noted the man’s behavior, namely that he appeared to be following the women with ill intent.
According to Europe1, the officers observed the individual gradually approaching the victim, eventually following her into a public restroom, where he proceeded to rape her. The police found the restroom door slightly open and witnessed the perpetrator, with his trousers down, forcing her into a sexual act.
The BAC (Anti-Crime Brigade) officers intervened and arrested him on the spot. Fdesouche has reported that the man was born in Morocco. He was placed in deferred police custody due to his condition, and an investigation was opened for rape.
The victim, who was also intoxicated, was taken to a sobering-up cell pending her hearing.
It is unknown if the Moroccan was present legally in France or not.
The increasingly popular Nationally Rally, led by Jordan Bardella, has been calling for increased migration controls and deportations in the face of rising crime stats in regard to foreign, often illegal, perpetrators.
Two years ago, Remix News reported on the response from local rap groups to Bardella and former RN leader Marine Le Pen’s call for a stricter migration policy: a video featuring ultra-violent lyrics against the party, calling for the two politicians to be beaten and killed. “Marine and Marion the whores, beat these female dogs in heat with a stick. “Jodan, you’re dead.” “If the fascists come by, I’m going out with a big caliber,” went the lyrics.
French rappers release ULTRA-VIOLENT new anti-National Rally music video:
"Marine and Marion the whores, beat these female dogs in heat with a stick. "Jodan, you're dead." "If the fascists come by, I'm going out with a big caliber." pic.twitter.com/yjRffivA8y
Far-left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La france Insoumise (LFI) has vowed to destroy RN in his run for French president, with his official campaign just announced this week.
The latest poll cited by Europe Elects shows National Rally with a healthy lead at 33 percent versus LFI’s 12 percent. Gabriel Attal, of Macron’s Renaissance party, is in second with 14 percent, and Bruno Retailleau, of The Republicans, at 13 percent.
Last summer, Remix News posted a video of Miss France 2007, Rachel Legrain-Trapani, describing in harrowing detail how a Moroccan migrant had lurked around her group of friends, asked for a photo, which she kindly agreed to, and then started groping her without her consent.
The 30-year-old man, who reportedly does not speak French very well, has now been sentenced to six months in prison, despite attempting to say his act was “unintentional,” an explanation the court rejected.
The incident took place last July at the Avignon Festival, when Legrain-Trapani was handing out flyers for her show. A group of fans had gathered around her to take selfies, when the Moroccan also requested a photo with her. According to her statement to police, it was then that he grabbed her buttocks.
🇫🇷 A Moroccan migrant was arrested for sexually assaulting Miss France 2007.
The suspect approached Rachel Legrain-Trapani on the sidelines of the Off Festival in Avignon.
"He started touching me, also on my behind, I didn't expect that."
According to the perpetrator, he said at the time of the incident, as well as during his court appearance, that he had found the woman crying at a café and offered to help, writes Ici. Later, he saw her with fans at a park and decided to get a selfie with the former Miss France as well for his social media profile. Per his report, he put his hand around Legrain-Trapani’s waist, but she then moved, causing his hand to “unintentionally” slide down onto her buttock. He says he then immediately removed it and apologized.
According to the victim, he simply disappeared after the assault.
The prosecutor, who had sough eight months’ imprisonment and a ban from French territory for two years, told the Moroccan: “After six months of the Pelicot trial, I thought it was clear to the people of Vaucluse that a woman’s body belongs only to her.”
While the perpetrator in the Pelicot case was a French native, and domestic abuse is still a concern across all ethnicities (and in all countries), France has in fact long suffered from violent sexual attacks perpetrated by migrants and those of foreign origin, typically from North Africa.
Child prostitution is yet another cause for concern, with grooming gangs controlling this trade almost entirely foreign. At the same time, up to 90% of the women in prostitution are also foreign.
🇫🇷🔴France has its own massive, Epstein-style pedophile rings, and they are receiving very little attention.
🔺There are an estimated 20,000 minor prostitutes in France.
‼️An incredible 75% come from the child welfare system (ASE). In other words, children are being directly… pic.twitter.com/EhlLU8Wvpi
Meanwhile, in France, while the Left pushes to cast the right’s concerns over rising migrant crime as mere racism, voters are increasingly waking up to the realities of mass immigration, pushing the anti-migration National Rally (RN) to first place in polling for next year’s presidential election.
A 14-year-old girl was stabbed to death in northern France on Wednesday morning while on her way to school, triggering a major manhunt before a 23-year-old suspect was arrested later the same day.
The schoolgirl was found critically injured at around 8 a.m. on a public road in Fère-en-Tardenois, a small town in the Aisne department west of Reims. Prosecutors said she had suffered multiple stab wounds, including numerous injuries to the neck.
Emergency services were called to the scene, but the teenager died before they arrived, according to the Soissons prosecutor’s office.
The victim was a ninth-grade student at Anne-de-Montmorency middle school in Fère-en-Tardenois, Le Parisien reported.
A 23-year-old man was arrested in Soissons shortly after 6 p.m. and taken into custody. Prosecutors said the suspect is unemployed and lives with his parents. No further description of the attacker was made public.
Authorities said his exact relationship with the victim still has to be established, but he may have been her former boyfriend.
A large-scale search operation was launched after the killing. Around 85 police officers were mobilized, along with drone operators, dog units, and helicopters, according to BFMTV.
The Soissons prosecutor’s office has opened a preliminary investigation for murder.
Investigators are interviewing the girl’s relatives and potential witnesses as they work to establish the circumstances of the attack and the suspect’s possible motive.
Pierre Moya, rector of the Amiens academy, said a listening unit and a psychological emergency team had been set up at the girl’s school for anyone affected by the killing.
“They will remain accessible for as long as necessary, to allow everyone to receive support during this difficult time,” he said.
Moya expressed his “deep emotion” over the killing and offered his “most sincere thoughts” to the girl’s family, friends, classmates, and school staff.
“I put myself in the parents’ place, and I feel just as much grief as they do,” Dorothée, a resident of the neighborhood where the murder took place, told AFP. “It could have been one of my children, one of my daughters,” she added.
“She always had a smile,” added Melissa, a friend from school who usually walked with her but had not done so on the day of the attack.
Hungary has returned money and valuables belonging to Ukrainian state-owned bank Oschadbank after authorities seized the shipment earlier this year while it was being transported from Austria to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the return on Telegram on Wednesday, saying the assets had been seized by Hungarian special services in March, a move he claimed had been unjustified.
“Today, the funds and valuables of Oschadbank, seized by Hungarian special services in March of this year, were returned,” Zelensky wrote.
“I thank Hungary for the constructive and civilized step,” he added.
The shipment, which reportedly included cash and gold belonging to Oschadbank’s Ukrainian branch, was stopped by Hungarian authorities during a period of high tension between Budapest and Kyiv. Hungarian officials said at the time that the bank workers involved were suspected of money laundering.
The Ukrainians were later released, but the authorities retained the seized assets until now.
The incident occurred during Hungary’s parliamentary election campaign last month, when Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had made criticism of Ukraine a central part of his political messaging. His government was also locked in a dispute with Kyiv over the interruption of Russian oil supplies through Ukraine to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline.
Orbán, who had long clashed with Ukraine and its European backers over sanctions, aid, and energy policy, was defeated in April’s election. Péter Magyar, the leader of the Tisza party, will now succeed him, and the new Hungarian parliament is expected to be sworn in on Saturday.
The return of the Oschadbank assets follows a broader easing of tensions between Budapest and Kyiv. Despite multiple claims from Ukraine during the election campaign that the Druzhba pipeline could not simply resume due to damage inflicted by Russian shelling, Kyiv promptly resumed the flow of oil to Hungary and Slovakia shortly after Orbán’s election defeat.
At the same time, Budapest stopped blocking final approval of a €90 billion European Union loan to Ukraine.
Three out of four tuberculosis patients in Germany were born abroad, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute as of March 1, 2026. This information was released in response to a parliamentary question from Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP Martin Sichert.
In 2025, a total of 4,070 cases were reported, with 3,036 of those involving individuals born in a foreign country, which represents 74.6 percent of all cases. Furthermore, 2,718 cases involved a combination of a foreign country of birth and a foreign nationality, reported Nius news outlet.
This has been an ongoing issue for years. In 2015, the rate of tuberculosis patients with a foreign background was 70 percent, and by 2023, it reached 75.6 percent. The figure has remained above 69.8 percent since 2015 and has consistently exceeded 74 percent since 2022.
As of March 2023, at least 167 confirmed cases among recently arrived refugees had been reported to the RKI. The outbreak continued through 2025, with 125 confirmed cases in Germany within a single strain cluster alone — the vast majority linked to newly arrived migrants.
Hepatitis B: Over half of infections among migrants
An RKI-affiliated study estimated that more than half of hepatitis B-infected individuals in Germany were migrants. The RKI’s 2022 annual report noted a significant increase in reported hepatitis B and C cases.
HIV: Significant share linked to migration
The number of new HIV diagnoses reported in Germany rose significantly in 2022, primarily due to Ukrainian refugees entering the country. Neighboring countries like Poland have also suffered from soaring HIV rates, tripling in five years due to Ukrainian migration.
Another German youth center is at the center of allegations of a cover-up after the family of a 14-year-old girl claimed officials failed to act properly following her alleged migrant gang rape in Lower Saxony.
The alleged attack took place in June 2025 at the “JuZe” youth center in Gnarrenburg, a municipality in the district of Rotenburg. According to ZDF’s Frontal program, three teenagers are accused of assaulting the girl, filming the incident, and distributing the video.
The suspects are minors with Dutch, Syrian, and Iranian citizenship, according to reports. The case has now been passed to the local public prosecutor’s office, where authorities will decide whether charges will be brought.
The girl’s family says they were not told about the allegations by the youth center, the municipality, or staff connected to the facility. Instead, they say they only discovered what had happened roughly six weeks later, after finding the video on the girl’s mobile phone.
According to ZDF, the girl and a friend allegedly contacted a staff member at the youth center a few days after the incident, but the family claims no action was taken.
The parents told ZDF Frontal, “The mayor admitted to us in a conversation that he had been informed about the incident and the video by his staff member. However, he did not file a report – which is completely incomprehensible to us.”
Gnarrenburg Mayor Marc Breitenfeld declined an interview with ZDF and refused to answer any questions, citing the ongoing investigation. In a written statement, he said the municipality had taken the matter seriously.
NEW: Left-wing MEP claims that migrant gang rape in Europe "does not exist."
At yesterday's European Parliament plenary, Birgit Sippel was outraged by a speech from @AndersonAfDMdEP, who had expressed concern over Spain's mass amnesty for illegal immigrants, and warned that gang… pic.twitter.com/bTBprpQpTD
“When parents feel their child has been harmed, it is an extremely serious situation that we as a community take very seriously. Therefore, we spoke with the parents the day after the allegations came to light and offered our full support,” Breitenfeld said.
He added that “all information available to the municipality was immediately made available to the responsible investigating authorities.”
The girl’s godmother, Sandra Grotheer, told the broadcaster that the family had grave concerns about how the case had been handled.
“We have serious doubts that the reporting procedures were followed. It certainly looks to us like this was meant to be covered up,” she said.
The case has drawn comparisons with another recent scandal in Berlin-Neukölln, where officials were accused of failing to properly escalate a sexual assault case involving a youth facility and suspects with a migration background.
That case centers on a 16-year-old girl who was allegedly raped in November last year by a teenage suspect at a youth center. Months later, she is said to have been sexually assaulted again, this time by a group of up to eight Muslim teens in a secluded room inside the facility.
There had been previous reports detailing a culture of abuse that had formed in the facility, where for months, there had been unwanted embraces, girls having their breasts and buttocks touched without consent, and being pulled onto boys’ laps.
In March, a sworn affidavit from employees of a neighboring facility was submitted to Berlin authorities, alleging that suspects were not reported to police because staff feared contributing to the stigmatization of “Muslim boys.”
It read, “Rape by a male visitor to the Wutzkyallee youth center. We also reported that the victim stated that videos of the crimes were made by the group of perpetrators, with whom the victim is regularly blackmailed. The group of perpetrators also attempts to persuade the victim’s younger sister to meet them.
“In this context, we informed the social services coordinator that a report must be filed. The social services coordinator refrained from doing so, as she feared the marginalization of the group of perpetrators. In essence, she stated that the Muslim boys are already sufficiently in the sights of the police and that she wants to prevent a general suspicion.”
A foreign illegal immigrant with previous criminal convictions was able to remain in Germany because authorities could not establish his identity before he killed a 14-year-old boy in the Bavarian city of Memmingen.
The 37-year-old man, who was suspected of murdering Jermaine B., had been a rejected asylum seeker but had been granted temporary leave to remain in Germany because his nationality was unclear. Philipp Höß, a spokesperson for the government of Swabia, confirmed the man’s residence status to Bild.
Prosecutors said the suspect was born in Abu Qash, a town in the West Bank, but his nationality had not been established and he claimed not to have a passport.
The man was already known to German authorities. According to prosecutors, he had been convicted twice and fined, once for property damage in 2021 and again this year for illegal residence without a passport.
Jermaine had been missing since Saturday evening, prompting a major police search for the teenager. Officers discovered his body on Monday morning in an abandoned building near the train station in Memmingen.
German media reported that the boy died as a result of violence inflicted on his neck. No further details surrounding the nature of the killing have been forthcoming.
Several posts on social media purport to show the now-deceased attacker’s social media content, in which he promoted “Free Palestine” content, including “Allahu Akbar” chants and the Tawhid gesture, a finger pointing to the sky that has regularly been adopted by Islamic extremists.
🔴 Allemagne 🇩🇪 | Un adolescent de 14 ans retrouvé mort… le suspect était un demandeur d’asile palestinien débouté
Jermaine B., 14 ans, avait disparu le 2 mai à Memmingen, en Bavière.
Son corps a été retrouvé dans un bâtiment abandonné près de la gare dans la nuit du 3 au 4… pic.twitter.com/0rC2RR8JBK
According to T-Online, during a further search of the building, officers found the suspect hiding in a cupboard. According to prosecutors, he attacked police with a knife before initially fleeing the scene.
Investigators later received a tip and located the 37-year-old outside an indoor swimming pool in Memmingen on Monday evening. Five plainclothes officers approached him, but the suspect reportedly tried to flee again before suddenly turning around and lunging toward the officers with a knife. The officers opened fire and hit him several times. The man was treated at the scene but later died in the hospital.
The officers are now under investigation to ascertain whether or not the use of firearms was lawful.
Memmingen’s Social Democrat (SPD) mayor, Jan Rothenbacher, said, “It’s unbelievable what has happened in the past few days. My thoughts are with the young man’s family, and I wish them strength during this difficult time. We are in contact with the family.”
Lumina Metals plans to build a copper mine in Poland in the Nowa Sól region in the Lubusz Voivodeship. The project may be one of the largest mining investments in the country in years.
Lumina Metals has been operating in Poland since 2011 and already has other projects underway, including the development of concessions in the Mozów and Sulmierzyce regions. For over a decade, the company has conducted extensive geological research and exploration in search of both silver and copper.
According to industry data cited by Do Rzeczy, the deposit in Nowa Sól could contain 10-11 million tons of copper and significant amounts of silver, with estimates stating that the site holds approximately 20 percent of the known reserves of these minerals in Poland.
The deposit has been identified as a high geological category (C1), meaning its parameters are well-documented. Geological documentation has already been submitted to the Ministry of Climate and Environment, and the company is preparing for the next stage: obtaining a mining license.
The project is currently in the mine design phase, with environmental and technical analyses being conducted. According to Lumina, the process of obtaining all necessary permits could take several more years, with key administrative decisions made around 2030.
To date, Lumina Metals has invested approximately PLN 500 million (€118 million) in exploration and documentation work in Poland. The total cost of building the mine, including infrastructure, could reach tens of billions of zlotys. For this reason, the company is considering securing financing through capital markets, including a potential stock exchange debut.
A key element of the project is collaboration with KGHM Polska Miedź to deliver copper concentrate from the new mine to smelters in Głogów.
At the same time, investment in Poland faces barriers. Company representatives point primarily to high fiscal burdens – the total taxation of mining activities (including the copper and silver tax, in effect since 2012) could reach approximately 70 percent.
A 36-year-old German father, Steven K., was left with severe facial injuries, hospitalized, and may require further surgery after telling a Romanian family they could not grill in the Friedrichsfelde district of Berlin on Sunday afternoon.
The victim, whose daughter is only three months old, was reportedly attacked after attempting to enforce a building-wide ban on grilling in the communal courtyard.
According to Steven K., several tenants had been frustrated since last year by the persistent smell of unauthorized barbecues in the yard, namely with one family consistently violating the rule. He explained the impact on his family to reporters:
“The plumes of smoke go straight into the children’s room window. We can’t open that anymore,” he told Bild newspaper.
On the morning of the attack, Steven K. observed a family from Romania setting up tables and chairs in the courtyard as early as 8:00 a.m. He intervened three separate times to point out the barbecue ban. While the items were initially removed, they were repeatedly brought back out. After the third attempt, K. contacted the police.
Responding officers listened to the complaint and advised Steven K. to return to his apartment, telling him it was “for your own safety.”
Shortly after, the situation escalated when a tenant allegedly issued a direct threat: “Watch out, my family is coming soon.”
The assault began when an Opel Corsa arrived at the scene. Steven K. described the sudden violence:
“An Opel Corsa pulled up. A man jumped out, with a woman and a child behind him.“
One man immediately sprayed pepper spray into K.’s face. Two men then proceeded to beat him with their fists and continued to kick him in the head and body even as he lay on the ground.
The victim was transported to the hospital. As the photos of his face reveal, he was beaten to a pulp, all for asking the foreign family to simply abide by the rules everyone else has to follow.
Steven K. suffered from a broken and swollen nose, multiple hematomas across his face, a dislocated shoulder, and suspected tendon damage. His injuries are so severe that he may require future surgeries.
“I never thought that people could be so insidious and brutal because of something so trivial,” he said about the incident.
The beating comes at a time when data shows that foreigners make up a record share of violent crime in Germany.
Meanwhile, despite investigators reportedly knowing the names of the suspects, they remain on the run and no arrests have yet been made.
The beating comes at a time when the issue of large foreign families grilling in public parks has become a sign of the demographic and societal upheaval brought on by mass immigration. Although just one aspect of the bigger picture, which involves chaotic schools, massive growing public debt, soaring crime rates, and burdened public services, it is an element that symbolizes the new “cityscape.”
Public parks, trains, buses, dance clubs, and streets have now become places where Germans feel insecure and threatened.
Just days ago, on May 1, a large family grilling in Berlin’s Volkspark Friedrichshain refused police officer orders to disperse due to a grill ban in the park, according to BZ.
It is unclear if this is the same incident, but a video involving police officers breaking up an unauthorized grill party was recorded in Berlin on May 1 as well.
German police make arrests at a grill party on May 1.
Grilling is forbidden in Berlin parks to prevent fires, but these families decided to do it anyway.
When they refused to disperse, police made arrests, despite crying, screaming, and stamping.pic.twitter.com/YQcF9rt79n
The incident resulted in a police chief inspector being beaten, kicked in the head, and bitten after he and his colleague asked the group to extinguish an unauthorized grill. The group was approximately ten people, but one of them even tried to steal the officer’s pepper spray.
One participant even used a walking stick as a weapon.
Reinforcements arrived on the scene and managed to arrest three suspects. These included two men, aged 40 and 41, and a 76-year-old woman who “allegedly beat the officer with her walking stick.” As the arrests were being made, the situation grew more tense as a nearby crowd showed solidarity with the group and began to harass the responding officers. This required the police to call for further support to maintain order.
Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s Party (EPP), has threatened to put the Turnberry Agreement with the United States to a plenary vote if negotiations are not concluded this week, while the U.S. has made it clear: “A deal is a deal.”
Last summer, the U.S. and the European Union reached the trade and customs deal at President Trump’s Turnberry golf club in Scotland, eliminating tariffs on hundreds of American agricultural and industrial products. Since then, Trump has accused the EU of not holding up its side of the deal, hiking tariffs on cars and trucks to 25 percent last week. The EU, in turn, has accused D.C. of violating the agreement on its end, with many in the EU saying Trump cannot be trusted.
Part of the deal made last July called for the EU to erase tariffs on U.S. industrial goods in exchange for a 15 percent tariff ceiling on most European products, which Trump’s latest move would violate.
Now, with both sides getting antsy and almost a year having passed since the original agreement, Weber has put forth an ultimatum. “If the trilogue this week does not produce a result, then we, as the EPP, will simply put [Turnberry] to a vote,” Euractiv quotes Weber.
“Europe must show that it can implement what it has signed,” he added.
Unfortunately, there continue to be voices of dissent, with many in the European Parliament seeking to attach several conditions, including a “sunrise clause” that would tie the agreement to a reduction in U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs, and a “sunset clause” would also be included in the agreement, meaning it would only be valid until March 2028.
“Without a strong negotiation result, there is no majority behind a weak agreement in the European Parliament,” notes chief negotiator Bernd Lange.
Karin Karlsbro, a member of Renew, scoffed at Weber’s proposal for an accelerated vote, telling Euractiv: “It is not serious by the EPP to rush to a vote on an agreement that lacks support in the European Parliament due to pressure from the U.S.”
Meanwhile, the European Council is said to favor the European Commission’s original proposal, with fewer conditions, signed by EC president Ursula von der Leyen with Trump last summer, although Trump’s latest move has created tensions, as it is seen to be in breach of that deal.
In the wake of Trump’s auto tariff hike, the European Commission president told press that the EU is in “the final stages of implementing the remaining tariff commitments, but the U.S. must also remain committed to its agreed tariff ceilings.”
EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič was in Paris yesterday to discuss the matter with his American counterpart, Jamieson Greer. He had “called for a swift return to the agreed Turnberry terms, i.e., a 15% all-inclusive tariff rate, with the agreed carve-outs for the EU,” according to an EU commission spokesperson quoted by The Edge Singapore.
Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, Andrew Puzder, has posted to X that Trump’s approach is simply, “enough is enough.”
“Nobody should have been surprised by Trump’s tariff announcement on 1 May. U.S. officials had repeatedly warned European counterparts that the trade deal approval was taking too long to finalize. Let’s work together and quickly implement the trade deal as agreed to by Presidents Trump and von der Leyen last July at Turnberry. A deal is a deal,” he wrote on X.
Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) spoke at the Social Democratic (SPD) faction meeting this week. It is one year this week since he handed the reins over to Friedrich Merz (CDU), with the gathering serving as an interim assessment of the ruling CDU/CSU-SPD coalition, and he issued warnings to his party about the rising popularity of the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The coalition, he emphasized, must maintain its distance from the AfD party, i.e., its “firewall policy,” and must avoid any premature dissolution of the current coalition, which would leave Germany in the hands of a minority government.
Scholz and the ruling coalition have reason to be nervous. As Remix News reported last week, April polling shows the AfD at a record high of 28 percent, while the CDU/CSU is at 24 percent and the SPD stands at 14 percent.
According to participants, Scholz warned against any coalition with the right-wing, anti-migration party. He recalled, writes Tagesspiegel, that there had been left-wing majorities in the Bundestag after the 2005 election, but the SPD had “acted responsibly” and not governed with the Left (initially the PDS), because it was “impossible to govern with them.”
Similarly, it is impossible to govern with the AfD today, he told those gathered, effectively stating that the AfD was not a party in line with the principles of democracy.
Following the 2005 federal election, the CDU/CSU/SPD “grand coalition” was established under Chancellor Angela Merkel and has been in power for the majority of years since. Now, however, it is once again facing threats, namely from increased voter dissatisfaction over a stagnant economy, job cuts, rising energy prices, and migrant crime, and welfare abuse.
Noting that “much is at stake,” the former chancellor said internal disputes must be overcome to continue ruling Germany in what he believes is the right direction. Scholz labeled the AfD an “anti-pluralist party” and reminded the faction that the SPD has always rejected populism.
Chancellor Merz himself has been increasingly “unsure” of the coalition’s ability to hold, despite attempting to promote recent healthcare reforms and a new budget. Meanwhile, everyday Germans are struggling to obtain healthcare and stay employed.
“Why are we cutting costs, but not in politics?” one woman asked him at a citizen’s dialogue last week.
Poland has recorded a sharp rise in HIV cases over the past five years, with epidemiologists pointing to Ukrainian migration as one factor behind the increase.
According to Rzeczpospolita, the number of identified HIV patients in Poland has risen from 20,046 at the start of the decade to 31,738 last year, based on National Health Fund data. Over the same period, public spending on reimbursed HIV drugs rose from 436 million zlotys (€102.7 million) in 2020 to 728 million zlotys (€171.4 million) in 2025.
In 2025, Poland recorded 2,755 newly detected HIV infections. Compared with 2020, the incidence rate per 100,000 people tripled from 2.43 to 7.37. By the end of April this year, 791 cases had already been registered, compared with 734 during the same period last year.
Prof. Iwona Paradowska-Stankiewicz, Poland’s national consultant in epidemiology, said migration from across Poland’s eastern border was affecting the figures. “Eastern Europe is a region where the number of HIV infections and AIDS cases is statistically very high, which translates into a higher number of diagnosed cases in our country due to Ukrainian migration,” she said.
At the beginning of 2022, around 245,000 people were living with HIV in Ukraine, and HIV prevalence among adults aged 15 to 49 was estimated at 0.9 percent. In Poland, the rate in the same age group was around 0.1 percent.
Artur Białoszewski, an epidemiologist and president of the Polish Prevention Association, said the difference was almost ninefold. He added that in 2021, Ukraine recorded 37.1 new HIV diagnoses per 100,000 people, compared with 3.58 per 100,000 in Poland, a more than tenfold difference.
Poland’s HIV figures began rising more sharply in 2022, the year Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and millions of Ukrainians crossed into neighboring countries. That year, Poland recorded 2,384 new HIV cases. Of those, 682 were Polish citizens, 263 were foreign nationals, and nationality data was unavailable for 666 cases.
Białoszewski said the influx of people from Ukraine after 2022 should push Poland to organize testing responsibly, ensure continuity of antiretroviral treatment, and provide clear health information for those seeking refuge.
The issue is also becoming more relevant as the number of Polish-Ukrainian couples grows, making access to testing and treatment an increasingly important part of public health policy.
Other sexually transmitted diseases are also rising. Gazeta Prawna reported that syphilis cases have more than quadrupled since the beginning of the pandemic. Similar increases have been observed for gonorrhea and chlamydia.
The rise is also being driven by low testing rates, stigma, and changing patterns of transmission. Prof. Paradowska-Stankiewicz warned that many people avoid HIV tests because they fear discrimination, meaning the real number of infections is likely higher than official data suggests.
Health officials say sexual contact is now the dominant route of HIV transmission in Poland, replacing intravenous drug use as the main driver. Older Poles are another underdiagnosed group, with experts warning that seniors are less often asked about sexual risk and less frequently sent for testing.
Almost half of students in Vienna’s public middle schools are now Muslim, according to new figures from the Vienna Education Directorate, marking the latest sign of a rapid demographic and cultural shift inside the Austrian capital’s classrooms.
The data, cited by Heute, shows that Muslim students account for 49.4 percent of children in Vienna’s public middle schools — just short of an absolute majority. Across the city’s public compulsory schools more broadly, including elementary, middle, special needs, and polytechnic schools, Muslim students now make up 42 percent, up from 41.2 percent in the previous school year.
Catholic students, once the dominant group in the city, now account for just 16.7 percent of children in the public schools included in the figures. Orthodox students make up 14.2 percent, while children with no religious affiliation account for 23.2 percent.
The figures also reveal a stark divide between Vienna’s public and private schools. In private schools, Catholics remain the largest group at 45.39 percent, followed by students with no religious affiliation at 25.1 percent and Orthodox students at 10.6 percent. Muslim children account for just 7.6 percent of students in Vienna’s private schools.
Taken together, across both public and private schools, Muslim students now form the largest single group at 38.3 percent. Even when Catholic and Orthodox children are combined, they reach only around 33.6 percent.
The numbers reveal how the city’s public schools are becoming the front line of a much broader cultural transformation. Earlier this year, Remix News reported that more than half of first-grade students in Vienna were listed as Muslim for the first time, while separate reporting from Profil described one secondary school where a Christian boy was allegedly the only Christian in his first-grade class.
At that school, 230 of the 390 students were Muslim, while 99 percent of the students had an immigration background. Only five children in the entire school were reported to have no migrant background. The Christian boy was reportedly mocked by classmates and called a “pig,” while teachers described classrooms marked by language barriers, social problems, and growing religious pressure.
The school was said to include students speaking 32 different languages, with Turkish, Arabic, and Chechen among the most common home languages. One teacher said that the problems were so extensive that every class could use its own social worker.
Concerns over integration have also spilled into the school canteen. In October 2025, the Austrian Farmers’ Association warned that pork dishes such as schnitzel, ham noodles, and roast pork had become rare or had disappeared entirely from some Viennese school menus. The association said some schools now offered only vegetarian meals or meat dishes without pork, citing a mother who said her daughter could choose only between vegetarian food and “pork-free” food.
“No one has to eat pork, but it must be offered. Pork is part of our culinary culture,” said Corinna Weisl, director of the Farmers’ Association. The group’s president, Georg Strasser, said preserving choice was the key issue, arguing that “diversity on the plate means freedom of choice for everyone.”
For some parents, however, the question is whether public schools can still deliver basic education. In February, Remix News reported the case of a Vienna mother who withdrew her daughter from a public primary school in Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus after two years, saying only four children in the class spoke German fluently.
The mother, identified as Sabine G., said teachers spent much of the day translating instructions and managing basic communication rather than teaching. By the end of the first school year, she said her daughter still could not recite the alphabet, while several classmates had to repeat the grade.
She also said her daughter had begun refusing pork after being told it was “unclean” and had started rejecting certain summer clothing. “I felt my child was being strongly influenced,” she said.
Teachers’ representatives have voiced similar concerns. In November last year, Thomas Krebs of the Christian Trade Unionists Group warned that some students and parents were increasingly unwilling to learn German or accept local values. He said female teachers had faced disrespect, insults, and even physical assaults from male students and parents, and claimed that religious rules were often being placed above Austria’s national curriculum.
“Our educational principles are often rejected. For example, religious content is prioritized over the content of the curriculum prescribed by Austrian law,” Krebs said. He called for mandatory German-language instruction and compulsory integration programs outside school.
The cultural tensions have also reached school leadership. In December, Christian Klar, headmaster of the Franz Jonas European School in Vienna-Floridsdorf, used his book “How Do We Save Our Children’s Future?” to warn of what he called a growing “clash of cultures and religions” in the classroom.
Klar cited the case of a gay teacher at a public elementary school whose sexuality prompted a Muslim father to demand his removal. The school refused to dismiss or transfer the teacher, but allowed the father’s son to change classes. Klar called the decision “de-escalating” but questioned what precedent it set.
“When is it time to say ‘Stop!’? I think we should have done that a long time ago!” he said.
The school figures reflect wider demographic changes across Vienna. In January, Statistics Austria data showed that 40.5 percent of babies born in the capital did not have Austrian citizenship, double the share recorded two decades earlier. In districts such as Favoriten, Ottakring, and Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus, the figure has passed 50 percent.
At the same time, more than 44 percent of Vienna’s roughly 16,700 first-graders reportedly lacked sufficient German to follow lessons. In the 2018/2019 school year, the share was 30 percent. Officials have noted that around 60 percent of those children were born in Austria, intensifying concerns that poor German language skills are being passed on inside migrant communities rather than solved by birth and schooling in the country.
Romania’s pro-European government collapsed on Tuesday after Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan was ousted in a no-confidence vote backed by the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the right-wing nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR).
The motion passed with 281 votes in favor, well above the 233 required to bring down the government. Just four lawmakers voted against the motion, while three ballots were annulled, according to the official vote count. Bolojan will now remain as interim prime minister with limited powers until a new government is formed.
The vote brings down the entire government less than a year after it was sworn in and makes Bolojan the seventh Romanian prime minister to be removed by a no-confidence motion since Emil Boc was ousted in 2009, according to Romanian newspaper Libertatea.
The crisis erupted after the Social Democratic Party withdrew its ministers from the government two weeks ago, ending its coalition with Bolojan’s National Liberal Party. The Social Democrats then joined forces with the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, the opposition party led by George Simion, to submit the motion against the prime minister.
The alliance marked a major political reversal for Social Democratic leader Sorin Grindeanu, who had repeatedly insisted his party would not enter an alliance with the nationalist party while he remained in charge. Simion had also previously ruled out any deal with the Social Democrats, saying in 2024 that he would resign from public office if he ever made an alliance with them.
“George Simion does not clap his hands with the Social Democratic Party,” Simion said at the time. “George Simion does not form an alliance with the Social Democratic Party. George Simion is the only one capable, energetic enough, young enough, determined enough, to finish with the Social Democratic Party in Romania.”
Despite those pledges, Social Democratic and Alliance for the Union of Romanians officials announced in late April that they would work together on what they described as the “technical” drafting of a joint no-confidence motion.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Marian Neacsu, speaking for the Social Democrats, said the move followed “several rounds of discussions” between the parties and insisted the cooperation was “an exclusively technical matter.”
The collapse follows weeks of instability triggered by the Social Democrats’ decision on April 20 to withdraw political support from Bolojan. Bolojan responded the following day by announcing that the National Liberals were breaking the coalition with the Social Democrats, accusing Sorin Grindeanu’s party of creating the crisis. Social Democratic ministers formally submitted their resignations days later.
President Nicusor Dan must now hold consultations with parliamentary parties before nominating a new candidate for prime minister. He has, however, indicated that Romania will remain on a pro-Western course and has ruled out appointing a prime minister from the Alliance for the Union of Romanians.
Democracy in Romania has been rocky for some time, highlighted by the botched presidential election in 2024, the first round of which was rerun in controversial circumstances after AUR’s preferred candidate, Calin Georgescu, had his victory annulled by the Constitutional Court.
Simion eventually ran as the nationalist candidate, losing in the second-round run-off to Dan, the liberal, pro-EU mayor of Bucharest at the time.
The fall of the government comes at a sensitive moment for Romania, which is under pressure to rein in its deficit, protect its credit rating, and meet European Union reform targets needed to unlock billions in recovery funds.
A 17-year-old dual citizen of Sweden and Syria has been charged with aggravated rape of a child, while a 14-year-old is also being investigated for violently raping a 15-year-old girl with a disability.
The abuse, which was filmed by the perpetrators, reportedly occurred last November. According to prosecutor Karin Persson, “the crime scene is four different public toilets in a shopping center in Uppsala.”
The investigation reveals that the 17-year-old and the 14-year-old allegedly acted “together and in concert,” using violence and threats to force the victim into vaginal and oral intercourse.
The girl, who was 15 at the time of the attack, is considered a child under the law because her disability resulted in a “reduced ability to protect their sexual integrity.”
The lawsuit provides harrowing details of how the suspects forcibly raped the young girl. One passage reads: “The violence has consisted of blows to the plaintiff’s back and butt, as well as restraints on her head and body that caused the plaintiff pain. The threat has consisted of them threatening to spread filmed material of the abuse.”
The incident only came to light more than a week later when the victim sought medical care, at which point a police report was filed, according to Swedish newspaper Expressen.
While the 17-year-old faces criminal charges, the 14-year-old is subject to an “evidence action” because he is under the age of criminal responsibility. This process allows the court to determine guilt without imposing a formal punishment. Notably, the older individual has both Swedish and Syrian citizenship, meaning he cannot be deported even if convicted due to being a Swedish citizen.
In addition to the rape, the 17-year-old is charged with offensive photography and child pornography for filming the assault. While he admits to the photography and pornography offenses, he “denies aggravated rape of children.”
The 14-year-old “admits the course of events in some parts but denies wrongdoing.”
The 17-year-old suspect has a prior criminal history, including a conviction just months ago for aggravated assault involving a group attack on a man. For that crime, he received 70 hours of youth service. He also has a previous sentence for assault and unlawful threats.
The investigation into the early 2026 firebombing of Brandenburg Antisemitism Commissioner Andreas Büttner’s home is nearing a conclusion, but the results have stunned the public.
In a dramatic reversal of the initial narrative, the Brandenburg State Criminal Police Office has executed a series of raids across Lower Saxony, Baden-Württemberg, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania targeting the commissioner’s own close associates.
While the case was initially treated as an Islamist or antisemitic hate crime, the German Public Prosecutor General’s Office now identifies two men from Büttner’s “own circle,” which belongs to the left, as the primary suspects, reveals Tagesspiegel in a new exclusive report.
Initially believed to be a pro-Palestinian terror arson attack
On the night of Jan. 4, 2026, a shed on Büttner’s Templin estate was incinerated, and a red Hamas triangle – a mark of the Palestinian terrorist group – was found defaced on his front door. The attack, which caused approximately €20,000 euros in damage, triggered a massive increase in the commissioner’s personal security.
However, the “antisemitic or Islamist motive” is now being questioned following several key investigative breakthroughs.
The first has to do with DNA evidence. Forensic teams reportedly matched DNA from Lukas S. to threatening letters sent to the Brandenburg State Parliament, which branded Büttner a “Zionist pig” and a “traitor,” and expressed a clear intent to “kill” him.
One letter addressed to Büttner contained a mysterious “gray substance” and “granular substance,” which prompted an emergency response by police specialists at the parliament’s mailroom.
The second point of evidence has to do with the specific arson attack. Police discovered by chance a smoldering fire 20 kilometers from the crime scene containing gloves and barbecue lighter fluid. When investigators connected them to the arson, the items were traced back to a purchase at a hardware store in Lower Saxony that involved a debit card belonging to one of the suspects, the same one who is a business partner of Büttner.
Suspects are two Germans with deep ties to left-wing causes and combating antisemitism
The suspects, identified as Daniel R. and Lucas S., are not strangers to the commissioner; they are his “friends and business partners,” according to Tagesspiegel.
All three men are linked through a “management consulting” firm established in 2023, where Büttner is the majority shareholder and Daniel R. serves as the managing director. Furthermore, the suspects are active in a non-profit initiative for “political education and commemorative work” for which Büttner is the “sole patron.”
Despite the violent nature of the charges — which include arson and the use of “symbols associated with unconstitutional and terrorist organizations” — the trio appeared to maintain an amicable relationship after the attack.
Reports indicate they met in Berlin and Potsdam and even attended a performance of “The Flying Dutchman” at the Leipzig Opera in February.
When confronted with the news that his business partners were under investigation, Andreas Büttner maintained his distance, stating: “I had—and still have—absolutely no knowledge of this matter. Naturally not.”
He also noted he is cooperating with police, noting, “The police are investigating. I cannot say anything about this. I have confidence in the police investigation.”
The revelation complicates the wave of international support Büttner received following the fire.
At the time, Israel’s Ambassador Ron Prosor condemned the act as terrorism, stating that the Hamas triangle represented attacks on those with different views “in Gaza just as in Brandenburg.”
Federal Antisemitism Commissioner Felix Klein similarly labeled the event a “direct attack on our democracy.”
The German Public Prosecutor continues to investigate, with more details of why the attack occurred potentially coming to light in the future.
Meanwhile, commentators are addressing the remarkable details of the case and the suspects allegedly behind the firebombing.
Jan Karon, a journalist and author, wrote on X:
“Daniel R. and Lucas S., who are suspected of carrying out the arson attack (complete with Hamas triangles) on the antisemitism commissioner Andreas Büttner, practically embody the epitome of the progressive NGO complex.
The two, as the text states citing a source, had “made a business model out of mediating funding to people and organizations.” The article reconstructs their activities: nationwide courses and projects, €98,000 in funding from the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, the “German Engagement Award,” the fight against racism, and an explanatory channel on YouTube.
The two men posed in 2019 at the Chancellery next to Merkel—as young people “committed to democracy.”
This was followed by invitations to the EU Parliament, the Bundestag, and the Federal Press Ball. In 2020, they founded a foundation for educational work, from which a company later emerged that sought to commemorate the child victims of National Socialism (!) —and to this end collected donations to produce 5,000 pairs of fiberglass shoes (!!).
R. and S. also planned to rebuild the destroyed synagogue in Prenzlau with donations.
They are said to have pressed the antisemitism commissioner Büttner to “fly to Israel” with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Büttner founded a company with them that is dedicated to that (federally funded) fight.
One is left speechless.
Brutal gute (und sehr unbequeme) Recherche der »Märkischen Allgemeinen«: Daniel R. und Lucas S., die tatverdächtig sind, den Brandanschlag (mitsamt Hamas-Dreiecken) auf den Antisemitismus-Beauftragten Andreas Büttner verübt zu haben, verkörpern geradezu den Inbegriff des… pic.twitter.com/Dk9KHYjBQE
If proven that this was indeed a staged hate attack, it would not be the first time that a hate hoax occurred in recent years.
In 2022, famed German-Israeli musician Gil Ofarim was accused of lying about an alleged antisemitic incident inside the Leipzig Hotel Westin after video footage and other evidence led police to doubt his claims, but not before the case sparked national headlines in Germany.
According to the singer Ofarim, who was born in Israel but found success as a musician in Germany, an employee at the check-in counter asked him to remove his Star of David chain from sight if he wanted to be checked in. Ofarim made the claim in an emotional Instagram video entitled “Antisemitism in Germany 2021,” where he ended his story by holding up the necklace chain in question. The viral video sparked protests involving thousands of people in front of the hotel, and the claims were spread widely by antisemitism watchdogs.
After Ofarim’s claims, video footage obtained by Bild newspaper is calling into question Ofarim’s version of events, leading the case to fall apart and for the hotel employee to be completely cleared of wrongdoing after an independent investigation.
In a commentary piece on Germany’s Junge Freiheit, the Ofarim case was presented as a clear example of previous hate hoaxes that have plagued Germany in the past. Like many other cases later identified as false or misleading, the Ofarim antisemitism claim was widely reported in world media outlets, including the Guardian and CNN.
Junge Freiheit pointed to the Sebnitz case, where a mob of skinheads supposedly drowned a toddler, only for it to turn into one of the biggest debacles in Germany’s modern history. There is also the case of Mittweide, where nobody had actually carved a swastika on her forehead (police later proved she did it herself). In Müglen, foreigners were not hunted on the streets, and in Chemnitz, the same accusation that sparked a nationwide outcry has never been proven. And in Dresden, an Eritrean asylum seeker was not murdered by right-wing extremists from the Pegida movement, but killed by a fellow Eritrean.
Some startling new figures are coming out of France on the level of education of its students. Long considered a bastion of learning and strict educational standards, the new data paints a disheartening picture.
A new thread compiled by statistician Marc Vanguard offers up telling details, starting with dictation errors for CM2 students (final year of primary school, typically ages 10-11). Government data shows that the average number of errors shot up 70 percent between 1987 and 2021, with 1 in 2 students unable to spell “aussitôt,” compared to only 1 in 5 in 1987.
Furthermore, in 1987, making 25 errors made you the worst student in a class of 20. Fast forward to 2021, and between 5 and 6 students out of 20 are making that many mistakes. Shockingly, some 75 percent of students in 2021 did not attain the average score from 1987.
For mathematics, the average score dropped by 30 percent, with data compiled between 1987 and 2017. However, 93 percent of students in 2017 could no longer reach the median score of 1987, and a whopping 56 percent did not even attain the bottom decile of 1987.
As Vanguard highlights, zero students in 2017 were achieving the best scores from 1987, while no students in 1987 scored as low as the worst students in 2017.
… sur ces 2 extrémités du graphique.
Pour le dire très simplement :
👉 À droite du graphique, les très bons de 1987 n'existent plus en 2017 👉 À gauche, les très nuls de 2017 n'existaient pas en 1987 (hors retard mental)
“We’re doing worse in math than countries like Albania or Azerbaijan,” the statistician further remarks.
With official PISA data echoing the drop in educational levels, particularly in math, there is a common trend also highlighted: the increase in the number of students with an immigration background. As a matter of fact, in 75 percent of the countries in PISA’s study, children with an immigration background have a lower level of math skills than native kids.
And descendants of immigrants are a full school year behind in their math skills compared to students whose parents were born in France. One exception to this trend are students with Asian backgrounds.
Vanguard also points to other factors that have led to a decline in French education, including the documented levels of noise and distractions allowed in classrooms, the continuation of ineffective teaching methods, and the use of, i.e., reliance on technology such as calculators and perhaps, more and more, AI.
While France may have its own internal issues to sort out, on top of the rising number of students with a foreign background, other countries in Europe have faced stark consequences of the massive influx of foreign kids. In Vienna, teachers are fleeing a system they no longer can work within, while Muslim students also now outnumber Christians.
In Germany, the situation has been dire for a while, with test scores plummeting and data also pointing to the impact of migration. A 2024 study from Humboldt University clearly noted 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.
A Milan security guard says he has been fired for “doing my job” after drawing his gun during a confrontation with a group of youths accused of harassing young women on the city’s metro.
Ilario Esposito, 52, was initially suspended by Milan transport company ATM after the incident at Cadorna station on March 21, before later being dismissed for just cause, according to Il Giornale.
Three security guards responded after a group of girls said they had been harassed by a gang of youths carrying bottles and glasses on the Milan metro. The girls got off the train and left the platform, but the confrontation continued between the security staff and the gang.
Esposito said the situation escalated after the group refused to show tickets and leave the carriage.
“All we did was ask the boys for their tickets and to leave the carriage,” he said. “They brazenly replied that they didn’t have tickets and that they were used to traveling like this.”
He added that some of the boys then became agitated after getting off the train and held bottles full of alcohol in a threatening manner toward the guards.
The 52-year-old said he drew his gun only after one of the boys pushed him and spilled a drink on him.
“I was simply scared,” Esposito said. “Their intentions were certainly not friendly, and then we learned that the girls had been verbally harassed.”
“They were holding the bottles by the neck, like weapons,” Esposito said. “They wouldn’t put them down.”
He insisted he never pointed the weapon at anyone and held it safely against his chest with the barrel facing down, as cited by Rai News.
“I chose to draw my gun at that moment,” he said. “I couldn’t have known what might happen. I took three steps back, grabbed the gun with my finger off the trigger, and held it to my chest in a safe position.”
“My gesture was to deter, I didn’t threaten anyone,” he added. “It wasn’t a gesture of bravado. I repeatedly ordered the boys with my left hand to put down the bottles, but in the end, they gave up. Period, nothing else happened.”
According to Il Giornale, Esposito had worked for ATM for three years and has four children to support. He had already gone a month without pay after being suspended before the company moved to dismiss him.
ATM disputes his account. The company said the guard “completely disregarded operational protocols” by drawing his gun “without the need for self-defense after a physical altercation with one of the youths.”
According to ATM, the boys were not acting in a threatening manner when the weapon was drawn, and there was no imminent danger. The company also emphasized that Esposito was not alone, but accompanied by another guard, and that the incident took place on a busy metro platform.
ATM described his conduct as a “serious and unjustified disregard for the rules of engagement” and said safety requires strict compliance with procedures. The company also said the gun was not issued by ATM, but was the guard’s personal weapon.
Esposito remains defiant and says the decision sends a disastrous message to those expected to protect passengers.
“They fired me for doing my job,” he said. “If it happens again tomorrow, we might as well put cartoon characters on the platforms.”
The security guard is also reportedly under investigation by the Administrative Police of the Police Headquarters, which is reviewing the footage and could revoke his security guard license, potentially barring him from the profession permanently.
His lawyer, along with the Faisa union, is challenging aspects of the disciplinary process and considering an appeal.
Following a “Black Weekend” in Barcelona, where two people were murdered in knife attacks, a 20-year-old Nigerian man has now been murdered in a public park in Madrid, with police having already arrested a Moroccan suspect.
This stabbing happened early in the morning, today, at around 7:15 a.m., after the victim was stabbed twice in the chest in Paraíso Park in the San Blas district.
According to multiple witnesses, the victim and the assailant engaged in an argument, after which the attacker drew a knife and assaulted the young man. The deceased has been identified as a 20-year-old Nigerian man, D. O., while the perpetrator is a 38-year-old Moroccan man who was apprehended a few streets away from the scene.
Video of the incident shows rescue workers trying to save the victim’s life.
🇪🇸🚨JUST IN: Another deadly stabbing attack in Spain, this time in Madrid's El Paraíso park.
A 20-year-old Nigerian youth has died following a drug-related argument. The suspect is a 38-year-old Moroccan who has been arrested just a few streets away from the crime scene.… pic.twitter.com/iLBv1pu8p8
Madrid Emergencies reported that the stabbing occurred at the park located on Alberique Street. National Police officers were the first to arrive and began resuscitation maneuvers (CPR) on the victim, who was “bleeding profusely.”
Medics from Samur-Protección Civil arrived shortly after to continue cardiopulmonary resuscitation. After 30 minutes, medical staff determined that “nothing could be done to save his life” and confirmed the victim’s death.
Eyewitnesses, who identified the suspect “without a doubt,” described the perpetrator as a homeless individual and a drug user.
After the stabbing, the 38-year-old man fled on foot and was located an hour later on Emilio Ferrari Street. Although he was “covered in blood,” he was no longer in possession of the murder weapon.
Investigators believe the stabbing occurred after the two “argued over a matter related to narcotics,” according to El Pais newspaper. Forensic teams are working at the scene.
El Pais reports that the area has been the site of several violent episodes in recent years and is known as a location “frequently visited by people with drug dependency problems.”
The stabbing murder comes after a “Black Weekend” in Madrid, in which two people were murdered in separate stabbing attacks.
Residents in the Dutch municipality of Hulst have reacted with anger after local officials confirmed that the Reynaertland swimming pool will once again be used as emergency accommodation for asylum seekers.
The municipality said the decision was taken after an urgent request from the Dutch minister for asylum and migration, with the site due to reopen on May 15. The emergency center is expected to operate for one year and will house a maximum of 50 asylum seekers in the pool complex’s hall.
Despite the new accommodation arrangement, the municipality says the swimming pool will remain open to the public as normal.
That point has prompted particular concern from local residents, including parents whose children use the facility for swimming lessons.
As reported by De Dagelijkse Standaard, one local, Jordi Van de Wiele, responded sarcastically on Facebook, “Nice place in combination with our daughter’s swimming lessons. I’m glad other people are more important than ‘our’ people.”
The site has been used for asylum accommodation before, between October 2022 and July 2025, and several residents claimed the previous arrangement caused problems in the area.
Vanity Faas-esseling wrote, “Security… they were wandering around everywhere last time… and whistling at you by the roundabout.”
Another commenter, Beestenboel van Kaat, demanded written guarantees from the municipality. “Can you guarantee that the residents of the municipality of Hulst will remain 100 percent safe, and that if this is not the case, you will be held 100 percent responsible?” the resident wrote. “Please put this agreement in black and white on paper.”
The municipality has attempted to reassure residents by pointing to security measures, including 24-hour supervision and house rules for those staying at the site.
However, the comments under the announcement suggest many locals remain unconvinced.
Another resident, John S. van Ulst, wrote, “Hopefully no single young and ungrateful fortune seekers (come) to Hulst.”
The decision comes amid continuing pressure on Dutch municipalities to provide temporary accommodation for asylum seekers, a policy that has repeatedly triggered local opposition when public buildings, hotels, or sports facilities are converted into emergency shelters.
Residents of other Dutch towns now accommodating a center for asylum seekers have warned other municipalities from following suit. In February, residents in Harderwijk described what they said was a sharp deterioration in safety and quality of life.
One elderly resident said, “I won’t walk my dog here at night after nine o’clock. So, that says it all.” A mother added, “Fights, shots were fired here on the premises.”
Some described several incidents involving knives. “One stabbing to another stabbing. And then again that fuss, fights with people in the street,” one local said. Another added, “They stab each other. Just in the middle of the street with the children walking by.” A resident living opposite the center, who uses a mobility scooter, said, “If you see how often the police stand there. Surely that says it all.”
Last month, locals in the Dutch city of Loosdrecht protested against a proposed asylum seekers’ center, resulting in serious police violence targeting the protesters with baton charges, which left at least one protester unconscious on the pavement, which was caught on film.
Commentator and activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek praised the protests at the time, writing, “Hundreds of migrants are to be moved to a location in Loosdrecht – a small town close to where I grew up. The locals were not given any say, of course, and took to the streets in protest. Glad to see the true Dutch fighting spirit isn’t gone completely. Go, my fellow countrymen! Enough is enough.”
Following the protests, the local authorities scaled back plans, confirming that 70 asylum seekers will be housed at the facility instead of the proposed 110.
Twenty-three bystanders have been killed and 30 others injured in gang-related shootings in Sweden over the past three years, according to new police figures that highlight the scale of the country’s organized crime crisis.
The victims include people struck by stray bullets, individuals shot in cases of mistaken identity, and relatives of gang members caught in the crossfire, according to reporting by AFP.
Swedish police say the rising number of collateral victims is partly linked to the growing exploitation of very young and inexperienced shooters by criminal networks.
“We are dealing with very young perpetrators who, in many cases, have no prior experience of violent crime, which increases the risk that third parties or the wrong target will be hit,” Alexander Wallenius, an operations coordinator within the Swedish police, told the Swedish news agency TT.
Sweden was once regarded as one of Europe’s safest countries, but it has spent years battling a surge in shootings and bombings linked to rival gangs, many of them fighting over the drug trade.
Criminal networks have increasingly used social media and encrypted messaging apps to recruit teenagers as contract killers. Some are under the age of 15, meaning they are below the age of criminal responsibility in Sweden and cannot be prosecuted in the normal criminal justice system.
The government has responded with a series of tougher measures ahead of the Sept. 13 parliamentary elections, including a proposal to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 13 for serious offenses punishable by at least four years in prison.
But the crisis is no longer limited to shootings. Sweden has also seen kidnappings, grenade plots, welfare fraud, and organized criminal intimidation linked to the same gang networks. The two dozen homicide fatalities are just the tip of the iceberg of those affected by ongoing migrant gang wars.
In November last year, a Swedish court sentenced seven members of a Somali drug gang known as the Death Patrol over the abduction of a 22-year-old woman and her 2-year-old daughter, who were held for nearly four days over an unpaid drug debt.
The woman was kidnapped in Strängnäs while putting her daughter into a car seat. Several men pulled up behind her, forced her into a vehicle, and drove her and the child more than 400 kilometers to Gothenburg.
WATCH: 🇸🇪 A left-wing Swedish MP makes a swift exit when she is asked about her party's call for the forced mixing of Swedes and immigrants.
She runs away when asked which members of her party's leadership will be moving to Stockholm's migrant-dominated suburbs.
The pair were then taken to a rented cabin outside Kungälv, where they were held for almost four days. During the ordeal, the woman was told her ex-boyfriend owed several million kronor to the migrant gang over a lost drug shipment to Norway, and that she and her child were being used as leverage to force repayment.
The same month, a Swedish government review found that thousands of people linked to gangs had been receiving income from the benefits system for years, giving criminal networks a steady, legitimate revenue stream.
Around 4,000 people known to police for gang affiliation had reportedly received sickness benefits, sick pay, or job-seeker support, with total payments estimated at 3.6 billion kronor, or around €327.5 million.
The findings mean Swedish taxpayers have, in effect, been helping fund the very criminal networks now terrorizing their communities, providing gang members with a state-backed safety net while they continue their illicit operations.
Despite the violence, some senior political figures have continued to downplay the scale of the crisis. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt sparked criticism in December when he claimed Sweden had handled mass immigration “relatively well” and described gang crime as a “marginal phenomenon.”
“I still think that we have handled it relatively well in Sweden,” Bildt said in an interview with Göteborgs-Posten. “Something that we didn’t really foresee is this marginal phenomenon that is gang crime. A dominant marginal phenomenon, though. Shootings and such. We didn’t have that before. It has appeared on the margins of all this. We didn’t foresee that. At least, I didn’t.”
There have also been several near misses that could have dramatically increased the number of bystander casualties.
In February, a Swedish court found that a live hand grenade left in a stroller at a residential building in central Gothenburg could have caused mass casualties. The case, however, ended with only one person receiving a sentence because the suspected organizer was too young to be punished under Swedish criminal law.
The grenade incident was linked to a 15-year-old boy who traveled from Vänersborg to Gothenburg in August 2025 after allegedly being recruited through encrypted messaging platforms by criminal contacts who offered him money to carry out an attack.
Germany has seen another case of a “rampage” attack involving a vehicle, this time in Leipzig. A German driver drove into a crowd of people in broad daylight, killing two elderly citizens and leaving dozens more injured, two seriously.
According to a police spokesperson, the suspected perpetrator was still in the car when the police arrived. He surrendered voluntarily and is now in custody. Police have not yet confirmed any motive for the attack but numerous media reports described as “psychotic episode” that may have been driven over a relationship dispute with his girlfriend.
Mayor Burkhard Jung (SPD) spoke at a press conference that evening, calling the attack a “horrific rampage” but assuring residents that the streets were now safe. “There is no longer any danger,” he said, adding that his thoughts are with the victims and their families. A crisis intervention team offered assistance to those affected.
According to Leipzig Fire Chief Axel Schuh, there were “20 people affected,” while Senior Public Prosecutor Laube spoke of people “fighting for their lives in hospitals.”
NEW: 🇩🇪 Authorities confirm a total of 20 people were injured in today's car-ramming in downtown Leipzig, including two people confirmed dead.
"A suspect was arrested by police. We do not have any further details about him." pic.twitter.com/Y9SyFpOWMb
According to initial reports, the perpetrator drove from the direction of Augustusplatz along Grimmaische Straße, a shopping street, to the market at around 4:45 p.m. Images showed a gray car with a damaged hood and shattered windshield in front of a bollard. According to the “Bild” newspaper, the driver was traveling at high speed.
“I was in a shop when I heard a loud noise. Someone had just sped through here,” an eyewitness told the “Leipziger Volkszeitung.”
Shortly after the attack, flashing blue lights were visible everywhere in Leipzig’s market square, and numerous emergency personnel were on the scene. A screen was erected to block the view. A cloth was visible in front of the perpetrator’s car. It presumably covered one of the bodies.
According to Leipzig Police Chief René Demmler, there were “two serious collisions” resulting in the deaths of two pedestrians, a 63-year-old woman and a 77-year-old man. “Emergency services have declared a mass casualty incident, and police are on the scene with a large number of officers,” police stated.
In addition to Jung, Interior Minister Armin Schuster also expressly thanked the people who had provided quick and considerate assistance on site. He said that level-headed passersby had offered swift help, provided water, and reacted in an exemplary manner.
Sources informed Welt that the suspect is Jeffrey K., a 33-year-old German citizen, resident of Leipzig, and local boxing trainer. A video allegedly showing the moment of his arrest circulating online and supposed photos appear to show that he is of German ethnicity, although police have not authenticated any footage nor verified his identity.
Police have also warned against jumping to conclusions regarding any footage or photos posted online without any official verification from authorities.
According to people who spoke with Nius outlet, they indicated that Jeffrey K. “was said to have been psychologically abnormal time and time again. There are said to have been several instances of domestic violence.” He is reportedly a building technician and has one child.
Although there are claims circulating online that he was an Alternative for Germany (AfD) supporter, there is no evidence to back this claim at all. The police have so far said there is no indication this was a political or religious crime.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel also offered her condolences to the victims on X.
Bei einer Amokfahrt in der Leipziger Innenstadt sind gestern 2 Menschen getötet und mehrere weitere zum Teil schwer verletzt worden. Eine furchtbare und sinnlose Tat, die fassungslos macht. Ich wünsche den Angehörigen der Opfer viel Kraft in dieser schweren Zeit und den…
Jeffrey K. is reportedly known to police, albeit not for crimes such as the one he is now charged with, reports the German Press Agency (dpa).
The police have indicated that he was in a state of mental distress at the time of his arrest, and appears to be a “domestic violence incident.” Again, there has been no official confirmation of this yet.
“We are proceeding on the assumption that this was a deliberate act of sabotage,” said Chief Public Prosecutor Claudia Laube at a press conference. There is currently “absolutely no evidence to suggest any other interpretation, and there is no indication of any other person involved.”
A police spokesperson stated that the driver is being investigated for two counts of murder and at least two counts of attempted murder.
Saxony’s Minister-President Michael Kretschmer wrote about the rampage on the online service X: “This deeply shocks me. My thoughts are with the victims and their families. I wish the injured strength and a speedy recovery. Such an act leaves us speechless – and it makes us determined. The rule of law will be enforced with all due rigor. Now it is about being there for one another. Saxony stands together.”
People can commemorate the victims at St. Nicholas Church and St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. An ecumenical memorial service is planned for 5 p.m. on Tuesday at St. Nicholas Church. Both churches will also offer space for mourning, conversation, pastoral care, and lighting candles. They will be open all day.
Amidst continued fears regarding Putin attacking beyond Ukraine and economic uncertainty caused by the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Brussels is reportedly beginning to grumble, i.e., look for someone to blame and remove.
Now, according to a report by Finnish public service media Yle, cited by Világgazdaság, voices are growing to remove the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
Several European leaders, as well as NATO officials, have long warned that Moscow may potentially attack NATO states, which is why there has been a continued push for support for Ukraine to prevail in its war with Russia.
In the event of such a scenario, where Putin looks to further his ambitions and attack inside NATO, rapid and effective cooperation between European countries will be crucial, which is why, according to this recent report, some are wondering if von der Leyen is the right person for the job.
One name that has been put forth for “European war leader” is Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, an independent known for seeking greater EU integration and a higher profile for the EU in international policymaking.
The suggestion was also reportedly confirmed by defense expert Line Rindvig, who believes that the Finnish president may be particularly suitable for such a role. The Finnish president is even said to have served as a “quasi-European representative” on several occasions in discussions on support for Ukraine.
Rindvig has actively been assisting Finland to boost its military defense capabilities in light of lessons learned from Ukraine. He says that the Nordic country is at the forefront of preparations in Europe, which he attributes in large part to Stubb’s diplomatic activity and international acceptance. He is, according to the expert, a good bet for leading broader European cooperation.
Significantly, Stubb also enjoys good relations with U.S. President Donald Trump, which is key for transatlantic coordination. Rindvig even pointed to their closeness being aided by a shared interest in golf.
As the EU seeks to navigate its role in a world dominated by major powers and their wars, the right person at the helm will be critical if it ever wants a seat at the table — to discuss Ukraine, as well as NATO, foreign policy, and other economic matters.
A terrifying scene unfolded at a playground on Ostafrikastraße in Hanover-Badenstedt, Germany, on Friday, May 1, 2026, when a 46-year-old man attempted to kidnap a three-year-old child and violently assaulted his grandmother with scissors. According to citizen journalist Yvonne Kussman, the police have refused to disclose the man’s nationality.
Before the attack occurred around 5:35 p.m., the 58-year-old grandmother had observed the man acting suspiciously and lurking near the playground area. Once the other families present had departed, the assailant suddenly lunged at the toddler while he was playing in the sandbox, making it clear that “his intention was to kidnap the boy from the playground”.
As the grandmother desperately fought to keep hold of her grandson, the attacker produced a pair of scissors and stabbed her repeatedly. Despite sustaining multiple cuts and puncture wounds, the woman refused to surrender the child and “managed to lie protectively over the boy on the ground” to shield him.
Neighbors who heard her screams contacted police, but they “kept their distance” until help arrived because the suspect was still “threateningly holding the scissors.”
Responding officers were forced to use “gas” to subdue the man, who was taken into custody and has since been placed in pre-trial detention.
Yvonne Kussmann, a well-known citizen journalist in Germany, wrote on X:
“The police did respond to my inquiry about prior convictions and any potential previous mental breakdowns, but they refused to disclose the suspect’s nationality. This is the opposite of transparency and unnecessarily fuels rumors. In my view, the nationality should always and without exception—whether German or non-German—be disclosed, especially in cases of violent crimes in public spaces,” she wrote, while linking to her news report on the incident.
Am vergangenen Freitag versuchte ein 46-jähriger Mann auf einem Spielplatz in Hannover einen dreijährigen Jungen zu entführen. Die Oma des Jungen griff er mit einer Schere an, sie konnte ihren Enkel dennoch schützen. Der Angreifer konnte festgenommen werden. Die Polizei… pic.twitter.com/DV97opdIkN
Her report indicates the Hanover Police Department stated that the suspect had no prior criminal record in Lower Saxony, noting: “Even under criminal law, no other knowledge from other federal states can be identified.”
Although tests for alcohol and drugs came back negative, the suspect’s “lack of willingness to communicate” prevented officials from determining if he was suffering from a mental health crisis.
Regarding the nationality of the suspect, the police told Kussman that they “communicate nationalities only in those cases where the act is directly related to origin. In the present case, this connection does not exist.”
The incident is very similar to a recent incident in Switzerland. In that case, an “African type” male was on the run from Swiss police after he allegedly dragged a 5-year-old child inside a playground bathroom in Basel and sexually assaulted her.
Directly before the sexual assault, he had beaten her 69-year-old female caregiver, according to the Basel public prosecutor’s office.
The man, described as “African,” fled when the door to the bathroom facility was opened, where he was found performing sexual acts on the toddler. Police and medical services arrived on the playground and treated the two injured victims. The suspect still has not been caught, and the case was censored on X, which means this post cannot be embedded — only linked — into WordPress.
Former Czech Justice Minister Pavel Blažek has been charged amid an ongoing criminal investigation into a controversial bitcoin donation accepted by the Ministry of Justice during the previous administration.
Detectives from the National Headquarters for Organized Crime launched criminal proceedings on Monday against three more people linked to the case, prosecutors said.
The newly charged suspects are Blažek, a senior figure in the Civic Democratic Party, his former deputy Radomír Daňhel, and Brno lawyer Kárim Titz, who represented programmer Tomáš Jiřikovský, the man who donated the bitcoins to the state.
In a press release on Monday, the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in Olomouc said the three are accused of abuse of authority by an official and legalization of proceeds from crime.
According to prosecutors, the alleged abuse of power relates to an official exercising authority in breach of the law with the intention of giving someone else an illegal advantage.
The money laundering allegations concern the transfer of assets believed to be proceeds of another person’s criminal activity, as well as alleged attempts to make it substantially harder to determine the origin of those assets.
If convicted, the accused face prison sentences of between 5 and 12 years. The criminal prosecution is being conducted while the suspects remain at liberty.
The case stems from the Justice Ministry’s acceptance of a major Bitcoin donation from Jiřikovský, who had previously been convicted of embezzlement, drug trafficking, and illegal weapons offenses. Jiřikovský has also been charged in the case, accused of money laundering and of operating the darknet marketplace Nucleus Market.
Jiřikovský transferred around 30 percent of the bitcoins from a police-confiscated wallet to the Ministry of Justice following his release from prison in 2021. The ministry later auctioned the digital assets for nearly CZK 957 million, around €38.5 million.
The donation triggered serious questions over the origin of the cryptocurrency, the transparency of the transaction, and the ethics of a government ministry accepting assets from a convicted criminal.
The scandal led to Blažek’s resignation last summer.
Barcelona has experienced four stabbings in 24 hours, with two of the victims dying during the attacks. Viral video of some of the incidents has spread throughout social media and fueled the debate around insecurity and mass immigration due to the role of foreigners in at least two of the incidents.
Woman stabbed to death by North African
The first shocking death occurred on May 2 at the Esplugues de Llobregat where a North African man was arrested on suspicion of having killed an Asian woman with a “large knife” on Joan Miró Street, located near the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital. During the attack, a 59-year-old man was also stabbed by the North African attacker after the elderly man intervened, including by throwing rocks at the attacker, although the older man survived his injuries.
🇪🇸🔴JUST IN: This man stabbed an Asian teenage girl to death today in Barcelona, Spain.
The young woman was stabbed mainly in the thorax and neck in the random attack. She suffered massive blood loss and died on the spot.
There are suspicions that the attack may have an Islamist motive, since the attacker was screaming “Allahu Akbar,” but so far police reports indicate that the attacker is being treated for psychiatric evaluation. The investigation is ongoing and according to El Caso news outlet, the details of the investigation are tightly sealed.
North African stabbed to death by robbery victim
The second fatal knife attack saw the arrest of a minor by the Mossos d’Esquadra for the stabbing death of a man in the Raval neighborhood. This incident occurred just hours after the death of a woman in Esplugues de Llobregat, while authorities also investigate another stabbing at the Forum that left a minor injured.
🇪🇸🔴A North African was stabbed to death after he allegedly tried to rob a group of youths in Barcelona, Spain, over the weekend.
A group of 5 North Africans targeted a group of teens in Sant Antoni district outside a bar. However, the teens fought back and chased down one of… https://t.co/MBoAMGymChpic.twitter.com/w5w5FogGD2
The Catalan police received a report at 11:55 p.m. regarding an incident on Wax Street in the Raval neighborhood where a man had been seriously injured.
Medical Emergency System (SEM) workers treated the man at the scene and transported him in critical condition to a hospital, where he finally died. Reports indicate that the man was a part of a North African gang who targeted a group of people with robbery, according to El Caso. The group fought back and chased one of the North Africans, catching him, and stabbing him to death.
The Mossos d’Esquadra stated that the alleged perpetrator was later located and arrested by agents of the Urban Guard. The Criminal Investigation Division (DIC) is currently leading an investigation that remains under judicial secrecy.
Various stabbing attacks
According to Spanish newspaper El Debate, on Friday evening into Saturday, a fight between two groups of people in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat with knives left two injured, one of them seriously. The fourth stabbing occurred in the Forum area of Barcelona, where a minor was attacked at the exit of the April Fair by a group of people armed with knives. The Spanish police are investigating.
Shooting
On Monday, at 6:30 a.m., there was at shooting in L’Hospitalet, at the intersection of Rambla Catalana and Santiago Apóstol street. It was, according to El Caso, at the exit of a bar: at least five shots were heard in the middle of the street, although there were no injuries.
The perpetrators of the shooting took refuge in the aforementioned establishment, which led to a deployment of the Mossos, including ARRO troops, to get everyone out onto the streets. There are no arrests at the moment, and the investigation remains open.
On Friday night, although not involving a knife, a shooting was recorded in which a man was seriously injured, adding to the sense of insecurity felt throughout the weekend, as reported by El Debate.
Reform UK has announced a new pre-election pledge to block migrant detention centers from areas represented by its own MPs or controlled by its own councillors, while prioritizing Green-held areas for new sites.
The party said the policy would be necessary under its plan to deport all illegal migrants from Britain, arguing that tens of thousands of people would have to be detained at any one time before being removed from the country.
Under the proposal, illegal migrants would be held in secure detention centers and would not be allowed to leave while awaiting deportation.
Reform said each migrant would be held for “a couple of weeks” before being removed from Britain.
Today we announce a new policy:
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
The party then made a direct promise to voters ahead of the council elections, saying a Reform government would not place any migrant detention facility in a constituency represented by a Reform MP. It said the same guarantee would apply to any council area controlled by Reform.
The pledge comes just three days before local elections across much of Britain, in which the right-wing Reform party and left-wing Greens are expected to excel, much to the expense of the governing Labour party.
For all remaining parts of the country, the party said it would prioritize parliamentary constituencies and local authorities controlled by the Greens as locations for detention centers.
“Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention center near you,” the party said. “If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will,” it added.
The party launched a new website to promote the policy, naming it “VoteGreenGetIllegals.com.” It allows users to input the postcode to check the polls ahead of the local elections, and provides a map in which it shows which areas would be targeted for detention centers.
Reform described the policy as an “important exercise in democratic consent,” both for its mass deportation plans and for deciding where detention centers should be located.
This policy is genius. Everyone can get what they vote for – what's not to like?! pic.twitter.com/h293EP9VCY
The party also singled out Green Party leader Zack Polanski, accusing him of supporting open borders and saying it looked forward to the Greens’ “warm embrace” of the proposal.
The policy marks a sharp escalation in Britain’s immigration debate by tying the location of detention facilities directly to how communities vote.
Reform argues that areas backing its candidates should not be forced to host facilities linked to a policy they support only in principle, while areas represented by parties opposing deportations should not be able to avoid the practical effects of their position.
Italian police have launched a manhunt for a suspected North African attacker after a 56-year-old woman was beaten and sexually assaulted inside her own home in Livorno.
The attack reportedly took place in the San Marco area of the city after a man in his 30s entered the woman’s apartment building and found the door to her home half open.
According to Il Terreno, the victim had been cleaning when the stranger appeared at around 6 p.m., entered the property, and greeted her before allegedly turning violent. He is accused of forcing his way inside, shoving the woman against a wall, tearing off her bra, and pulling down her pants as she screamed for help.
The attacker then allegedly continued to push her against furniture while trying to rape her. The assault was only stopped when a neighbor heard the victim’s screams and rushed to help her, forcing the man to flee the building.
The suspect, described as being of North African origin and around 30 years old, disappeared before he could be detained. Police are now working to identify him, with investigators hoping security cameras in the area may have captured him arriving at or leaving the apartment building.
Emergency services were called after the attack, and the woman was taken by ambulance to the hospital. The victim told attending officers that she had suddenly found herself under attack in the place where she should have been safest. She later went to the police station in Livorno to file a formal complaint after being examined at the hospital.
An investigation has been opened into sexual assault and robbery.
“What happened is crazy, we still can’t believe it,” one shocked resident told local media.
Last month, a 22-year-old man from Mali accused of raping a woman in her seventies inside her home in Pistoia, was freed after an Italian court annulled his pre-trial detention on technical grounds. It found that the original custody order had not been translated into French, a language the defendant understands, and as such, the migrant was freed from pre-trial detention.
Also last month, seven suspects, all with foreign backgrounds, were charged with raping a 23-year-old victim in the Cesena countryside and filming the crime.
The victim was allegedly abused and filmed by seven youths during a drug-fueled party in early April. The suspects, described as being “born in the city but of African and Asian origins,” are aged between 19 and 25.
They reportedly took advantage of the victim’s state of intoxication, but the films they recorded on their phones may now be the deciding piece of evidence in their case.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni recently criticized judicial decisions blocking the detention of migrants transferred to Albania for deportation, citing the case of a Moroccan rapist whom authorities say they cannot deport after he applied for international protection.
“This is someone who entered Italy illegally, started dealing drugs, and gang-raped a woman — we can’t detain him, we can’t send him to Albania, we can’t repatriate him, and we’re almost forced to grant him international protection,” she said.
“How can we guarantee the safety of citizens like this?” she asked. “These decisions are surreal; they affect not the government’s work but citizens’ rights, first and foremost, the right to safety.”
Earlier this year, an Italian woman whose parents were murdered in a brutal attack by an Ivorian asylum seeker a decade ago accused the state of abandoning victims while prioritizing the rights and welfare of offenders.
Rosita Solano, whose parents, Vincenzo, 68, and Mercedes, 70, were killed in their home in Palagonia, Sicily, in August 2015 by an 18-year-old Ivorian asylum seeker, said she no longer feels like an Italian citizen because of what she described as a complete lack of protection and support for victims of violent crime.
“In Italy, those who commit crimes are protected, legally assisted with free legal aid, food, and lodging, while those who suffer a crime count for nothing,” she said. “Victims are abandoned and invisible.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has come under fire from several media outlets following a citizens’ dialogue in Salzwedel, Saxony-Anhalt, where he was accused of lecturing a terminally ill woman.
There, a woman had spoken out and told the chancellor that she had terminal stage IV skin cancer, saying that the looming public health cuts amount to austerity measures that would deny citizens essential funding.
“I sent you an invitation to my funeral“ she told Merz. She said she has massive financial difficulties in even being able to afford her burial.
She then went on to say she had no understanding that the federal government wants to make major cuts to the healthcare system, but at the same time tried to increase their own salaries.
“Why are we cutting costs, but not in politics?” she asked the chancellor.
Merz reacted harshly to the senior citizen, saying: “At no time, at no time has anyone considered raising the salaries of members of the federal government. At no time. Not from me either. Anything else is a false claim.“ He then addressed the dying woman, saying: “And I would simply be grateful if you would not simply repeat this without checking.”
In fact, the elderly dying woman’s claims were accurate, as media outlets across Germany are reporting. Approximately two weeks ago, Bild newspaper reported on a draft law federal law to boost the salaries of state secretaries by almost €40,000, however, the chancellor’s salary would have been linked to this increase. In fact, if the draft law went through, Merz’s own salary would have increased by approximately €65,000 per year.
The law was only stopped after the plan sparked massive public outrage, especially on the back of looming public health cuts. Bild called it “shameless self-serving actions from the goverment.”
It should be noted that Germany is planning on cutting essential health services to its seniors, even as public spending on migrants is soaring. Germany spends approximately €50 billion in costs per year on foreigners, including social benefits, education, and housing, however, experts say many billions more are spent that are not directly included, such as on housing Germany’s massive foreign population in the prison.
In addition, Germany continues to funnel tens of billions to Ukraine, with another €19 billion directly from Germany planned. While some of this money is loans, many experts believe that Ukraine will never be able to pay this money back.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis believes Turkey can help bring peace to Ukraine, especially as U.S. President Trump is preoccupied with Iran and Putin does not want to sit down with anyone from Europe.
Leaders from Europe and Canada arrived at the European Political Community summit in Yerevan, Armenia, over the weekend, with both Iran and Ukraine as the primary topics of importance for talks to be held starting today.
Talks to bring peace to Ukraine have stalled, especially with the United States now busy in the Middle East. “It is in the interest of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to have peace in Ukraine. The Czech Republic also wants this. However, the problem at the moment is who will mediate between the warring parties,” the Mandiner news portal, citing the Czech news agency, quoted Babis as saying after he arrived in Yerevan.
Trump may currently be preoccupied with the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, Babis continued, but there is still a chance to establish peace in Ukraine. According to the Czech PM, leaders of Central Asian countries or the Turkish president could also be involved in the peace talks.
“It is clear that Ukraine is unlikely to accept the conditions that President Putin envisions. However, negotiations have already taken place. They should continue, but for now they are waiting for the American side to join them,” the Czech news agency quoted Babis as saying.
Babies also posted on X about his pre-summit talks with Zelensky, where they discussed post-war reconstruction and further opportunities for Czech companies once peace is achieved.
According to Babis, since Russia does not accept the involvement of European leaders in resolving the conflict, the Organization of Turkic States could possibly step in. He believes that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan maintains good relations with Trump, while the leaders of Central Asian countries maintain good relations with both Moscow and Washington, effectively serving as acceptable replacements to the U.S. while DC has its hands full with the ongoing crisis in Iran.
Foreign inmate gangs have sparked fresh chaos inside an overcrowded Italian prison after a violent brawl at Frosinone left five officers needing emergency hospital treatment.
The confrontation reportedly broke out between two separate groups of foreign prisoners, as verbal abuse and threats quickly escalated into a violent clash involving clubs and improvised weapons.
Prison officers moved in to restore order, but the situation rapidly deteriorated as inmates began using objects inside the facility as weapons.
Five officers were eventually taken to the emergency room at Frosinone hospital with injuries including bruises, cuts, a fractured little finger, and a bruised jaw. They were later discharged with prognoses of around 10 days.
The violence was reported by both the Autonomous Penitentiary Police Union and the Penitentiary Police Union, which warned that the prison is once again facing serious disorder linked to overcrowding, staff shortages, and the presence of violent inmates.
As reported by Corriere della Sera, Angelo Vittiglio, regional deputy secretary of the Penitentiary Police Union, described the incident as “yet another attack” and called for the most troublesome prisoners to be moved to other facilities immediately.
“Immediate transfer is necessary to avoid compromising the peace, order, and security in places where security is increasingly lacking,” Vittiglio said.
The Autonomous Penitentiary Police Union said the episode confirmed the “highly tense situation” already reported after a recent inspection of the facility.
According to the union, inmates threw stools, gas canisters, and coffee machines during the brawl, while others got hold of sharp objects as the violence intensified.
“Only thanks to the professionalism, sense of duty, and spirit of sacrifice of the Penitentiary Police staff was it possible to prevent the situation from further deteriorating,” the union said, warning that the consequences could have been even more serious.
The union also said repeated calls to transfer the most violent inmates had been ignored.
“We have repeatedly urged the transfer of the most violent inmates to other facilities, even outside the district, but our requests have fallen on deaf ears. Meanwhile, the most troublemakers continue to compromise the security and stability of the facility,” it added.
The Frosinone brawl comes amid wider concerns over Italy’s prison system, with overcrowding and staff shortages repeatedly blamed for unrest, assaults, and deteriorating conditions inside detention facilities.
Officers’ unions have warned that prisons are becoming increasingly difficult to control when too many inmates are held in stretched facilities without enough staff to maintain order.
Italy has seen repeated prison unrest in recent years, including riots linked to overcrowding and pressure on detention centers, with officers and other staff members left exposed during the violence, and the crisis has already forced the Italian government to consider politically sensitive measures.
Official figures highlighted by Italian newspaper La Verità in February showed that more than 144,000 convicted offenders in Italy are currently serving sentences outside prison through alternative or community-based measures due to overcrowding.
Of those, 30,279 are foreign citizens, accounting for 21 percent of the total.
Among foreign nationals under supervision, the largest share comes from African countries, accounting for 37 percent of foreign offenders in alternative measures.
By nationality, the largest groups are Moroccans, Albanians, and Romanians, with 4,871, 4,147, and 3,890 convicted offenders, respectively, serving sentences in the community. They are followed by Tunisians, with 1,824, and Nigerians, with 1,464.
In July last year, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government weighed the early release of more than 10,000 prisoners in response to severe overcrowding, despite previously opposing so-called “prison-emptying” policies.
Justice Minister Carlo Nordio said the proposal would merely apply an existing legal provision allowing inmates with less than 24 months left to serve, and who were convicted of non-violent offenses, to complete their sentences outside prison.
Italy also saw a wave of prison riots in August 2024, with overcrowding blamed for violence at detention centers in Turin, Bari, and Rome.
In one incident, prisoners took a nurse hostage, while prison security staff were seriously injured.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon has officially launched his campaign for the 2027 French presidential election, declaring himself the “best prepared” candidate on the far left and vowing to defeat the National Rally “soundly.”
The 74-year-old leader of La France Insoumise confirmed his candidacy on Sunday evening during an appearance on TF1, hours after elected officials from his party approved his run.
It will be Mélenchon’s fourth attempt to win the presidency, and his announcement comes a year before French voters are due to choose a successor to Emmanuel Macron.
“We are very clear. There is a team, a program, a single candidate,” Mélenchon said, insisting that the scale of the crisis facing France and the wider world justified entering the race early.
“Without wanting to cause alarm, but to be clear-sighted, we are entering a very turbulent season in world history. We are threatened by a widespread war. We are threatened by a dramatic change in the climate. And then we have an economic and social crisis coming towards us,” he added.
Mélenchon also took aim at rival parties on the left, warning that political fragmentation risked weakening their chances of defeating the right-wing National Rally, which is widely expected to be one of the dominant forces in the election.
🇫🇷 Far-left French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon says "so much the better" about the Great Replacement.
"It is just one generation following after another. Everything is fine."
Yesterday, Mélenchon announced his candidacy for next year's French presidential election to succeed… pic.twitter.com/hcFVJ5H4VY
He said “the internal divisions within the parties” were producing “a multitude of candidacies and confusion,” describing the situation as “irresponsible.”
The controversial far-left politician used an interview on TF1 to also address the ongoing tensions in the Middle East, arguing that France should have formed a “common front” with Spain in opposing American and Israeli strikes on Iran.
Speaking about the National Rally, Mélenchon dismissed expectations of a right-wing victory in the election.
“They are the main opponent since it seems they are going to win,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t believe it. I don’t even know if they’ll make it to the second round… I think we’re going to beat them soundly,” he added.
The National Rally has not yet confirmed whether Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella will carry its banner in 2027.
Le Pen, who has repeatedly sought the presidency, is currently blocked from running by a conviction and a five-year ineligibility ruling unless she succeeds on appeal.
“I know very well that the decision regarding this candidacy isn’t mine to make,” Le Pen said in February after the appeal hearing ended.
“It’s in the hands of three judges who will decide whether or not the millions of French people who want to vote for me will be able to do so,” she said.
“You can imagine that if the appeals court follows the lower court’s ruling that sentenced me to wear an electronic tag, I won’t be able to campaign,” Le Pen added.
Le Pen denies allegations that she was involved in a fraudulent scheme to misuse European Union funds. The appeal court’s president has said a ruling will be delivered on July 7.
If Le Pen is allowed to run, she is widely expected to be among the leading contenders to succeed Macron. If she remains barred, she has said Bardella, her 30-year-old protégé, would stand in her place.
Other declared candidates include former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, who leads Horizons, and Bruno Retailleau, the former interior minister and president of the center-right Les Républicains.
Philippe’s party was created to broaden support around Macron’s political project, particularly among center-right voters, while Retailleau is seeking to position Les Républicains as a serious alternative after years of decline.
Last Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump further escalated tensions with the European Union by announcing a hike in tariffs to 25 percent on all trucks and cars imported from the EU. The president accused the EU of violating their previous tariff agreement reached last year, but the strong suspicion is that this was in retaliation for Germany’s head of state speaking out on Iran.
The impact of this move will be felt across the Union, and although Germany may be the real target, Europe’s lack of support for his attacks on Iran — and resulting economic and energy crisis — has drawn Trump’s ire in general. Most recently, however, Chancellor Merz took aim at Trump’s war on Iran, saying that Iran’s leadership was humiliating Trump. The American president then said the U.S. would be pulling 5,000 troops from Germany, and more withdrawals may be on the way.
Now, new tariffs have hit the entire EU, with the new rate of 25 percent, up from 15 percent, reportedly taking effect this week. The rate will not apply to any vehicles manufactured in the U.S.
Bernd Lange, chairman of the European Parliament’s trade committee, commented on Donald Trump’s announcement. called the move “unacceptable,” noting that it “shows how unreliable the American side is.”
“This is not the way to treat close partners. We can only respond now with the utmost clarity and decisiveness, leveraging the strength of our position,” he added, as quoted by Do Rzeczy. Lange also indicated that there had been no violation of the agreement reached last year but that the U.S. had repeatedly done so.
The Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research is warning of a new trade war between the European Union and the United States and advising that any further escalation be avoided, according to a Deutsche Welle article, also cited by Do Rzeczy.
Germany, battling layoffs and bankruptcies, has also sounded the alarm. The Federal Association of German Industries (BDI) said in a statement that “Trump’s new tariffs pose another huge challenge to transatlantic economic relations and threaten them not only with regard to the automotive industry.”
“The EU-US trade agreement must be respected by both sides, including the EU,” it added.
Volker Treier, director of foreign trade at the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), also called Trump’s new hike another unnecessary escalation. He noted that while the EU is working to implement a trade agreement with the United States, DC is hindering this process.
Some sectors — and countries — in the EU will feel the impact of the new 25 percent rate more than others. The consequences are sure to be severe for the German automotive industry, as well as Hungary, home to plants for nearly all of Germany’s auto manufacturers and suppliers. Világgazdaság highlights that around 25 percent of Hungarian exports go directly to Germany, with another 10-15 percent indirectly linked to it.
With already weak growth in Hungary, compounded by the impact already felt by previous tariff hikes, the prospects are not good. Hungary has long enjoyed growth due to its exposure to Germany’s auto sector, but now this dependency has become a burden.
Calculations by the Bochum-based Automotive Research Center show that the tariffs could impose an additional burden of around €2.5 billion on German manufacturers, according to Handelsblatt. Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, head of the research center, believes that Trump’s new tariff threats could be interpreted as the start of an economic war specifically against Germany.
He noted, however, that the impact could vary by manufacturer. Mercedes and BMW have U.S. manufacturing plants, so they are protected to a certain extent, as vehicles manufactured there can be exempt from tariffs. These plants primarily produce SUVs, which account for a significant portion of U.S. sales. In contrast, the situation is different for Porsche and Audi.
“This will likely accelerate both companies’ plans to build car factories in the U.S., said Dudenhöffer. He added that overall, the tariffs could give further impetus to the relocation of automotive production — and supply chains — from Germany and the EU. Which is even more bad news for Hungary.
An Iraqi father accused of beating, imprisoning, and threatening to kill his daughter after she refused an arranged marriage has been arrested in Sweden on a European warrant issued by Italian authorities.
The 52-year-old man was tracked down by Taranto State Police after the authorities in southern Italy opened an investigation into domestic abuse and forced marriage following a complaint from the young woman last November.
As reported by Il Giornale, prosecutors say the victim told officers her father had demanded she marry a Kurdish man selected by him and had threatened her with death if she resisted or tried to flee abroad.
The woman had traveled from Iraq to join her family in Taranto, but investigators say she soon found herself trapped in what police described as a family campaign to force her into submission.
According to the allegations, her relatives sided with her father because they believed she wanted to live in a way that was too “Western” and incompatible with their cultural expectations.
When she refused to obey, her father allegedly held her captive inside an apartment in the southern Italian city and subjected her to violence that left her with injuries requiring 15 days to recover.
Police also believe the pressure became so severe that the young woman was forced to give up work and began a life of isolation, fuelled by fear over her safety.
The young woman gave evidence under protected arrangements before being moved to a secure facility, where she remains.
Investigators later discovered the father had left Italy for Sweden. Swedish authorities arrested him on the European warrant issued after a precautionary detention order by a judge in Taranto.
The case is the latest in a string of forced marriage scandals across Europe involving migrant families accused of using threats, violence, and isolation to control young women who refuse marriages arranged by relatives.
In October last year, a Bangladeshi couple living in Rimini was placed under house arrest after prosecutors accused them of forcing their daughter into marriage in Bangladesh and subjecting her to threats, abuse, and drugs intended to induce pregnancy.
The 20-year-old woman was taken into protective custody after allegedly being tricked into traveling to Bangladesh under the false pretense of visiting a sick relative.
Once there, prosecutors say, her parents confiscated her documents and forced her to marry a wealthy man more than 20 years older than her. The wedding was held on Dec. 17, 2024.
Italian investigators allege she was threatened and abused before and after the ceremony. She was also reportedly given medication intended to promote pregnancy and sedatives to reduce her resistance to sex with her husband.
The young woman secretly began taking contraceptives and eventually managed to contact a health center in Rimini through Instagram, triggering contact with Italian authorities. She later convinced her mother to bring her back to Italy by claiming she would feel “more at peace” and ready to have children if she returned.
Forced marriage fears have also escalated in Germany, where Berlin authorities warned last summer that the school holidays are a danger period for young people being taken abroad and married against their will.
Women’s rights advocate Seyran Ates warned that the problem was growing amid mass immigration and the spread of parallel communities.
“I fear the numbers will continue to rise,” she told German broadcaster RBB, as cited by Junge Freiheit.
“In Germany, we speak of a parallel society of the Muslim community,” she said, adding that forced marriage is a tool used by “archaic patriarchal societies” to enforce religious norms and control female sexuality.
Berlin’s Neukolln district also sounded the alarm, warning that young people could be taken out of the country during the holidays to be married in their parents’ country of origin, often with no clear way back.
“Most of the affected girls and boys grew up in Germany,” the district office said.
District Mayor Martin Hikel said, “Forced and early marriages are human rights violations that we do not tolerate. But, we know that they are a reality for Neukolln’s young people.”
🇬🇷 "There were 40-year-olds in facilities for unaccompanied minors, drug trafficking, and the relatives of a 15-year-old girl organized her stoning because she resisted a forced marriage."
Greek minister Eirini Agapidaki recalls the horrors that unfolded at the Moria migrant… pic.twitter.com/Pp1qC76e0M
Eirini Agapidaki said the camp had descended into “absolute chaos” at the time.
“I honestly don’t want to talk about what I saw and what I found there, because they are very, very ugly things,” she said. “They expose the country.”
Agapidaki claimed the girl had effectively been sold into marriage by her mother.
“A mother had agreed to marry off her 15-year-old daughter to someone there,” she said. “And because the girl resisted, the community organized a stoning.”
The minister said she only learned of the case after the girl had been removed from the camp and placed in a shelter for unaccompanied minors.
The Seven Times restaurant in Vaulx-en-Velin has been shut down by the local prefecture, pending the fulfillment of no less than 39 corrective measures for serious breaches of local hygiene rules. But this isn’t the first controversy for Lyon’s “largest halal-certified food court.”
Last December, Seven Times launched an all-girls room, which was finally ended over outcries of discrimination. The restaurant insisted that the “100% girls” area had zero link to Islam. But locals weren’t buying it.
Vaulx-en-Velin : le fast-food halal proposant salle réservée aux femmes, salle de prière et interdisant l’alcool fermé d’urgence pour mauvaise hygiène (MàJ) https://t.co/6lrYyDNhHHpic.twitter.com/8Difi9uofX
— Fdesouche.com est une revue de presse (@F_Desouche) April 24, 2026
National Rally (RN) deputy Jérôme Buisson at the time denounced the move as “unacceptable and illegal separatism” in a post sharing a TikTok video from the restaurant’s channel that clearly indicates only women may go to the girls-only room (seemingly in the back and completely shut away), while the rest of the restaurant, out in the open, is reserved for men. The man in the video is clearly pleased with the space provided for men, seemingly referencing some sort of cultural norm that this is appropriate.
Le restaurant Lyonseventimes à Vaulx-en-Velin semble pratiquer un séparatisme inadmissible et illégal en isolant dans une salle à part les femmes. Les clients sont donc triés par sexe. Trouvez-vous ceci normal @prefetrhone ? C’est de la discrimination inacceptable en France 🇫🇷 ! pic.twitter.com/t3BuUA1UaX
Unfortunately, this is France, and people responded accordingly.
French law also stipulates that any establishment open to the public, such as a restaurant, cannot deny service or restrict access to specific areas based on sex.
For its part, the owner of Seven Times told Le Figaro, “It’s 20 square meters out of 400 where women can gather to celebrate birthdays or graduations. We’re very far from communalism; everyone comes as they are and sits wherever they want.” At the time, the owner also considered filing a complaint against Buisson.
🇫🇷 A French woman is allegedly told her outfit is "haram," which means "forbidden" in Islam.
The girl, wearing a cross necklace, responds: "It’s a good thing I’m a Christian."
The incident happened at Music Festival 2025 in Paris, which saw widespread violence and 371 arrests.… pic.twitter.com/f8s2H25WiG
As seen in the video posted by Fdesouche, the restaurant also has a prayer room and indicates that families may also gather for celebrations in the larger open area. They did, however, eventually backtrack on the dedicated room for women, reportedly removing the large sign denoting the “100-girls” area. Now, Seven Times has new legal issues.
During a visit by agents from the Departmental Directorate for Population Protection (DDPP) on Monday, April 20, 2026, several deficiencies were noted at the restaurant, reported Le Progrés. Violations included the presence of dead flying pests, the risk of unsanitary conditions due to chemical contamination, inadequate maintenance and cleaning of the premises, and poor storage and preservation conditions for raw materials.
Shockingly, the portal also discovered that one of the managers also owned another restaurant in Villefranche-sur-Saône, the Naan Factory, that was also shuttered in April over hygiene and food safety regulation violations. Fines were also imposed in this case due to the presence of three undeclared employees, two of whom were also undocumented.
In Dubrovnik, Polish President Karol Nawrocki took part in a joint press conference with Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and Slovak President Peter Pellegrini after a meeting of the Three Seas Initiative, established in 2015 to accelerate infrastructure development, energy security, and digital connectivity among 13 European Union nations bordering the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic Seas.
“For me, this is a special event, because for the first time as the president of Poland, I am taking part in the Three Seas Initiative – in the place where it began,” he told press, as quoted by wPolityce.
Calling the initiative “a foundation for Europe’s competitiveness and a driving force for transatlantic cooperation,” Nawrocki announced that “it’s time to start discussing the creation of infrastructure financing mechanisms around the Three Seas Development Bank. We’ve been discussing this, and I think it’s ahead of us. This is the step the Three Seas Initiative is looking forward to.”
He also emphasized Poland’s leading role in helping the region wean itself from Russian energy, calling it a “gateway for American gas,” specifically referencing Polish terminals such as Świnoujście and another planned floating terminal on the Baltic Sea.
“Poland is ready to become the Northern Gate and a pillar of the region’s energy security. The Three Seas States have proven that together we can build independence and effectively free ourselves from dependence on Russian raw materials. This is the path to a strong and sovereign Europe,” Nawrocki posted on X.
Polska jest gotowa, by stać się Bramą Północy i filarem bezpieczeństwa energetycznego regionu. Państwa Trójmorza udowodniły, że wspólnie można budować niezależność i skutecznie uniezależniać się od rosyjskich surowców. To droga ku silnej i suwerennej Europie. 🇵🇱 pic.twitter.com/pDwUCV7T9M
Croatia’s former president, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, was on hand as well to tout further potential for a north-south axis to additionally help cut reliance on Moscow.
Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina announced their support for the Southern Interconnection gas pipeline, which will connect Bosnia to Croatia’s gas network and the Krk island LNG terminal. The project enjoys strong backing from the U.S., writes TVP World.
Central Europe, noted Grabar-Kitarović, should become “a consolidated, self-confident, ambitious region,” not a region at the mercy of larger powers.
As for the Slovak president, Pelligrini posted a pro-business update, emphasizing the region’s potential on the back of the Business Forum hosted by his country. “The Three Seas region has enormous potential, and the Business Forum helps turn that potential into action,” he wrote on X, listing five priorities for “shared prosperity.”
The Business Forum is the beating heart of the #3SI — where business meets business, capital meets governments, and partnerships turn into growth for our region.
Looking ahead, I see five priorities for strengthening our shared prosperity:
Before the Hungarian parliamentary elections last month, László Toroczkai, leader of Mi Hazánk (“Our Homeland”), was hopeful that his party would end up a kingmaker and vowed not to cede to either Fidesz or Tisza if it meant going against his party’s nationalist interests.
As it turned out, Tisza, led by Péter Magyar, won by a landslide, achieving an unprecedented number of seats in the National Assembly and easily getting the two-thirds majority needed to rule as it wants.
Mi Hazánk ended up just crossing the threshold to enter parliament with 5.9 percent of the vote. Considered a hard-right party, Toroczkai is now claiming to be the only party capable of standing up for Hungary’s sovereignty. And although he says it will be a challenge, he is dedicated to trying to grow his base.
“Mi Hazánk wanted to become an unavoidable force in parliament, but it didn’t turn out that way. At the same time, I can’t hide our disappointment. Many more people sympathize with Mi Hazánk Movement than voted for us,” he said in an interview with Mandiner.
Toroczkai also noted that, given the censorship his party faced on Facebook and Instagram, the result is a success. The party leader actually congratulated Meta, the parent of both social media platforms, after Magyar won.
“Congratulations to Facebook, or more precisely to the global corporate giant behind it, Meta, and to the bankers for their victory! They’ve made their first Hungarian prime minister. Rothschild Bank’s former banker, France’s current president, Emmanuel Macron, was among the first to congratulate Péter Magyar,” he posted on X at the time.
In his interview with Mandiner, published just this morning, Toroczkai appeared to believe Tisza would “radically decrease corruption and nepotism and increase competition.” However, he took to X again last night to express his disappointment over the news that Magyar named his brother-in-law, Márton Melléthei-Barna, as minister of justice.
“I had hoped that at least in this area, the Tisza Party’s governance would bring change,” he wrote, right after slamming Fidesz for overseeing an era when “nepotism became widespread in public administration, diplomacy, (and almost everywhere appointments were made).”
Toroczkai further revealed that the new justice minister is a former employee of Oppenheim Law Firm, which represented Meta against him when he sued the Marc Zuckerberg-owned tech behemoth for alleged rampant censorship he and his party faced on both Facebook and Instagram.
“It seems I wasn’t wrong when I congratulated Facebook on election night. In any case, it will be an interesting situation when I later ask the new Parliament for the new Minister of Justice to take action against the interventions by Meta and other global tech companies, which seriously violate equal opportunities as well as the integrity of elections in Hungary,” he concluded in his post.
The right-wing leader did concede that Magyar will succeed in freeing up EU funds for Hungary, and along with positive economic policy measures taken under Fidesz, he feels GDP should get a boost, which, in turn, will strengthen Tisza.
“There is the 8,000 billion forints that the European Commission blackmailed Hungary with, and with this, it clearly interfered in the election, since it immediately indicated afterwards that the money would come. They will reach an agreement with Péter Magyar, which will boost the Hungarian economy,” Toroczkai told Mandiner.
Still, this has come with a price tag, which the Mi Hazánk leader sees as a direct threat to Hungary’s sovereignty. “Now, bankers much bigger than Soros influence politics, elections, and the value system. These circles do what they want with the forint, and now they will leave the forint strong for a while. In addition, inflation and corruption are minimal, EU funds are coming, and all this will strengthen the Hungarian economy. Unless what happened at the Strait of Hormuz brings down the world economy, but that is a completely different situation,” he said.
Toroczkai also points to a glaring issue, which will be the real test for Magyar: how to keep this “colorful” electorate that ousted Viktor Orbán together.
“Power and a strengthening economy will also hold this terribly colorful company together. There are the wild liberals, the LGBTQ activists, and many of the old Jobbik voters who wave the Hungarian flag,” he says, noting that hanging the EU flag on parliament is announced alongside the same decision for the Székely flag to keep everyone happy.
Toroczkai says there is no way everyone will be kept happy in the long run, especially with the demands being made by Brussels, some of which have already been met, for example, with openly LGBTQ-friendly appointments made for the education minister and elsewhere in his government.
Another primary question is what Magyar will do regarding mandatory migrant quotas, something for which Hungary is presently incurring a €1 million daily penalty for defying. Magyar has promised he will stand up for Hungarian borders, even taking an even stronger stance and saying he will abolish the foreign workers used for multiple factory and service jobs under Fidesz.
Only time will tell, but Toroczkai remains skeptical.
“Our task will be to keep a sharp eye on the betrayals against the nation that Péter Magyar will commit in exchange for EU funds,” he told Mandiner, adding that the Tisza leader’s ego may have him thinking he can have his way with the European Commission, but he should not underestimate the “deep ideological foundations” of progressives.
“Mass migration and support for LGBTQ issues are all expectations that they will not give in to. Given the support, they don’t have to fear that Fidesz will return or that Our Homeland will call an early election within a year, so they don’t have to give in to Péter Magyar,” he said.
“Of course, there are many more tricks here, but if he gives in to these, it will be our job to confront him in the National Assembly with his broken promises,” Toroczkai noted.
For Mi Hazánk, aside from attempting to battle Tisza in a parliament it controls, the focus now is on attempting to win back voters who backed Tisza simply in the wave of “anything but Orbán” that ruled last month’s election. “A lot of votes, especially the votes of the young, were taken away by the will that Fidesz should definitely go and something else should come in its place,” he said.
“Now a globalist government is being formed in Hungary. Many people did not understand this message, or the feeling was stronger among young people that it doesn’t matter what happens, as long as it’s not Fidesz. In any case, we are present in parliament as sovereignists,” he continued, adding that Mi Hazánk will remain present for those who end up realizing that perhaps Hungary’s best interests are not being followed.
“A huge community in the Fidesz voting camp that feels orphaned, abandoned, but that is none of my business, it is Fidesz’s internal matter, how it can stand up after such a big defeat. Many will watch Mi Hazának with interest, and they may also leave Tisza disappointed – the big challenge of the coming years is whether we can grow into a major party.”
The mother of a 16-year-old Ukrainian refugee pushed to her death in front of a train by an Iraqi migrant has said she no longer believes in Germany’s justice system after he was spared prison and sent to a psychiatric hospital.
Liana K. was killed at Friedland station in Lower Saxony in August 2025 after Muhammed A., a 31-year-old rejected asylum seeker from Iraq, shoved her onto the tracks in front of a moving freight train.
The teenager, who had fled the war in Ukraine, had been speaking to her grandfather at the station moments before the attack.
A court in Göttingen ruled on Wednesday that Muhammed A. would be committed permanently to a secure psychiatric facility after prosecutors argued he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and could not be held criminally responsible for murder.
DNA evidence linked him to Liana, with traces found on the teenager’s shoulder, prosecutors said.
Her mother, Alisa K., reacted angrily after the ruling, telling Junge Freiheit she had wanted the man who killed her daughter to be jailed for life.
“How am I supposed to feel? I feel terrible. Now he’s going to a psychiatric hospital. I wanted my daughter’s murderer to go to prison. It should be a sentence with no possibility of ever being released,” she said.
She added that she had pulled herself together for the sake of her daughter and was now prepared to continue the legal fight.
“Yes, I intend to appeal. I disagree with the court’s decision. If necessary, I am prepared to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights and any other court of appeal to achieve justice not only for my Liana, but also for all other victims whose perpetrators have so far gone unpunished,” she said.
The case has intensified anger over Germany’s asylum and deportation system after it emerged Muhammed A. had no legal right to remain in the country.
He arrived in Germany in 2022 and applied for asylum, but his claim was rejected. He had been subject to an enforceable deportation order since March 2025 and was living at the Friedland asylum center at the time of the killing.
Weeks before Liana’s death, he was in custody in Hanover and was due to be transferred to Lithuania, the EU country through which he first entered the bloc. However, a court rejected his deportation and he was released back into Lower Saxony. Liana was killed three weeks later.
Alisa K. said victims’ families were left to bear the financial burden of legal action while the perpetrator’s costs were covered.
“Unfortunately, all of the perpetrator’s court costs are covered, while we – I mean us as the affected parties, as victims – have to bear all of this ourselves. We don’t have the necessary funds and are therefore forced to ask ordinary citizens and the public for donations to cover the court costs,” she said.
Asked whether she still believed in the German rule of law, she replied, “No, I no longer believe in the German justice system.”
“Here, people are severely punished for illegal parking or improper waste disposal, but murderers are sent to psychiatric hospitals so they can recover at the expense of normal, honest citizens who dutifully pay their taxes,” she added.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel criticized the decision earlier this year after prosecutors signaled they would seek psychiatric detention rather than a prison sentence, a move now rubber-stamped by the courts.
“The Iraqi who was subject to deportation at the time of the crime and who killed Liana by pushing her in front of a freight train will go unpunished,” Weidel wrote on X. “No deterrent judgment, no imprisonment followed by deportation — instead, the taxpayer has to foot the bill for the perpetrator’s accommodation in a psychiatric hospital. This is a scandal!”
Muhammed A. first entered the European Union illegally through Lithuania in August 2021, where he applied for asylum and claimed he was gay and feared execution in Iraq. His application was rejected twice.
Germany later filed a Dublin request to return him to Lithuania, but the process was delayed by legal challenges. He had also previously come to the attention of authorities. In November 2024, he was convicted of an exhibitionistic act after approaching a woman, putting his arm around her, unzipping his pants, and exposing himself. He was fined, but the penalty was too low to trigger the kind of criminal record that could have further affected his immigration status.
Liana’s mother said the case had left her fearful for her surviving children and demanded that the German government change course.
“The situation has gotten to the point where I’m afraid for my other children when they go anywhere without me,” she said.
“I want to say to the government: Open your eyes and reconsider your priorities! Because with this attitude, you’re destroying your own country! We must finally protect our children and create a safe world for them.”
A French website and real estate browser extension for Chrome is promoting an unusual data offering, which includes information on immigration levels, insecurity, and Islamization rates — all factors that real estate buyers may want to take into consideration before they make an investment.
The OVMF assigns various scores “automatically in real estate ad photos,” according to the company behind the extension, which is free and collects no data from its users, according to the website.
The OVMF also promises to highlight certain facilities in the area or neighborhood, which some real estate buyers may want to be aware of, such as asylum accommodations, troubled QPV districts, and the number of mosques in an area.
The OVMF site appears to have an enormous amount of data, such as the number of migrants in accommodation facilities, the number of different religious groups, and immigration levels for each neighborhood.
In extremely multicultural cities, the site tracks granular data such as the evolution of first names, which it uses to point out the categories of “African names,” “Traditional French names,” “Modern French names,” and “Muslim names,” as well as other categories.
Paris also features data on scam rates and other detailed information, including the share of foreigners living in specific neighborhoods, political leadership, and even trending news stories that may be relevant to security-focused real estate buyers.
Outside of the browser extension, users can also access a map of France showing known locations such as asylum accommodations and mosques across the entire country.
The site’s data on QPV districts refers to “Quartier Prioritaire de la Politique de la Ville,” which are specifically designated urban areas that receive targeted government support to reduce social and economic inequalities. Typically, they feature high rates of immigration, crime, and poverty.
The French government uses the QPV label to implement the “Politique de la Ville” (Urban Policy). The objective is to “bridge the gap” between these poorer areas and the rest of France. There are approximately 1,500 QPV districts across France, including overseas territories, and roughly 5 million people living in them.
The website and the real estate extension are likely to be geared towards individuals or families oriented to the right; however, polling may show that this information appeals to a broad swathe of the French public.
Public intellectual and famed author Michel Houellebecq may have summed up the general sentiment felt by many French during his explosive interview in 2023 when he said: “The wish of the native French population, as they say, is not that Muslims assimilate, but that they stop stealing from them and attacking them — or else, another solution, that they go.”
For those French people looking to live in traditional settings with lower rates of immigration and crime, they may find this is increasingly difficult. For one, the French immigrant population continues to hit record highs year after year, while the government is actively promoting mass immigration into the rural countryside as the cities begin to overflow and social ills explode.
Many of the regions of France with the lowest immigration levels also feature more isolated communities, which may appeal to some, but for jobseekers and those looking for specific careers, often the cities are the only option.
The data from OVMF on the location of migrant centers may be especially interesting for potential real estate buyers. The issue of migrant accommodation centers is socially explosive across Europe, with locals in cities and towns protesting whenever governments announce the construction of such centers in their neighborhoods. Just last week, protests broke out in the Netherlands, which saw incredible police violence against protesting youths in Loosdrecht — all due to plans to create a new asylum center in the small town.
🇳🇱"We just want to fight for the safety of our girls… These girl cycle home, also in their shorts."
After Dutch police beat anti-immigration protesters in Loosdrecht, mothers have come on to the streets with their sons and daughters to protest.
A Socialist lawmaker from Pedro Sánchez’s governing party has urged supporters to physically confront Spaniards who criticize the government’s mass regularization of illegal immigrants, telling them to hit opponents when they complain about the highly controversial measure.
Juanjo Marcano DaSilva, a Socialist (PSOE) member of the Madrid regional assembly, made the remarks while defending the Sánchez government’s migration policy, which has opened the door for hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants to obtain legal status in Spain.
Spain’s Socialist-led government finalized the measure in April, allowing undocumented migrants who arrived before Dec. 31, 2025, and can prove at least five months of residence, as well as a clean criminal record, to apply for temporary legal status and work permits. The government estimates around 500,000 people could qualify, although experts have suggested the figure could be considerably higher, possibly up to 1.6 million people. The measure was pushed through by decree, bypassing a normal parliamentary vote.
In the remarks, Marcano DaSilva mocked those who argue that the program is a mass amnesty and said they deserved to be “denied” or shut down.
“When they come with the nonsense that this is massive, please deny them, because it is what they deserve,” he said, according to a recording made during an internal meeting held in Rivas-Vaciamadrid, published by Frontera.
He then claimed some critics were speaking out of ignorance, while others were acting in bad faith.
“There are people among them, many do it out of ignorance, but others do it with bad intentions,” he said.
DaSilva can then be heard saying that when a “fascist” argues the policy is massive, supporters should “pick up something big and hit him in the face.”
He then repeated the call to use a book against opponents, saying: “So, take a bigger book and give the fascist another slap in the face.”
“Make it even bigger when they come with the nonsense that migrants are criminals,” he added.
Spain’s General Commissariat last month suggested the real figure of regularizations could be up to 1.6 million potential applicants.
These figures come against the backdrop of a sharp rise in illegal immigration. According to estimates cited from the Funcas think tank, the number of undocumented migrants in Spain has surged from around 107,000 in 2017 to nearly 840,000 in 2025 — an increase of almost 685 percent. Funcas also estimates that illegal migrants now account for 17.2 percent of the non-EU foreign population.
Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, said, “The Spanish people have not given permission for this. If the illegals ‘already form part of our daily life,’ it is only because you and the [center-right] PP have let them in against our laws and against our interests.”
A 21-year-old Syrian man convicted of raping a 13-year-old Norwegian girl in a bike shed will serve just six months in prison after a court cited his low IQ, limited development, and a recent change in Norwegian sentencing law.
Abdelmonem Abdelrazak Al-Yousef was found guilty by Nord-Troms and Senja District Court on March 31 in relation to the rape that occurred during the night of Sept. 7, 2024, near the Harbour Terminal in Tromso.
As reported by Norwegian news outlet Document, the teen victim had left her home during the night and gone into the city center. At the Harbour Terminal, she encountered Al-Yousef and another man. The court said there was little conversation because the defendant spoke only Arabic.
The court found that Al-Yousef first assaulted the girl on a bench near the Edge Hotel before the abuse continued in a covered bicycle parking area belonging to the Harbour Terminal. He also attempted vaginal intercourse, but the judgment said he did not succeed because the victim did not want to.
Al-Yousef, who arrived in Norway from Syria in 2023, initially denied ever meeting the girl and denied being the person seen in surveillance images. He later admitted meeting and kissing her, but continued to deny sexual activity or entering the bicycle area.
Police found semen on the asphalt at the scene, and DNA testing linked it to Al-Yousef. The court rejected his defense, noting it was entirely lacking in credibility.
The court also found that Al-Yousef should have understood the girl was underage. The victim had said she was born in 2008, while a witness said she appeared visibly young and childlike. In a police interview, Al-Yousef himself said she looked small and around the same age as his younger sister, who was born in 2010.
However, the sentence was reduced after forensic psychiatric experts found that he had a mild intellectual disability. One assessment estimated his IQ at 41, although a later report put it in the range of 64 to 75.
The court treated his condition as a mitigating factor and said that, despite being 19 years and 8 months old at the time of the offense, his developmental level could be considered comparable to that of the 13-year-old victim.
The judgment, cited by Utenfilter, said, “In mitigation, the court finds that it must be emphasized that the defendant is most likely no further along in development than the victim, and that he appears to have a reduced understanding of reality.”
The case was also affected by a Norwegian legal change that entered into force last July, when the minimum sentence for rape of children under 14 was repealed. Previously, such cases carried a minimum sentence of three years in prison.
The court described the abuse as degrading and clearly exploitative, noting that it took place outdoors in public after the defendant and victim had met only a short time earlier. It nevertheless set a starting point of two years in prison before reducing the effective sentence.
After deductions for Al-Yousef’s low level of development and the age of the case, one year and six months of the sentence was made conditional with a three-year probation period. As a result, he will serve six months in prison.
The victim was awarded 280,000 Norwegian kroner (€25,700) in compensation for damages. The court said that although the girl had reportedly not described the incident as especially burdensome, she was young and such events could affect her later in life.
A German youth said he was raped in a school toilet by five Syrians while he was just 13 years old, but that the case was thrown out by a judge, despite the fact that DNA was reportedly collected after the rape.
“I was raped by five Syrians in the school toilet,” the youth told German commentator and media presenter eingollan during a street interview at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. When she asked him how he was raped, he said: “Just like that.. Carried by five people. I was like a plank in the air, so to speak, and they all carried me into (the toilet).”
🇩🇪🔴This German youth says that 5 Syrians raped him in 10th grade in a school toilet.
Afterwards, the judge just let them go.
When asked by @eingollan_real if they were punished in court, he said that DNA samples were taken which confirmed the attack, but that "nothing"… pic.twitter.com/XbqR00INX7
He also detailed further abuse and bullying at the hands of the youths, stating: “They poured Tabasco sauce in my eyes, threw me in the organic waste trash can, and so on.
The story, which involved all minors, was not covered in the German media, likely due to the ages of the perpetrators and the victim.
She seems taken aback by the story, stating: “All of a sudden, you throw something like that out. I wasn’t prepared at all… Wow, I’m so sorry that we probably won’t be able to get any sympathy. But it’s amazing that you can talk about it so openly, that it happened to you.”
He then reassures her that the incident happened a long time ago, that he was 13 at the time, and that the alleged perpetrators were in the 10th grade.
When he asked if they were punished in court, he said: “Nothing at all. So I was in court, and they were completely acquitted. Lack of evidence, allegedly. Although samples were taken from me and everything turned out positive, the judge didn’t really care much.”
In the full video, he went further, stating that he could not understand how they could have done that to him, regardless of what kind of background or experiences they had in life. Furthermore, he says that since his political opinion is different from others, he has lost friends over his views.
“Yes, I don’t understand that either. But I also find it relatively sad that every time something happens, people always say, ‘He has his problems, he has his bad experiences and so on.’ And I don’t think you should use that as an excuse for committing such acts, whether they are supposed to be psychological problems. I also have many friends who disagree with me. I’ve also lost a lot of friends because of it.”
The man is dressed in many ways like a typical hipster, normally associated with left-wing views, but during the interview, he says that he is on the side of the right “even if I don’t look like it.”
They then discuss the cases of judges letting criminals loose with no consequences or very little consequences, which has been a hot topic across Europe.
The youth said that “no matter what your problems are, you shouldn’t make excuses for them. So no matter what the problems are, how big the problems are, the child will still be traumatized and is perhaps afraid of experiencing such situations or similar situations again. For example, let’s take my case now, where a child becomes afraid to go to the school toilet or something like that. And this child will be traumatized for the rest of its life. It stays in that little child’s head forever. And it is simply excused because the gentleman has some kind of problem. I don’t think that should happen.”
The 20-year-old woman had been forced to serve a longer prison sentence than the actual gang rapists in the Wandsbek district court for “insult and threat” due to a message she left one of the rapists. She called him a “dishonorable rapist pig” and a “disgusting miscarriage,” and also asked him: “Aren’t you ashamed when you look in the mirror?”
The woman did not know the perpetrator but saw his number circulating on the web after it was leaked by internet sleuths trying to mete out extrajudicial justice in the wake of the lenient verdict.
Syrians are known to be especially overrepresented in violence and sexual crimes in Germany. For example, new data showed they are 11 times more likely to commit violence than Germans.
More than three-quarters of people wanted on arrest warrants in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are foreign nationals, according to figures released by the state’s left-wing coalition government in response to a parliamentary inquiry from the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The data showed 1,497 people are currently wanted on arrest warrants in the northeastern German state, of whom 1,134 do not hold German passports. The largest groups are Polish nationals, with 364 cases, followed by Georgians with 107, Romanians with 75, Ukrainians with 68, and Tunisians with 58.
The figures also showed that around 100 foreign nationals are wanted on two arrest warrants, 29 are wanted on three, and six are wanted on more than three.
The imbalance becomes even more striking in cases involving violent crime. Of 83 people wanted on arrest warrants for violent offenses in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, 74 are foreign nationals, amounting to almost 90 percent. The largest groups in this category are Tunisians, with nine cases, Poles with eight, and Moroccans and Russians with five each.
The AfD, which requested the figures, said the data exposed the consequences of failed migration and security policies.
“Foreign criminals contribute significantly to crime in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania,” said Nikolaus Kramer, chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in the state parliament. He argued that a higher propensity for violence, disregard for law and order, and contempt for German society were factors behind the figures.
Kramer also said foreign offenders may have more opportunities to evade law enforcement, either by returning to their countries of origin or disappearing into existing migrant communities in Germany.
The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania figures follow similar state-level data elsewhere in Germany, showing foreign nationals disproportionately represented in a range of crime categories.
In Bavaria, a report from the state government in response to an inquiry by AfD lawmaker Martin Böhm found that foreign nationals accounted for almost half of all criminal suspects in 2024, despite making up around 18 percent of the state’s population.
The Bavarian data used the suspect burden number, which measures the number of suspects per 100,000 people in a given population group aged eight and over. According to the report, foreign nationals made up 43 percent of suspects in sexual offenses, 49 percent in robbery cases, 47 percent in serious bodily harm and violent crime, and 40 percent in murder and manslaughter cases.
It is important to note that in German crime stats, those who are foreign-born but subsequently naturalized are included as German for these purposes, meaning the number of foreign-born suspects is likely to be far higher.
The report also showed that Turkish, Ukrainian, and Romanian nationals were around four times more likely than Germans to be suspected of violent crimes. However, the Bavarian government did not provide suspect burden figures for several smaller foreign population groups, including Syrians, Afghans, and Iraqis, citing the risk of statistical distortion where the population group was below 100,000.
Public transport crime in Baden-Württemberg has also become a major focus. A response from the state’s Interior Ministry to an AfD inquiry found that 30,950 suspects were recorded for crimes on public transport in 2024, an average of around 85 per day.
🇩🇪‼️ "I will beat you till you die… Look at your pig skin."
A migrant makes sexist, racist, and anti-LGBT remarks against young women in the Berlin train system near the Tempelhof stop. pic.twitter.com/LuJZCcrTsT
Of those suspects, 19,138 were non-German nationals, or 62 percent, compared with 11,812 German suspects. The figures did not include immigration offenses, of which there were an additional 20,339 recorded violations. Including those cases, the total number of recorded incidents connected to public transport rose to 51,289.
Foreign nationals also made up a majority of suspects in several specific public transport crime categories in Baden-Württemberg. They accounted for 53 percent of violent crime suspects, 64 percent of theft suspects, 56 percent of drug offense suspects, and 61 percent of weapons offense suspects.
According to Germany’s 2025 police crime statistics, published last week by the Federal Criminal Police Office, the proportion of non-German suspects continued to rise, particularly in serious and violent crime categories.
The data showed foreign nationals were responsible for 41 percent of all violent crimes and 38 percent of murders, despite foreigners making up around 15 percent of the population. They were also listed as suspects in 36 percent of all sexual offenses, rising to 39.1 percent when only rape and sexual assault were counted.
The figures also showed around 29,000 knife-related crimes per year in Germany, equivalent to roughly 80 per day, with knives used in about four in 10 murder and manslaughter cases.
A new poll from the presitigous ifop polling firm shows that a large majority of French citizens believe in a core tenent of the Great Replacement.
Specifically, 60 percent of French people told ifop they believe we are witnessing “a replacement of the French population by non-European populations, mainly from the African continent.”
The poll also found that 66 percent see it as a bad development, compared to 9 percent who see it as a good thing.
Two weeks ago, Marion Maréchal, leader of Identité Libertés, posted to X: “60% of French people think that we are witnessing ‘a replacement of the French population by non-European populations mainly from Africa’ according to @IfopOpinion. To our greatest misfortune, our rulers are among the 40%.”
Analyst Paul Cébille, from the Hexagone Observatory, posted the same line.
💥📊 Chiffre choc passé inaperçu⤵️
🔸60% des Français pensent que l'on assiste à "un remplacement de la population française par des populations non-européennes principalement issues du continent africain."
🔸Et 66% y voient une mauvaise chose, contre 9% une bonne.
According to the data from IFOP, 7 percent are undecided.
According to the French Directorate General for Foreigners (DGEF), valid French residence permits in 2025 hit an unprecedented level of 4.5 million, an increase of approximately 3 percent, driven primarily by multi-year permits and long-term resident cards, writes Le Journal du Dimanche.
For 2025, one in three permits was issued for family reasons (1.5 million), while one in five was an automatic renewal. New permits also increased to 384,000, a jump of 11 percent, which was partly driven by a 65 percent increase in admissions for humanitarian reasons.
Foreigners with legal status now represent 8.1 percent of France’s adult population, with a high concentration of nationalities from the Maghreb. At the same time, regularizations have declined (-10%, to 28,610), while deportations have increased sharply (+15.7%, to 24,985), reaching their highest level in a decade, notes JDD.
Maréchal more recently posted a telling video of the number of illegals coming to the EU, blasting French leaders for their continuous stance of “above all, let’s do nothing!”
L’immigration illégale dans l’UE de 2008 à 2024. Chaque point représente 100 clandestins. Réaction des gouvernements français successifs en voyant cela : « surtout ne faisons rien ! ». pic.twitter.com/0G78rKLeIy
Maréchal has also been a vocal critic of Spain’s Socialist PM Pedro Sánchez for his “irresponsible regularization of 500,000 undocumented immigrants,” a figure that some say is likely to skyrocket to over 1.5 million.
“Closing Schengen at the Spanish border is a vital act to deter and protect the French and Europeans,” she wrote. The National Rally’s Jordan Bardella has also sounded the alarm over what many consider an immediate threat to France. Bardella has made it clear that he feels the EU must alter current rules to disallow free movement within Schengen for those holding a resident permit.
Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, advisor to Polish President Karol Nawrocki and former PiS MEP, has come out swinging, questioning the motives behind Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s alarmist interview with the Financial Times in which he questions America’s loyalty to Europe’s defense and claims Russia could attack NATO “within months.”
“What is Tusk’s alarmism meant to serve?” he asks before reposting a text from historian Sławomir Dębski.
CZEMU SŁUŻY ALARMIZM TUSKA ❓
„Jeśli premier naprawdę wierzy, że Rosja może zaatakować członka NATO „w ciągu miesięcy”, to właściwą odpowiedzią nie byłaby kolejna dramatyczna rozmowa z „Financial Times”. Byłoby to natychmiastowe przywrócenie powszechnej służby wojskowej w… https://t.co/Yr4EeFdYmM
Dębski, who previously served as head of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, as well as the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding, immediately notes the “performative quality” of Tusk’s alarmism. He specifically questions Tusk’s claim that Moscow could attack a NATO country “within months.”
If that was a genuine concern of Tusk, that would point to “the immediate reintroduction of universal conscription in Poland, a comprehensive mobilisation of the state, and perhaps a plane to Washington to speak directly with President Trump. That, after all, is what statesmen do when they believe war is approaching,” the historian wrote.
Instead, Dębski says Tusk is simply seeking “to frighten the public, to dramatise the moment, and to present oneself as the lonely guardian of national survival” without thinking of the impact this may have abroad, namely, that those in DC will see “little point in holding serious conversations” with Polish leadership.
The chance of any Russian attack on NATO “within months” is pretty much zero, he continues, citing Moscow’s ongoing war against Ukraine. “It has neither the political nor the military freedom to open a second front against the Alliance.”
“Russia is dangerous, brutal, and revisionist. But it is not omnipotent. So the real question is not whether Moscow is preparing to invade NATO next month. The real question is why the Polish Prime Minister has chosen to speak as if it were,” the historian concludes.
Saryusz-Wolski went after Tusk in another post for trying to “push the United States out of Poland and Europe” in his FT interview, during which he questions NATO’s Article 5. “Tusk, instead of doing everything in his power to anchor the USA in Poland and Europe—the main guarantor of our security after the Polish armed forces—has taken on the role of the chief pusher of the United States out of Poland and Europe,” he wrote.
‼️TUSK PODDAJE W WĄTPLIWOŚĆ ARTYKUŁ 5 NATO‼️
KOMU TO SŁUŻY ⁉️
JAK TO OKREŚLIĆ ⁉️
Tusk, zamiast ze wszystkich sił kotwiczyć USA w Polsce i Europie, głównego, po polskiej sile zbrojnej, gwaranta naszego bezpieczeństwa, podjął się roli głównego wypychacza Stanów z Polski i… pic.twitter.com/MY8MEuurpU
In another post, he quotes an article that states, “Tusk Wants to Seal the European Superstate at the Expense of Polish Security.”
Saryusz-Wolski has been a long-standing critic of Brussels’ elites and their pet projects, be that damaging green policies, the war in Ukraine, or the disastrous Mercosur free trade agreement. In this last matter, the advisor to President Nawrocki was adamant that Poland’s parliament block Tusk from being able to simply cave to Germany’s wishes, to the detriment of its own farmers and industry.
Germany’s influence in the EU is a common topic of concern among member states, particularly those who promote a more sovereigntist approach to the Union.
Just this week, Saryusz-Wolski posted in support of National Rally’s Jordan Bardella, who has vowed to combat what he calls Berlin’s “excessive influence.”
Germany’s birth rate last year was at its lowest since World War II, according to data released Tuesday by the federal statistics office Destatis. In total, the country saw 1.01 million deaths and just 654,300 births, a drop of 3.4 percent versus 2024.
The data and accompanying statement, cited by the Mandiner news portal, also noted that this is the fourth consecutive year that the number of births in Germany has decreased and represents the lowest figure since 1946.
The issue, as is the case for many Western countries, is that people are simply deciding to have fewer or no children. Destatis points to the less populous generations born in the 1990s, after the reunification of the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR; they have now entered their thirties, when it is customary to decide whether to have children, and are not. Another factor is simply that Germany’s fertility rate, the number of children a woman is expected ot have over her lifetime, has been decreasing since 2022.
It is worth noting that the drop of 4.5 percent in the eastern part of the country (the former GDR provinces) was more severe than the 3.2 percent decline in the western provinces of the country, according to the Destatis statement.
The only German state where the number of births increased was Hamburg, where 0.5 percent more babies were born.
Another issue is Germany’s aging population, with the country home to the oldest working age group in the European Union. According to data published in February, nearly a quarter of the country’s workers were between 55 and 64 years old, and the resulting labor shortage is already holding back growth in several sectors.
Data for 2024 shows that around 19 million people in Germany were aged 65 or older – about 23 percent of the total population, a figure that was only 15 percent in 1991. of the population was aged over 65.
A surprising addition to the statement was that Germany can improve on these present statistics “through an increase in the birth rate and at least moderate immigration.” This is a shock given the realities that Germany is having ot face due to all the problems immigration has brought.
Last July, Remix News wrote about Thilo Sarrazin, the author of “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (“Germany Is Abolishing Itself”), who sparked controversy this month with a revised edition of his bestseller.
“Back then, I predicted that within a few decades, Germans would become a minority in their own homeland,” Sarrazin said. “But it will come much sooner.”
New data released by Eurostat on Wednesday reveals a staggering rise in reported sexual crimes across the European Union, with Spain showing an increase far beyond the continental average.
Spain has seen one of the most significant shifts in reporting, according to Spain’s La Razon outlet. In 2024, the country registered “5,222 violations” compared to only “1,239 in 2014.” This represents a “322 percent increase,” a figure that sits “well above the 150 percent average in the EU.”
What Eurostat does not provide is data on who is committing these crimes. However, other sources have explored this issue. As Remix News reported last year, a CEU-CEFAS Demographic Observatory report titled “Demography of Crime in Spain” showed that foreigners, who make up 31 percent of Spain’s prison population and commit per capita 500 percent more rapes and 414 percent more murders than Spanish citizens. The highest rates are seen among Arabs and Latinos, with many of them hailing from countries in South America known for their extremely high crime rates.
While the murder numbers are stable in Spain at 300 per year, there has been explosive growth in attempted murders. Over the course of just four years, between 2019 and 2023, attempted murder cases nearly doubled, going from 836 to 1,507.
In just five years, penetrative rape cases also soared 143 percent, going from 2,143 in 2019 to 5,206 in 2024.
As Remix News has reported on in the past, in many Spanish states, the crime statistics show massive overrepresentation of foreigners in serious crimes like sexual assault, including in the Basque region.
In cases of robbery with violence, foreigners are 440 percent more likely to commit such a crime. Many such cases have made headlines in the Spanish media.
The study heads indicated that Spain’s aging population should have led to a decrease in crime rates, but the influx of migrants, amounting to 3.8 million per decade, has led to an “imported crime” problem.
The report confirmed a consistent pattern that violent crime is predominantly committed by young men. Specifically concerning nationality, the study indicates that foreigners have much higher crime rates than Spaniards, particularly for the most serious offenses against persons, such as homicide, rape, and robbery. This overrepresentation is noted to be especially pronounced among individuals of African and Latin American origin.
🇪🇸‼️ 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
Data on the prison population supports this finding: in 2024, 31 percent of the prison population was foreign-born (excluding naturalized or second-generation immigrants). This proportion is more than double their share of the general population in the 20-69 age group, with North Africans and Latin Americans showing significant overrepresentation.
Rape and sexual crimes jump across Europe
According to the report, police forces across EU member states registered “more than 250,000 crimes of sexual violence” in 2024. Of these recorded offenses, “almost 100,000 (38 percent) were rapes,” marking a “150 percent more than a decade ago” increase.
The Eurostat statistical office highlighted a “sustained upward trend over the last ten years, with an average growth of almost 10 percent annually in sexual violence and 7 percent in rape”. In total, cases of sexual violence nearly doubled in the EU, seeing “124,350 more cases than in 2014,” while the number of rapes added “nearly 59,000 additional crimes in that period.”
However, Eurostat suggests these numbers may not reflect a simple increase in crime alone. The office noted that the surge “could be linked to greater social awareness, which would have impacted reporting rates.”
France’s latest incident of violence perpetrated by someone with a migration background has left 57-year-old Yasmine Zekia Benhebri dead. The murder took place in Pantin, Seine-Saint-Denis.
Brahim B., a 27-year-old French-Tunisian travel agent, was formally charged on Wednesday, April 29, with the murder of his 57-year-old colleague. Benhebri was a mother who worked with him at the Al Hayat Voyages agency, which specializes in pilgrimages to Mecca, reports Le Parisien.
At a court hearing for the case, prosecutors say that Brahim B. struck and then strangled his colleague before hiding her body in a closet, wrapped in a garbage bag. The body was not discovered until more than three days later. In the meantime, the suspect reportedly actively participated in the search, helped distribute the missing person notice, and alerted local shopkeepers.
Brahim B. even allegedly took police around the agency upon their arrival and opened closets in front of them.
During the proceedings, the prosecution referred to the “extreme violence” of the act. When questioned by the judge about his participation in the search, Brahim B. replied, “I didn’t realize I had committed this act. For me, she had simply disappeared.” His own lawyer, Adrien Sorrentino, spoke of “a fully admitted murder,” while also stating, “We still lack the motive for this abominable act.”
Initially, police had opened an investigation into Yasmine Zekia Benhebri’s disappearance, but then inconsistencies were found in the suspect’s schedule and phone records placed Yasmine’s last recorded phone signal at the agency.
According to Le Parisien, Brahim B. allegedly mentioned a request for financial assistance that was refused by the victim, an explanation the prosecutor’s office urges caution in considering. “This is a closed-door investigation, and for the time being, we only have the statements of the accused,” they told the court.
The suspect has been placed in pretrial detention, as requested by the prosecutor.
In what would be a monumental turn of events in German politics, the governing coalition is beginning to show some serious cracks, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hinting that snap elections could come in the future.
While touting Germany’s planned healthcare reforms and a deal on the 2027 budget on Wednesday, seemingly assuring those present that his volatile coalition could still govern, he also raised doubts when he was asked about his coalition’s ability to survive to the end of its term, stating that “no one can guarantee anything.”
During the press conference, Merz said the government’s healthcare reform, approved by the Berlin cabinet following months of intense debate, was “one of the most significant social welfare reforms of recent decades.”
BREAKING NIUS: Der Kanzler will nicht mehr garantieren, dass die Koalition hält: "Garantieren kann niemand für nichts." An einem Tag der wehleidigen Horror-Kommunikation ("Kein Bundeskanzler vor mir hat so etwas ertragen müssen.") setzt Friedrich Merz noch einen drauf. Er kann… pic.twitter.com/ZYnXKNZAG8
Merz is under intense pressure, with the rival Alternative for Germany (AfD) party pulling ahead as the most popular party in the country, reaching a record of 28 percent of support in the latest Insa poll, a record high. Merz’s own approval is at rock-bottom levels, with data showing that 83 percent of Germans are dissatisfied with his performance. Germany’s economic problems are one of the major factors driving resentment, with the latest energy shock not helping matters.
Addressing the AfD’s growth, along with the Left Party, he stated: “The rise of the fringes is a direct symptom of a center that is seen as indecisive.”
Citing the crisis his government is facing, Merz claimed in a quote that has been widely panned since he uttered it: “No chancellor before me has had to endure something like this,” while responding to a question about his plummeting approval ratings.
He cited various factors that have led to political instability, including the rise of populism, the neglect of infrastructure for 20 years, and crises like the war in Iran.
Following the cabinet meeting, Merz told reporters that the deal “demonstrates that this coalition is willing and able to make decisions.” He further noted, “We can compromise and we negotiate, even if things get a little shaky at times,” adding, “That is simply part of the process.”
Despite his claims, the junior far-left Social Democrats and Merz’s CDU are coming into open conflict. Now, given the CDU’s desire for deep cuts to social programs, the SPD is pushing back.
Merz argues that the healthcare system is heading for a crisis, and that without reform, the budget deficit could grow to €40 billion by 2030.
The SPD is not Merz’s only problem, as a significant right-leaning faction of the CDU is increasingly unhappy with his performance and what they feel is the CDU’s inability to pass laws and reforms with the far-left SPD as its partner.
CDU MP Christian von Stetten, for example, reportedly told a business event recently that the coalition would “definitely not” last the full four years of its term.
Among the other proposals the coalition is attempting to pass is an income tax law, which Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) said would cut the tax burden “several hundred euros per year” for low-income households while raising taxes on the wealthy. The draft budget framework shows that spending will amount to €543.3 billion, with €105.8 billion earmarked for Germany’s military.
Klingbeil acknowledged “passionate discussions” and “conflicting positions” between the coalition partners. Among the right-leaning CDU politicians, there has been sharp criticisms of government spending, with many desiring to put a lid on welfare payments, among other areas.
There was much speculation that the last Olaf Scholz government would fall apart before its term ended, but in that case, all the parties hung on until near the very end. A similar scenario could play out here, where both the CDU and SPD remain at loggerheads, but fear losing power, especially to a surging AfD.
There are also rumors that the CDU may pursue ruling with a minority government. There are discussions about calling a vote of no-confidence. A Welt article published today, which interviews dozens of insiders, explores the fact that Merz has “exhausted” his number of close confidantes and that anger is growing in CDU ranks.
“In recent days, the possibility of a vote of confidence has been circulating in Union circles. This means that the Chancellor would have to ask the question in the Bundestag whether the majority of the members of parliament who elected him to office still support him. In the Union, this is seen as an instrument to push through major reform against all odds by directly linking it to the fate of the government. Or, in case of failure, to pave the way to a minority government,” writes Welt.
In Germany, a chancellor can call a vote of no-confidence and lose but still govern with a minority government. In such a case, the CDU may require a shift to working with the AfD to pass major legislation. However, German governments, unlike other national European governments, are not designed to run as minorities for long, with the political economy of the country geared towards stable coalitions.
Polish billionaire and owner of InPost Rafał Brzoska is celebrating a major court victory against Meta after he filed a lawsuit against Facebook’s parent company.
“This is an unprecedented ruling that will set a completely new legal precedent in the European Union for similar cases where the image of public figures is used as a tool for crime, and Meta has so far pretended it wasn’t their fault!” he wrote on his Facebook page.
“We have a groundbreaking ruling from the Warsaw Court of Appeals clearly stating that Meta is responsible for the scam,” his post continued.
Two years ago, Brzoska and his TV presenter wife, Omenaa Mensah, were targeted by fake posts on Facebook, suggesting, among other things, that Mensah was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of her husband, while other posts portrayed her as the perpetrator. Some had even suggested she had died, reports Do Rzeczy.
The famous couple filed, and a ruling yesterday from Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court indicated that “if a platform decides which ads are published, verifies them before they are broadcast, targets recipients and earns billions from it, it is not a neutral observer,” but an active participant in the system who is responsible for what is displayed to users.
“We’re coming for you—and not just in Poland anymore,” he remarked on his post celebrating the ruling.
Brzoska also noted similar fake posts used on Instagram, saying thousands have lost their “life savings” from ads for schemes that used his image illegally. He said a large portion of Meta’s revenues comes from such false adverts.
“Lately, you’ve been reporting another flood of scams involving fake ads using my image on Facebook and Instagram—thousands of victims falling for these ads and losing their life savings! What’s more, according to Reuters, as much as 10% of the company’s revenue comes from fake ads and scams of all kinds. We’re talking about up to 16 billion dollars.”
The couple also reported the matter to the Personal Data Protection Office. Under the GDPR, the Office ordered Meta Platforms Ireland Limited to suspend the display of false ads using Brzoska’s name and image on Facebook and Instagram in Poland for three months.
Brzoska is determined that his court ruling marks “the moment when the model of impunity of large platforms begins to crack.”
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) has vowed to cut off taxpayer money for left-wing activist groups after a Berlin organization that runs a coworking café that reportedly excludes White people received more than €662,000 in public funding.
The controversy centers on BIWOC Rising, a nonprofit group in Berlin-Kreuzberg that operates a coworking space and café marketed as a protected venue for Black, Indigenous, and women of color, as well as transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people of color.
Critics say the model amounts to a publicly subsidized space that excludes white people while presenting itself as a project for tolerance, diversity, and democracy.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said the case showed why the party wants to overhaul Germany’s taxpayer-funded activist sector.
“A Berlin café that bans white people from entering was funded with €662,450 in taxpayer money — from the federal program ‘Democracy in Action!’ Pure racism! The AfD will drain the NGO swamp and end the waste of taxpayer money on left-wing ideology,” she wrote on X.
Ein Berliner Café, das Weißen den Zutritt verbietet, wurde mit 662.450 Euro Steuergeld gefördert – aus dem Bundesprogramm „Demokratie leben!“. Rassismus pur! Die AfD wird den NGO-Sumpf austrocknen & die Steuergeldverschwendung für linke Ideologie beenden.https://t.co/Ky6H66dbll
According to German media reports citing funding lists from the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, BIWOC Rising received €662,450 from the federal “Live Democracy!” program between 2021 and 2024. Other calculations place the figure closer to €800,000 when related funding is included, according to reporting from Tichys Einblick.
The program was created to support democracy, counter extremism, and prevent radicalization, but critics say the BIWOC Rising case exposes how public money has been channeled into highly ideological projects.
The group’s official charitable purposes reportedly include education, the promotion of tolerance, and support for people persecuted on political, racial, or religious grounds. However, questions have been raised over how those aims can be reconciled with a venue that restricts access according to racial and identity categories.
The organization is believed not to have responded to media inquiries about the allegations.
It’s not the first time allegations of White racism have been made within German institutions. In August 2023, a German museum of industrial heritage in Dortmund was scolded for only allowing “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color” to enter the museum on Saturdays between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. for the “That’s Colonial” exhibition. The Zollern Colliery museum argued it was creating a “safer space” intended to protect people of color from “further discrimination.”
The exclusive access was “an offer for BIPoC and black people to be able to withdraw and exchange ideas openly,” according to the museum. “For BIPoC, such safe spaces are rarely found in everyday life or in museum rooms.”
In May 2025, the German Evangelical Church (EKD) was accused of racism after banning White children from attending a workshop on being “courageous and strong” during its Church Congress in Hanover.
The “Become Courage and Strong” workshop was, again, only open to Black, indigenous, and children of color. However, while ethnic Germans and ethnic Europeans are indigenous to Germany and Europe, the designation did not apply to them, only indigenous people from other continents.
“This offer is aimed exclusively at Black, Indigenous, and children of color,” read the program website.
In January of this year, the German taxpayer-funded NGO “Black Sheep,” Schwarze Schafe in German, was offering a six-month intensive seminar designed specifically for White individuals to examine their “alleged privileges,” which is modeled after the concept of “Critical Whiteness.”
The organization, which identifies as a “post-migrant education initiative,” has received significant taxpayer funding from Germans and operates a reporting center for anti-Muslim racism.
White participants were expected to pay up to €2,290 for the course that runs from March to September.
An asylum seeker from Syria, a 23-year-old known to the police, allegedly attempted to rape a 15-year-old girl during a horrific act at night on an ICE night train on April 22 at 1:00 a.m.
The teenager resisted and managed to escape the train toilet, only for the perpetrator to follow her and attack her again in the gangway.
A brave traveler and fellow passengers raised the alarm, alerting the train crew of ICE 921, who rushed to help.
A police spokesman confirmed that, “according to an initial assessment by the Dortmund public prosecutor’s office, there is initial suspicion of sexual harassment in connection with bodily harm.“
The suspect, identified as Bashar A., reportedly lives in the Netherlands but maintains a long criminal record in Germany, including for sexual offenses, according to Bild newspaper.
The police confirmed his criminal history, stating, “The man is known for similar offenses.“
His record also reportedly includes aggravated robbery and violations of gun laws.
Despite the nature of the attack, a police spokesman noted, “Initial findings indicate a relationship between the suspect and the 15-year-old.“
Railway employees managed to restrain Bashar A. until the train reached Dortmund main station, where the Federal Police took him into custody. However, the suspect is now free again.
Explaining the release, a police spokesman stated, “The special requirements for pre-trial detention were not met.“
This indicates that a judge apparently did not find a sufficient risk of escape or repetition to justify continued detention.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician Martin Hess wrote about the incident on X, stating: “In an ICE train to Dortmund, a 23-year-old Syrian is said to have attempted to rape a 15-year-old girl in the train toilet…The judge apparently saw no risk of flight or repetition.”
He then stated that a “real change can only come with the AfD.”
The German government and its various media arms continue to deny the massive issues brought to the country’s soil by mass immigration over the last decade. Many Germans have increasingly had enough.
“Our children did not have to die alone” is the title of the piece in Berliner Zeitung, bemoaning the fact that a vigil in Dresden this past weekend commemorating the victims of migrant crimes perpetrated in the city was not “newsworthy” enough for the MDR (Central German Broadcasting) to cover. It also does not seem to be covered by any mainstream news portal. Certainly, none of the established politicians attended, including former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who still claims she has no regrets about opening the borders to Germany.
🇩🇪🔴Germans marched in Dresden to honor victims of migrant violence, with nearly everyone on the list below having died at the hands of a foreign national.
Known as the "Mourning Vigil Germany," marchers held photos of their deceased loved ones.
The father of 17-year-old Ann-Marie, Michael Kyrath, spoke at the vigil, recounting the horror of losing his daughter, who was killed along with her 19-year-old boyfriend, Danny, in a commuter train in January 2023 when a stateless Palestinian man with multiple prior convictions and a deportation order stabbed them both 38 times.
Kyrath is part of a growing network of families mourning the loss of their children and loved ones to the epidemic of migrant crime across Germany. By many measures, he is considered the leader of this movement. He says he was shocked when families of girls who had suffered violent sexual assaults also started contacting him. “”I sometimes sit across from girls as young as 10 years old,” he said.
The present refusal to even recognize the violence committed against the locals of a major German city brings up memories of what happened just two years ago, this time by leftist Greens who sought to rewrite history. Every year, Germans gather at a memorial in Dresden to commemorate the victims of the carpet bombing of the city by the Allies during World War II. Apparently, doing so only fuels right-wing nationalism, according to the left.
Efforts to cancel the event have so far failed, with the memorial taking place this past February as usual.
The vigil for victims of migrant crime this past weekend went ahead as planned as well, however, a media fearful of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), is placing a media blackout on th event. The AfD just hit a new record high of 28 percent in the polls, all as the latest crime statistics, which were released this month, show that 42 percent of all violent crime in the country is committed by foreigners.
Germany has long been at loggerheads over the issue of migrant crime, with right-wing and even center-right parties battling leftist forces determined to change the demographic makeup of the country. The ruling CDU/CSU has long unleashed rhetoric against mass immigration, in particular illegal immigraiton, but so far, they have refused to team up with the anti-migration AfD party to bring real change.
In the meantime, there has been very little influx of qualified professionals, and mass immigration remains an incredibly net fiscal negative for German society, despite promises from the CDU. In fact, the opposite has been true, with migrants continuously representing a far larger share of criminal perpetrators than their share of the population.
🇩🇪A tale of two Germanys🇩🇪
🔴The first Germany represents illiterate Syrian migrant Ahmad A. and his 2 wives and 6 children. The entire family received free housing and welfare thanks to German taxpayers.
Another issue is the growing threat of Islam, which has been forced upon Germany via migration.
Ex-TV-Moderator Waldemar Hartmann, who spoke at the vigil in Dresden, issued a response to former CDU president Christian Wulff’s statement that “Islam belongs to Germany.”
“Islam exists, yes, but it does not belong to Germany.”
There may be many who feel otherwise, but the data from the federal police about Muslims in Germany is alarming, with nearly 50 percent of Muslims under the age of 40 in Germany hold “Islamist” views, with these Muslims expressing an attraction to Islamism, a preference for Sharia law over the German Basic Law, and harboring anti-Semitic prejudices.
Hartmann also criticized Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s speech last November, warning against the dangers of far-right extremism and populism.
“I can handle it. But I am deeply worried about the future of this country, especially for the young people,” he said.
The German state and the media are aware there is an undeniable crisis, but the answer is more taxes.
“In addition to raising tobacco and alcohol taxes, the federal government now also wants to introduce a ‘sugar tax.’ This is not about health, but about financing climate, migration, and Ukraine policies. We will not only immediately abolish the sugar tax again,” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel posted on X.
As Germany now faces record bankruptcies and layoffs amidst an energy crisis and multiple wars, the government is telling Germans to do more after “living beyond their means” for so long, a statement made by CDU Minister Warken on the health insurance reform that Weidel called “outrageous.”
“For more than 10 years, Germany’s workers have co-financed all those who have never paid a cent into the social system. No German insured person in private or statutory health insurance has ‘lived beyond their means,’ yet they are now being punished for the CDU’s migration policy,” she wrote, adding that if in power, the AfD would “immediately scrap this ‘reform’” and initiate deportations to ease the continuous “burden” on working Germans forced to finance this social experiment.
Weidell’s stance may be driving the parties growing popularity.
It has now been revealed that a suspected Hamas operative, who was arrested for helping plan a terrorist attack in Germany, was actually on the payroll of the powerful Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s powerful domestic spy agency.
An Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician, Rene Springer, is now directing sharp criticism toward the German government following reports that a suspected terrorist was on the state payroll.
“How does an informant working for the German state come to supply Hamas with weapons and ammunition?” Springer argued that the public “must ask the question of why the state leaders of the Federal Republic have turned our nation into such an experimental laboratory, where terrorists can come and go freely—and why the Federal Republic’s domestic intelligence service even employs terrorists as agents.”
Wie kommt ein V-Mann, der für den deutschen Staat arbeitet, dazu, der Hamas Waffenmunition zu liefern?
Man muss die Frage stellen, warum die Staatslenker der Bundesrepublik aus unserer Nation so ein Versuchslabor gemacht haben, in dem Terroristen frei ein- und ausgehen können –… pic.twitter.com/VSiFFtAWv6
According to Springer, the informant Mohammad S. was well-provisioned by the state, alleging he “is alleged to have received cell phones, laptops, fake passports, and certainly good pay for his services on behalf of the domestic intelligence agency.”
Consequently, Springer claimed that “the BfV is involved when a Hamas terrorist attack on German soil is being organized.”
He contrasted this with the agency’s treatment of his own party, noting that “the same domestic intelligence agency, however, labels the AfD as ‘extremist’ because we want to deport these individuals and keep them out of the country permanently.”
He further accused the service of providing “templates to exclude migration-critical opposition figures from social life—not to mention the disproportionate surveillance and defamation.”
The Hamas plot
This political fallout stems from a foiled plot in Berlin involving a group of Palestinians who investigators believe planned an assassination attempt on Jewish or Israeli institutions. The suspects referred to ammunition for their pistols as “dates” during intercepted phone calls, according to German newspaper Die Zeit.
While several suspects were arrested in October, it was later revealed that a central figure in the logistics was Mohammad S., a 37-year-old Lebanese man living in Berlin. He had been an informant for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) since at least 2019, primarily due to his connections with Islamists in Lebanon and his history of transferring large sums of money to Syria.
The investigation detailed a series of events where Mohammad S. allegedly stepped in to provide 300 rounds of ammunition for €1,050 after a previous courier thought he would be arrested and, in a panic, threw 80 rounds of ammunition into the Spree River.
When the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) eventually searched his home, Mohammad S. was reportedly not intimidated, telling officers that he worked “as an informant for a German secret service.” He identified a brand-new iPhone, a laptop, and a Bulgarian passport in the name “Vladimir Georgiev” found in his apartment as items “related to his intelligence work.”
The shocking case shows that the BfV may have come very close to actually helping fund a terror attack on German soil.
The BfV has since confirmed to the Federal Prosecutor General that Mohammad S. was an active source until December 2025, but they insist he was never “at any time” controlled by the agency regarding the specific attack plan.
Despite the agency’s internal guidelines stating that informants “may not commit serious crimes,” Mohammad S. is now “strongly suspected” of having been a member of Hamas. He was arrested at a Berlin airport in January 2026 and currently remains in custody, facing charges of membership in a terrorist organization and trafficking in ammunition.
It must also be noted that it is not clear how much the BfV had to do with foiling the attack. Apparently, Mossad was actively surveilling these individuals on German soil and sent a warning to German authorities about the attack.
The AfD’s Springer concluded by mocking the BfV, which is known for actively surveilling AfD members and politicians. He noted that “as amateurishly as the BfV’s desk heroes may conduct themselves in their countless reports, the entanglement of this agency with genuinely dangerous, violence-prone groups is just as perilous,” ultimately asking, “How long can German democracy afford such an intelligence service?”
The European Parliament will vote today on suspending EU funding for the right-wing Patriots for Europe faction, founded by outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
At stake is the alleged mismanagement of €4.3 million of EU funds by Philip Claeys, the former secretary general of the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group, who now holds the same post for the Patriots for Europe grouping.
One vocal critic of the lack of action by Brussels in the case, according to Euractiv, has been Nick Aiossa, director of Transparency International.
To remind readers, Soros-backed Transparency International has long attacked Hungary for various alleged violations. Last February, it notoriously ranked the CEE country at the same level as Burkina Faso and South Africa in its 2024 corruption index.
Soros-backed Transparency International listed Hungary as tied with Burkina Faso and South Africa in its latest corruption index 2024.
Burkina Faso is nearly a failed state ruled by a military junta, with 2 million people displaced due to ongoing jihadist violence. The… pic.twitter.com/R4LhNcnTMi
“Considering the seriousness and scale of the irregularities identified, and given that the expenditures in question were authorised and validated under the authority of Mr Claeys, the initiation of a complementary investigation by OLAF appears both necessary and proportionate,” Transparency International stated.
The funds are implicated in various accusations of misuse, including “fictitious service contracts, improper procurement procedures and donations to non-parliamentary groups with ties to far-right figureheads, such as France’s Marine Le Pen,” notes Euractiv.
Le Pen was a major target of Brussels as well, with her rising popularity seen as a threat ahead of critical presidential elections in France next year. Her party, National Rally, also joined the Patriots for Europe group. She was, however, banned from running for office in France after being convicted for misappropriating over €4 million in European Parliament funds, a charge she continues to deny and blames on a witch hunt against anti-migration, conservative voices.
Transparency International’s Aiossa has called for Claeys to be stripped of his power as well. Claeys has denied any wrongdoing, telling Le Monde, “All payments made in the last five years have been duly invoiced, justified and controlled.”
This vote today is critical, as it will allow Brussels to continue going after Orbán by cutting funds for the group his Fidesz party belongs to and which still holds close to 12 percent of the seats in the 2024–2029 European Parliament. It is well known that the outgoing Hungarian leader, highly unpopular among Brussels elites for his sovereignty-focused, nationalist movement, is planning to renew and rebuild his brand inside his country, in Europe, and beyond.
Curbing any resurgence of Orbán will be a high priority for the EU leadership. On the other hand, they are also wrangling with getting funding as soon as possible to Hungary’s new leader, and their darling, Péter Magyar. However, this time, unlike when the right-wing conservatives were ousted from Poland, Brussels is playing hardball, insisting that certain hurdles be overcome before money is released.
Numerous mechanisms were used over the years to go after Orbán’s successive governments, with billions in EU funds ultimately frozen, specifically, €10 billion in post-Covid recovery funds and some €7 billion in cohesion funds.
Hungary has, in fact, already met 17 out of 27 conditions demanded by Brussels, for the former, but now, Magyar has only until August to deliver on judicial independence, anti-corruption safeguards and other reforms, notes Euractiv.
Balázs Orbán, the political director of outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has given his prediction on what Fidesz’s future looks like. The party, and the patriotic movement it represents, are going nowhere, he says.
“Fidesz will not disappear, because it will always be a supporter of national, conservative, right-wing politics at home and in Europe, even if the majority did not vote for it in the elections,” the politician said during an interview on the Ultrahang Youtube channel, as cited by Mandiner.
Regarding the election defeat, Balázs Orbán emphasized that the campaign was obviously not successful, otherwise this would not have been the result, but at the same time he does not feel that the message of the outgoing government party did not reach the people. He also drew attention to the fact that Fidesz and Mi Hazánk, which lies further to the right, got a collective 2.8 million votes.
“The Hungarian people decided this time based on different criteria, and it will be decided later whether Fidesz formulated realistic things. The future will prove this,” Balázs Orbán emphasized.
“Viktor Orbán is able to reorganize the national right,” he said, adding that voters understood what Fidesz was offering: peace and the maintenance of the achieved standard of living and the achievements of the past decade and a half in a period of war and economic difficulties.
Regarding election interference by Brussels, he called it unprecedented, noting that after 2022, it increased the pressure on the government, which was already being monitored by the Biden administration in America.
Balázs Orbán characterized Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party, which won the election by a landslide, as a centrist political force with a decidedly left-wing character. He believes the government will follow policy similar to that of France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz, i.e., committed to continuing European integration.
Tisza’s challenge will be fulfilling the promises it made to Hungarians regarding the economy. The new cabinet will inherit a stable economic trajectory, he said, but their campaign rhetoric would mean huge spending.
“We are not against our country. If the new government can fulfill these promises well and things will be better for the people, we will support that, but the signs do not point in this direction for now,” said Balázs Orbán.
His concern is that the measures being discussed to release funding for various programs will increase Hungary’s deficit and state debt, thus threatening the benefits implemented, both under Tisza and those previously introduced by Fidesz. Brussels has been vocal about wanting Hungary to cut certain measures, such as utility price caps and the tax exemption for mothers, and rumors have already spread that the pressure is on Magyar to institute some austerity.
This is particularly a concern given the apparent mandate of Magyar to join the eurozone by 2030, an ambitious plan that would pose some significant hurdles for Hungary to overcome.
Brussels has already achieved some wins in its desire for a more LGBTQ-friendly Hungary.
Regarding the MCC institute, Balázs Orbán, who has been the chairman of the institution’s board of trustees for six years, said that a 30-year-old institution that has educated tens of thousands of students cannot be accused of not managing its resources properly. The attacks from Tisza, he said, are ideologically driven, but despite its support for Fidesz and Viktor Orbán’s patriotic movement, “an institution cannot be nationalized just like that.”
According to him, Fidesz and the national conservative side represented by the party will continue to need the existing intellectual circle in the future, for which Viktor Orbán’s knowledge and community-building experience are the best way to reorganize.
Regarding his own future political involvement, Balázs Orbán said that as a Member of the European Parliament, he will continue to participate in building the national conservative side and in the increasingly lively debates regarding the future of Europe.
A teenage girl in a Greek migrant camp was nearly stoned to death after refusing a forced marriage, according to a senior government minister who described the episode as one of the most disturbing cases she encountered during the migrant crisis.
Eirini Agapidaki said the incident took place in 2019 inside the overcrowded Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, at a time when the facility had spiraled into what she called “absolute chaos.”
“I honestly don’t want to talk about what I saw and what I found there, because they are very, very ugly things,” Agapidaki said in a televised interview. “They expose the country.”
Describing the conditions inside Moria, she added, “Moria was completely out of control… an endless chaos… absolute chaos. All sorts of things were happening there — drug trafficking… criminal activity.”
Agapidaki said the teenage girl had effectively been sold into marriage before the situation escalated.
“A mother had agreed to marry off her 15-year-old daughter to someone there,” she said. “And because the girl resisted, the community organized a stoning.”
When pressed on who was responsible, she added that it was “her relatives,” claiming the girl had been “essentially sold to someone else.”
🇬🇷 "There were 40-year-olds in facilities for unaccompanied minors, drug trafficking, and the relatives of a 15-year-old girl organized her stoning because she resisted a forced marriage."
Greek minister Eirini Agapidaki recalls the horrors that unfolded at the Moria migrant… pic.twitter.com/Pp1qC76e0M
The minister said she only learned of the case later, after the girl had been removed from the camp and transferred to a shelter for unaccompanied minors.
“They told me she was doing very well at school, and we were very happy, given what she had gone through,” she said.
Agapidaki, who was tasked at the time with overseeing the protection of vulnerable minors under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ administration, said the episode reflected the broader breakdown of order inside the camp during the peak of Europe’s migrant influx.
“There were also cases that amounted essentially to human trafficking,” she said. “These children rarely manage to survive. They fall into the hands of trafficking networks.”
Originally built to house around 3,000 people, Moria became a symbol of the migrant crisis after its population grew to many times that number, with thousands of minors among those living in increasingly dangerous conditions.
However, many illegal migrants were found to be abusing the system, with Agapidaki noting, “I found 40-year-olds in facilities for unaccompanied minors,” adding that young children were also living in extreme conditions “and we didn’t even know they were there.”
She said reforms introduced in the years that followed brought the system under control, reducing the number of unaccompanied minors and improving oversight.
“From that chaos, we built a system,” she said.
The Moria camp was later destroyed by fire in 2020. In recent months, the Greek government has sought to crack down on asylum entries.
In July last year, Mitsotakis announced the suspension of asylum application processing for migrants arriving in Greece by sea from North Africa, declaring that Greece would take strict legal measures to prevent further arrivals.
“This is a necessary temporary response, based precisely on the same legal reasoning that the Greek government successfully invoked when dealing with the migration invasion of March 2020. Those migrants who enter the country illegally will be arrested and detained,” he said at the time.
In October, the government announced sweeping cuts to asylum-related spending and the phasing out of rent subsidies for refugees, redirecting funds toward work programs and Greek-language training.
The Ministry of Migration and Asylum confirmed that total funding for asylum benefits will drop by almost 30 percent, from €400 million to €288 million per year.
Migration Minister Thanos Plevris said the reforms mark a fundamental shift in policy. “Those granted asylum in the future will no longer live on permanent subsidies, but will be integrated into society through work,” he said, adding that support payments will cover “only the absolute necessities.”
Despite Agapidaki’s suggestion that a new system was put in place to bring stability to the issue of unaccompanied minors, in November last year, Migration and Asylum Minister Thanos Plevris announced that more than half of asylum seekers who claimed to be minors under Greece’s new verification system had been found to be adults.
Out of 104 cases reviewed since the new procedures began in late August, 59 individuals were determined to be over 18. “The repercussions for those who filed a false statement are self-evident,” Plevris said.
