Germany's military spending is set to fall below its NATO targets, in the latest flashpoint in Berlin's long-running row with Washington.

The latest German budget plans, revealed on Monday, will see defence spending drop well below the two per cent of GDP expected from NATO members.

U.S. ambassador Richard Grenell said the cuts were a 'worrisome signal', while President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused Germany of freeloading on U.S. military might.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected the U.S. criticism, saying Germany will not cut foreign aid to raise military spending.

I’ve known Speaker Bercow since he was a young man, wore a ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’ t-shirt, and was a secretary of the Monday Club – a conservative group so conservative that they’re probably wearing ‘Hang Bercow’ t-shirts today.

By all objective standards Bercow has been a poor speaker of the Commons. What you perhaps don’t know is that is testimony to the chilling effect of laid back liberalism.

Bercow has had an easy ride because he’s biased against a government so incompetent that if it were a “Carry-On” film you wouldn’t want it to end. But it isn’t and most people want it to end as swiftly as possible.

Hungary’s ruling right-wing party Fidesz has been suspended from the center-right 'European People’s Party' bloc (EPP), as growing confrontation between Viktor Orban and EU leadership comes to a head in the European Parliament.

After serious debate over Fidesz’ fate in the transnational EU bloc, the EPP has voted to suspend the party rather than kicking them out altogether as some had called for.

United Nations judges have ordered former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to spend the rest of his life in prison for genocide and war crimes, increasing his original sentence of 40 years.

Karadzic, 73, was convicted in 2016 for the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. He was also found guilty of leading a campaign of ethnic cleansing that drove Croats and Muslims out of Serb-claimed areas of Bosnia.

A panel of appeals judges in The Hague "imposes a sentence of life imprisonment" after rejecting Karadzic's appeal against his original 2016 conviction, head judge Vagn Joensen said on Wednesday.

Judges at the original trial "underestimated the extreme gravity of Karadzic's responsibility for the most grave crimes committed during the period of conflict, noted for their sheer scale and systematic cruelty", Vagn Joensen said.

The European Union has done a lot to accommodate the UK over Brexit and can go no further, European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker said on Wednesday. He also played down hopes of a breakthrough at this week’s EU summit, Reuters said. With just nine days to go before the March 29 exit date, uncertainty surrounds Brexit with options including leaving with British Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal, a short or longer delay, a disruptive exit or another referendum. “There will be no re-negotiations, no new negotiations, no additional guarantees in addition to those already given,” Juncker told Germany’s Deutschlandfunk radio.

Italy’s Lega (League) party has doubled in popularity since its election victory a year ago, according to a nationwide poll Monday.

At the time of national elections on March 4, 2018, fewer than one in five (17 percent) voters said they favored the League over any other party, whereas that figure today has nearly exactly doubled to 33.9 percent, making the League Italy’s favorite party by a significant margin.

In a distant second and third place are the Democratic Party (PD) and the League’s governing partner, the Five Star Movement (M5S), who command allegiance from 21.1 percent and 21 percent of Italians respectively. Monday marked the first time since the elections that the PD has polled higher than M5S, even if they did so by only a tenth of a percentage point.

AIRPORTS in Majorca, Menorca and Ibiza would COLLAPSE once Britain leads the European Union, officials have claimed. Worried officials say the baggage system for non-EU residents won't be able to cope with the huge influx of Britons heading to the islands for their holidays.

THERESA May has requested a three-month delay to Brexit after her failure to get her deal through Parliament plunged Britain’s planned departure from the European Union into chaos but it looks like Brussels has different ideas.

The talks continue after Speaker of the UK House of Commons John Bercow barred May's government from submitting the Brexit agreement in the Parliament once more, stating that the deal must be fundamentally changed.

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has stated that Brussels was ready for a no-deal Brexit, also urging Britons to "finalise all the preparations" for the issue.

He also noted that the EU had now approved nearly all foreseen contingency measures, however, European institutions are still working on the issues of short-term visas and the EU budget for 2019.

Today, March 24th marks the 16th anniversary since NATO began its 78-day bombing campaign of Serbia. The alliance bypassed the UN under a “humanitarian” pretext, launching aggression that claimed thousands of civilian. Years on, Serbia still bears deep scars of the NATO bombings which, as the alliance put it, were aimed at “preventing instability spreading” in Kosovo.

A UN court has increased to life the sentence, which former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic will spend in prison over what it says were mass killings in Srebrenica during the 1990s Bosnian wars.

Karadzic had served as the Serb’s leader in Bosnia during the civil war in the 1990s. In 2016 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted him for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre by Bosnian Serb forces.It found him guilty on 10 out of 11 charges and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Two older brothers of Gökmen T. have focused on the faith, say local residents. "They are both very strict on the doctrine. You can see that from their clothing, their women are also wearing strong veils. The oldest also sat on his knees in the middle of the city to pray when it was time, ”they say. According to various local residents, the eldest brother in Chechnya has trained or fought and he has links with the radical Turkish movement Caliphate.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford issued a statement Monday denying weekend media reports that the US plans to leave around 1,000 troops in Syria, saying the reports are “factually incorrect.”

Dunford presented the current planned “residual force” as 200, saying that this hadn’t changed since February. The US announced 200 would stay on February 21, but on February 22 officially increased that number to 400.

It’s not clear from Dunford’s statement where the “incorrect” aspect of the new report, which came out of a Wall Street Journal, exists. That report suggested that the 1,000 figure was not yet finalized, but was being discussed. Dunford’s comments didn’t include any details on what is actually being discussed, but just that nothing was finalized.

His comments came a month after tensions flared between Poland and Israel over comments reportedly made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a conference on the Middle East in Warsaw.

After a briefing with reporters, Netanyahu was quoted as saying that “the Poles cooperated with the Nazis” to kill Jews during the Holocaust, The Jerusalem Post reported on its website on Friday.

Netanyahu’s reported comments were seen as suggesting Polish complicity in the Holocaust.

But Netanyahu’s office said at the time that the Israeli prime minister “spoke of Poles and not the Polish people or the country of Poland. This was misquoted and misrepresented in press reports and was subsequently corrected by the journalist who issued the initial misstatement.”

The spat escalated when days later Israel’s interim foreign minister claimed that Poles “imbibed anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk.”

Europe must move away from full dependency on American weapon supplies, the French defense minister stressed, slamming President Donald Trump’s “conditional” approach towards NATO and his European allies.

Expressing concern that Trump’s idea of NATO’s solidarity is “conditional on allies buying this or that equipment,” the French Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, wondered if the US commitment to the military block will continue to be “perennial.”

The alliance should be unconditional, otherwise, it is not an alliance. NATO’s solidarity clause is called Article 5, not article F-35.

Hungary just finished their new border wall to stop illegal immigration and it dropped the crossings from 6,000 a day to 40.

Russia has deployed strategic bombers and Iskander missile systems in Crimea to counter US anti-missile elements in Romania, a top senator said. It will allow the country to respond to any threat coming from European territory.
The installation of the American MK-41 missile defense launch systems in Romania became a “serious challenge” for Russia, Viktor Bondarev, the head of the Russian Federation Council’s Defense and Security Committee, said.

But the proper response has now been formulated, with “Russia’s Defense Ministry making a decision to deploy squadrons of Tu-22M3 long-range missile-carrying bombers in Crimea, at the airbase in the town of Gvardeysk.”

Russia’s state-of-the-art missile systems, including S-300 and S-400, Buk-M2, Pantsir-S1 and two modifications of [nuclear capable] Iskander, have also been stationed at the peninsula, he added.

Mr Brok, a close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, insisted there were “very different views” across the EU over Theresa May's request to extend the bloc’s Article 50 exit clause. Any Brexit delay will require a unanimous decision by all leaders at the European Council summit on Thursday afternoon. Mr Brok has begged for a short delay until May 23 to avoid new British MEPs having to be elected to the European Parliament.

Police have named 37-year-old Turkish born Gökman Tanis as their chief suspect in the shooting and urged members of the public to contact them with information on his whereabouts.

They have warned people not to approach him.

The gunman opened fire at around 10.45am local time.

A woman who was sitting in a tram told local broadcaster NRC a man got put of his seat and started shooting at other passengers.

More than 10,000 military personnel, 35 warships, 5 submarines and 59 aircraft and helicopters from 13 countries will take part in Exercise Joint Warrior until 11 April.

The aim of Joint Warrior is to allow the UK’s Royal Navy, Army, Royal Air Force and their allies to conduct joint operations involving different forces and units and against a range of current and future threats.

Serbians engaged in a protest movement in the capital of Belgrade broke through the first line of security and trespassed into the lobby of the presidential offices.

“The police have confirmed that they will be able to provide security in the building, and the authorities will not allow violence to threaten anyone,” head of state President Alexander Vucic told reporters.

Today, more than a thousand protesters gathered in front of the presidential offices, where a Vucic press conference was being held. The meeting began at 12:00pm local time, after which the protesters attempted to break through the fence around the residence.

Catalonian independence activists are protesting on the streets of Madrid under the banner ‘self-determination is not a crime’.

More than 60 political collectives from Catalonia and other parts of Spain are heading to the nation's capital aboard 400 chartered buses, and are expected to gather and march between Atocha and Plaza de Cibeles.

According to a new investigation, one in three returned Islamic State fighters in Sweden have committed serious crimes after coming back from the Middle East.

The investigation, which looked into the activities of 41 Islamic State members who had returned from Syria and Iraq, found that all of those sentences or suspected of crimes, 13 people in total, were men, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.

The crimes that the men have been either suspected or of convicted of have included serious offences such as the case of a 31-year-old man who was filmed by his neighbours attacking another man with a pair of scissors last July and is now looking at attempted murder charges.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that he wanted European Parliament elections in May to give Europe “strong leaders” who would strengthen nation states. “We want a strong Europe, strong nation states, and strong leaders at the helm of Europe, who don’t bring trouble here but take the help there,” Orban told a pro-government rally in Budapest. The statement referred to his determination to prevent migrants coming to Europe, Reuters said.

The last expansion of anti-Russia sanctions by the US occurred in January 2018, when 21 individuals and 12 entities were added to the sanctions list.

The US has imposed sanctions targeting 6 Russian nationals, including Board Guard Service Deputy Director Medvedev, the notice from Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control stated on Friday. At the same time, new sanctions have been imposed on 8 enterprises for their alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis.

According to the US State Department, Washington's new set of restrictions have been introduced in coordination with the European Union and Canada.

The media portrayal of Denmark as a country hostile and inhumane to migrants is misleading, if not completely false.

One reason for the inaccurate picture is that it is painted by journalists' political bias. Another is that trustworthy official Danish statistics on the country's immigration problem are both difficult to find and even harder to interpret. A further problem is a lack of reliable research, at best; and purposely distorted data, at worst.

The following breakdown illustrates that rather than being more relatively free of the consequences of mass migration than other European countries in general, and Scandinavian countries in particular, Denmark is in a state of societal collapse. In spite of Copenhagen's many laws that govern migration and affect immigrants, the Danish people have been experiencing a major cultural and political shift in their life as they have traditionally known it.

EU leaders have renewed their warnings that Brussels will not agree a Brexit delay unless the UK can suggest a way out of the current deadlock.

The House of Commons voted last night to seek an extension to Article 50, which Theresa May says could be a short delay until June if Parliament approves her deal - or a much longer one if it is rejected again.

Brussels has said it will listen to a request for more time if Britain provides a good reason, but Guy Verhofstadt said last night it was up to the UK to take a 'cross-party' approach to find a breakthrough.

The European Parliament on Thursday rejected the EU launching trade talks with the United States. The move deals an unexpected blow to efforts by Brussels to avert a trade war with Washington.

But instead of thanking Poland for its example – Poland a country which borders Russia and following its present anti-Russian course would absolutely be among the first zones of occupation or assault in the event of a major war between Europe and Russia, a veritable nuclear cushion – Trump has backed away from furthering the spectacle of NATO building in ‘New Europe’. Moreover, Trump has increasingly insulted the Polish political class and public, through its tacit insinuation that modern Poland is responsible for the crimes committed against Jews during the Holocaust. The Trump administration in response to Polish politicians upset with the sudden change of position, is said to have unofficially responded to Poland’s commitment to increase spending on its part of NATO and to instead ‘hand property to Jewish holocaust groups’.

Really and truly, I did not expect the most promising developments in West-European politics to come from Italy. Who could predict that the strange government appointed in June 2018 – an uneasy alliance of nationalists under Matteo Salvini’s Lega and the populist-but-vague Five-Star Movement – would last as long or achieve as much as it has? Italy’s parliamentary regime is notoriously unstable, governments falling with unnerving regularity, and yet this strange hybrid has gone from strength to strength.

The globalists – notably the EU institutions and the various migrant NGOs, many supported by George Soros’ Open Societies Foundation – had adopted a criminal policy whereby the goal of their operations was not to reduce illegal immigration but to “solve” the problem by “rescuing” migrants at sea, even if they barely left the coast of North Africa, and breaking down Europe’s external and national borders.

ISIS fighter Azad G, an Austrian citizen with Turkish roots, received social benefits while he was recovering from a gunshot wound in Vienna in 2014.

During his 14 month long stay he received a total of 12.400 Euro in social benefits. That’s a total of 885,47 Euro per month.

Peter Hacker, a politician of the Social Democrat Party informed tabloid ‘Krone’: “Legally we had no way of action because the Intelligence Services did not inform us.”

A recent document by the legal service of the European Commission has “revealed the greatest lie by Brussels”, according to Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó.

He claims that the document suggests “secret efforts to make the UN Migration Compact mandatory” in all EU member states.

Speaking at a press conference, Szijjártó said that the Hungarian government “calls on the European Commission to stop making secret plans to make the UN compact mandatory and publish all relevant documents completed so far”.

He added that the government would call on the EC to report on “any such secret plans” at a foreign affairs council session on March 18.

The European Parliament considers necessary to curtail the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, according to the report on the state of EU-Russia political relations approved on Tuesday.

"Russia and the EU will remain key economic partners in the foreseeable future, but Nord Stream 2 reinforces EU dependency on Russian gas supplies, threatens the EU internal market and is not in line with EU energy policy, and therefore needs to be stopped," the report says.

"The EU’s dependency on Russian gas supplies has increased since 2015," according to the report.

"The deepening of EU integration and coherence between its internal and external policies is the key to a more coherent, effective and successful EU external and security policy, including vis-a-vis Russia," the report noted.

"A central operations room has been formed to manage the revolution in Algeria with Rabat city in Morocco as its headquarters. 4 American and 6 Moroccan intelligence officers are present in the operations room as well as 12 Serbian nationals who are called as destruction experts and they are financially supported by the US," the Arabic-language al-Bana newspaper wrote on Monday.

It added that two other rooms for field operations have also been established in Wajdah city in Northeastern Morocco, near the border with Algeria, which is controlled by 11 US, Moroccan, Serbian and Algerian operations officers.

According to the paper, the second room for field operations has been established in the town of al-Rashidiyeh which is 80km away from Algeria, saying that 8 officers from the aforesaid countries and two French intelligence-military officers work for it.

NATO's military operation against the sovereign Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has turned the Alliance into a major threat to security in the world, and impunity has led to new tragedies in Syria, Iraq and Libya, the Federation Council of Russia said.

According to the document adopted by the Russian House of Lords on the occasion of the forthcoming 20th anniversary of the beginning of the military aggression against the FRY, this military operation reflected on the further development of the mutual relations of European countries and negatively affected their mutual trust.

Unfortunately, the lessons are not learned, and NATO continued to use military force in other sovereign states - Iraq, Libya and Syria, and Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua are threatened today.

Russian senators remind that NATO used ammunition filled with depleted uranium in the bombing of Yugoslavia, which caused numerous casualties among civilians.

Lavrov has just spoken publicly about the interference of the US in the European Parliament. Today, the European Parliament adopted a self-defeating document which summarily ends the EU’s consideration of Russia as its ‘Strategic partner’. Lavrov understands this to be further evidence of the US’s interference or meddling in the political processes of the EU’s EP.

“The introduction of US sanctions against the Nord Stream II project and all companies associated with it is, under international law, contrary to all the tenets and norms.” This was announced at a press conference on March 12 by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov .

Switzerland is about to have a national election with electronic voting, overseen by Swiss Post; e-voting is a terrible idea and the general consensus among security experts who don't work for e-voting vendors is that it shouldn't be attempted, but if you put out an RFP for magic beans, someone will always show up to sell you magic beans, whether or not magic beans exist.

Swiss Post contracted with Barcelona firm Scytl to build the system, then consulted with outside security experts and KPMG to audit the system, and then announced a bug-bounty program that would allow people who promised to only disclose defects on Swiss Post's terms to look at some of the source code.

A US National Security Council official has warned Italy against participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to unite European and Asian markets, claiming it adds ‘legitimacy’ to Beijing’s infrastructure project.

“Italy is a major global economy and great investment destination,” Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the White House’s national security team, stated on Twitter, after Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he would welcome Italy's participation in the BRI.

No need for Italian government to lend legitimacy to China’s infrastructure vanity project.

“With all the necessary precautions, Italy’s accession to a new silk route represents an opportunity for our country,” Conte said Friday, noting that participation in China’s trade master plan would be up for discussion when President Xi Jinping visits Italy on March 22. Conte also announced his plans to attend a BRI summit in China in April.

The European Union's aviation safety regulator (EASA) closed on Tuesday the block's airspace for all Boeing 737 MAX flights following the deadly Ethiopian Airways crash.

Following the suspension of the 737 Max flights in the EU, the non-commercial aviation media outlet AIRLIVE reported Tuesday that among other flights two SmartWings Boeing 737 MAX aircraft were diverted from Prague airport.

The UK parliament has again rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal after she secured legally binding assurances from Brussels on the controversial Irish 'backstop' – but the changes weren't enough to placate lawmakers.

May's deal was defeated 391 to 242 on Tuesday evening and will be followed on Wednesday by a debate and vote in the House of Commons on the prospect of the UK leaving the EU with "no deal" in place - which MPs are also expected to reject.

More than half of the British public does not think the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal delivers on the referendum result, according to a new poll.

The YouGov survey found only 12 per cent of adults think Theresa May's deal honours the leave vote compared to 58 per cent who claim it does not and 31 per cent who don’t know.

Labour voters are even more unhappy with Mrs May's deal than Tories, with 66 per cent opposed to the withdrawal agreement compared to 58 per cent of Conservatives.

SOURCE: PEPE ESCOBAR, ASIA TIMES
All roads seem to lead to Rome as Italy expresses its love for China’s Belt and Road Initiative...

President Xi Jinping is due to arrive in Italy for an official visit on March 22. The top theme of discussion will be the New Silk Road, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

A day earlier, in Brussels, the EU is to debate a common strategy related to Chinese investments in Europe.

A substantial part of the EU is already linked de facto with BRI. That includes Greece, Portugal, 11 EU nations belonging to the 16+1 group of China plus Central and Eastern Europe and, for all practical purposes, Italy.

And yet it takes an undersecretary in the Italian economic development ministry, Michele Geraci, to tell the Financial Times that a memorandum of understanding supporting BRI will be signed during Xi’s visit, for all (White House) hell to break loose.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has been invited to address a joint meeting of US Congress in the beginning of April, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in a press release.

"It is my honor as Speaker, on behalf of the bipartisan leadership of the House of Representatives and the Senate, to extend to you an invitation to address a Joint Meeting of the two houses of Congress… at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, April 3, 2019", Pelosi wrote in her letter to Stoltenberg on Monday.

Stoltenberg will be visiting Washington, DC to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the NATO alliance.

A recent European Union (EU) announcement about national ID's will destroy millions of people's privacy and create a near global biometric database.

An article in State Watch News revealed that the EU has agreed to create a MANDATORY national biometric ID card.

"Measures being negotiated as part of the EU's 'Security Union' are moving ahead swiftly, with the Council and Parliament reaching provisional agreements on new rules for immigration liaison officers, the EU's Visa Code and the introduction of mandatory biometric national identity cards; and the Council agreeing its negotiating position on the new Frontex Regulation."

Earlier this week the Nepal government announced their plans to roll-out a national biometric ID card that will affect 30 million people.

Last month, I wrote an article warning people about the global effort to restrict everyone's right to travel. But what is happening across Europe and Asia should send chills down everyone's back.

The political turmoil has been ongoing in Venezuela since late January, when opposition figure Juan Guaido declared himself the interim president, leading to recognition by the United States and its allies. Russia, China, Mexico, and Turkey have said that they recognise Nicolas Maduro as the only legitimate president.

On Tuesday, the European Parliament is holding a plenary session in Strasbourg to discuss the developments in the Venezuelan political crisis.

British PM Theresa May has agreed to a “legally binding” deal with the EU around the Northern Ireland ‘backstop’ to secure Brexit, and will put that to a vote in the Parliament on Tuesday. Talks with EU leaders are ongoing.

During the negotiations on Monday with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Strasbourg, May secured legally binding changes that “strengthen and improve” the original Brexit agreement, her Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington told reporters Monday evening.

British lawmakers have the choice to “vote for this deal or plunge the country into a political crisis,” said Lidington, noting that the EU has made clear this will be “the only deal on the table.”

The successor of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has rejected French President Emmanuel Macron’s vision of the European Union (EU), rejecting a more centralised EU.

The Christian Democratic Union leader, known by her initials AKK in Germany given her tongue-twister name, presented her own vision of the future of the European Union which differs greatly from the proposal of President Macron and would see increased cooperation but not down the path of an EU superstate Die Welt reports.

“Europe needs a strategy to promote convergence, which intelligently links national and European approaches,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said and added support for an “EU innovation budget” to fund research and technological development.

British MPs are holding an important vote to determine the fate of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement elaborated by the government after the previous plan was rejected by lawmakers in January.

If there is no agreement on the divorce plan with the EU, Parliament will be holding a vote on a no-deal Brexit on Wednesday. If this option is also rejected, a vote on extending the Article 50 period beyond 29 March will take place on Thursday.

Whenever there is talk of redrawing borders between geopolitical entities, these precipitate or come as the consequence of a major war. Such is the scenario now in the central and west Balkans, as the Serbian government led by Vucic’s Progressive Party, proposes a redrawing of the de-facto map, that would see a land-swap. There is nothing war-like in Vucic’s proposal, rather his proposal hopes to cool-off the present Greater Albanian escalation. But the debate surrounding it reveals that the US plans to further hack Serbia down in size, as punishment for continued defiance. Russia, on the other hand, entirely supports all of Belgrade’s initiatives and right to defense. Moreover, this is a serious arms race presently underway.

During his time as Prime Minister (1997-2007), Mr Blair presided over a wave of pro-Europe policies, which included devising ways to shift the British currency from the Pound to the Euro, although he admitted in 1999 that the proposal would likely fail in a referendum.

Former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has been secretly advising French President Emmanual Macron on how to stymie the UK's attempts to leave the European Union (EU), the Telegraph has revealed.

Mr Blair apparently shared his beliefs with officials in Paris that if the EU continues to refuse concessions then eventually the British parliament will relent and accept a customs union arrangement that would keep London tethered to Brussels, or, that they may even cancel Brexit altogether.

An alternative to what Europe could and should be exists to the one Emmanuel Macron described last week. If there is a need for a rebirth, then let it be of the sovereignty of the people, of enlightenment against the obscurantism of money and religion.

In Europe, the time has come to speak the only truly international language capable of motivating peoples widely diverse in history, languages and culture. It is the language of common good, of its defence and its extension, of living together, of rebuilding after 30 years of ransacked rights and public services, and free and undistorted competition. It is a language for peace, in the face of frenzied belligerent, anti-Russian, warlike Nato provocations.

There is urgency, for we are threatened by a system of production and exchange that is destroying not only the Earth but also the human beings who live on it. Has the time not come for solidarity that will save us from the impending ecological disaster?

Italian children have been told not to turn up to school unless they can prove they have been properly vaccinated.

The deadline follows months of national debate over compulsory vaccination.

Parents risk being fined up to €500 (£425; $560) if they send their unvaccinated children to school. Children under six can be turned away.

The new law came amid a surge in measles cases - but Italian officials say vaccination rates have improved since it was introduced.

Under Italy's so-called Lorenzin law - named after the former health minister who introduced it - children must receive a range of mandatory immunisations before attending school. They include vaccinations for chickenpox, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella.

Swedish terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp recently warned Sweden against taking back not only ISIS terrorists, but also their wives and children, who he said also pose a security risk: "Some of them have learned how to kill... their identities will forever be linked to their time with ISIS..." (Image source: Victoria Henriksson/Wikimedia Commons)

Sweden's new government, which was finally formed in January after months of delay, is introducing policies that will lead to more immigration into Sweden -- despite the main governing party, the Social Democrats, having run for office on a promise to tighten immigration policies.

Recent unrest there now threatens France, with possibly another migration wave on the way.

After surviving several assassination attempts by French partisans of Algérie Française , Charles de Gaulle in March 1962 signed a peace agreement ending French sovereignty over Algeria. The war for Algerian independence had been long and vicious, marked by terrorism and torture. Everyone who mattered in French politics believed in 1954 that Algeria was an integral part of France, to be defended at all cost. But by 1962, their view had changed. With cold realism, de Gaulle remarked of the conflict, now in its seventh year, “As for France, it will be necessary for her now to interest herself in something else.”

Russia will conduct an observation flight over the territory of Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg (Benelux) under the Treaty on Open Skies on March 11-15, the acting head of the Russian Defence Ministry’s National Nuclear Risk Reduction Centre, Ruslan Shishin, said on Monday.

"As part of the implementation of the international Treaty on Open Skies, Russia plans to perform an observation flight using a Russian An-30B surveillance aircraft over the Benelux territory", Shishin said, adding that the flight would occur on March 11-15.

Shishin also said that a joint US-Norwegian mission will conduct a surveillance flight over the territory of Russia under the treaty on March 11-16.