Sputnik has discussed the increasing US pressure on EU states, particularly Germany, over the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that is poised to deliver Russian natural gas to Europe with European and American scholars and politicians in light of threatening letters by the US envoy in Berlin to European firms involved in the project.

Earlier in January, European companies participating in the venture aimed at building a new route for Russian gas to bypass Ukraine, reportedly received threatening letters from the US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell. He warned the firms about how their involvement in the project incurs the risk of sanctions.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte called out France and Germany in a hard-hitting interview Friday, fired up over the countries’ efforts to land Berlin a seat on the UN Security Council.

“Did Germany lose or win WWII?” Conte asked rhetorically, emphasizing, in his typical no holds barred style, that the seat had been intended for the EU as a whole.

A bill to outlaw trade in goods from Israeli settlements has been passed by the lower house of Ireland’s parliament, a major step on its journey into law.

On Thursday, the Dáil overwhelmingly approved the Occupied Territories Bill by a vote of 78-45, dealing a big defeat to the government of Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister.

Frances Black, the independent senator who initiated the legislation last year, greeted the result as “amazing,” adding that “Ireland will always stand for international law and human rights, and we’re one step closer to making history.”

Belgian Senator and former Secretary-General of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) Alain Destexhe has slammed “elites” for their handling of mass migration and the lack of debate on the long-term effects of migration.

The veteran Belgian politician, who was first elected in 1995, released a book entitled Immigration and Integration: Before It’s Too Late… last month, which sounds the alarm on integration problems and other issues stemming from the migrant crisis. Dr Destexhe discussed his book and explained his concerns in a recent interview with French newspaper Le Figaro.

Destexhe claims that Belgium, along with other countries like France, has “lost control” of immigration, saying: “About three-quarters of immigration, in Belgium as in France, is beyond the control of the country’s administrative authorities.

A Nigerian migrant narrowly avoided being lynched by an angry mob of Italians after attempting to drag a local woman into an alley in an attempt to rape her.
The incident took place on a street behind the Piazza Garibaldi in the vicinity of the Napoli Centrale railway station in Naples at around 8:30 pm at night.

The Nigerian, later identified as 41-year-old Stephen Pope, attempted to drag a local woman into an alley while groping her with police being alerted by her screaming, Il Giornale reports.

After sighting the police officers, the 41-year-old let the victim loose and attempted to escape but was met with a mob of Italians who had also gathered at the scene following the screams of the woman.

Italy’s Deputy Premier clearly wants to go all the way. After dispatching a team to fetch the extreme left-wing Italian terrorist Cesare Battisti in Brazil – with the help of the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro – Salvini has now set his sights on leftist activists in France, according to French daily Le Figaro.

On Saturday, January 19, Salvini said he was ready to meet Emmanuel Macron, to negotiate their extradition. These terrorists include individuals from two decades ago who launched extremist attacks that caused a thousand deaths in Italy between 1970 and 1990.

Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz says that Iran has not been invited to an international conference on the Middle East in Warsaw next month. Czaputowicz said in remarks published on Monday that Iran’s presence would have hampered talks because the language that Tehran uses is “hard to accept.” Iran has protested over the February 13-14 conference, calling it a hostile move. Poland and the US are co-hosting the event, which has also been met with a lukewarm reaction from the European Union, whose foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini will not be attending. Czaputowicz also said Russia has advised that it will not participate either, AP reports.

The Czech Republic is launching a programme to pay non-EU migrants to go home, noting that funding the scheme would cost taxpayers “far less” than if migrant groups remained in the country.

With an information campaign set to be put out on social media and with leaflets and posters from April, the Czech Interior Ministry said it hopes the first migrants participating in its new programme, titled ‘Návraty’ (Returns), will be processed in the third quarter of 2019.

With a particular focus on migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, and Vietnam, the programme will offer foreign nationals up to 4,000 euros’ financial assistance towards transportation costs, setting up accommodation in their homelands, and purchasing livestock.

Gda?sk mayor Pawe? Adamowicz of the Civil Platform (or PO) opposition party died after being stabbed in the heart by a deranged assailant at a charity concert on Sunday, who deceived security in order to get onstage and then give a crazed rant after the attack attempting to justify his crime on the alleged grounds that the mayor’s party wrongly imprisoned him.

All of Poland is mourning Adamowicz’s death and even his political rivals made speeches denouncing his assassination, but there are already some voices that are trying to make this into a partisan issue in order to score points ahead of this May’s European Parliamentary elections and besmirch the credibility of the ruling Law & Justice Party (also known by its Polish abbreviation as PiS).

The reports on the dramatic rise in the number of Iranians seeking asylum in Europe, especially unaccompanied children, are profoundly unsettling.

Prominent human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr recently drew attention to this phenomenon through a Twitter thread in which she highlighted the rise in the number of Iranian asylum seekers between 2013 and 2018.

"Interestingly, last year," she tweeted, "the number of unaccompanied Iranian children seeking asylum was higher than the number of unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Syria - three countries that are involved in armed conflict."

The number of reported rape cases has increased by 33 percent over the last ten years, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), with cases up eight percent on the last year alone.
Brå released preliminary statistics for 2018 this week that showed not only that the number of rape reports increased by eight percent on the last year, but that reports of rape against children had increased even more, by 13 percent, Expressen reports.

Stina Söderman, a researcher and report author at Brå, commented on the preliminary findings, saying: “We have seen a clear increase in reported rape in recent years.”

The Italian deputy prime minister has blamed France for the European migrant crisis, accusing it of impoverishing African nations with "colonialist" policies. He promised to take the issue to the EU and other international bodies.

Luigi Di Maio, leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and Italy's Deputy PM, launched a scathing attack on France, which he argued is to blame for the inherent causes of the ongoing migrant crisis at EU borders.

A no-deal Brexit and a worse-than-expected slowdown in the Chinese economy could cause more turbulence on the financial markets and hit global growth, the International Monetary Fund has said.

The US organisation issued the warning as it left its growth forecasts for the UK in 2019 unchanged at 1.5 per cent, but slashed global growth forecasts for this year by 0.2 per cent to 3.5 per cent.

It comes as separate figures released today show that in 2018, the Chinese economy grew by 6.6 per cent, its slowest annual rate since 1990.

Members of the European Parliament have voted in favour of introducing financial sanctions as punishment for patriotic countries that reject the bloc’s progressive “European values.”

MEPs voted Thursday in Strasbourg, France, to back the European Commission’s proposal to cut EU budgetary disbursements to member states deemed to have broken the so-called “rule of law,” with 397 MEPs voting in favour and 158 against (69 abstaining), reports Politico.

The votes were notably split along eastern/western divides, with those in favour coming from establishment western European parties with those against coming from conservative and right-wing eastern parties.

European Union countries could snub an international conference on the Middle East scheduled to take place in Poland next month over concerns it is part of a US drive to ramp up pressure on Iran.

EU diplomats raised questions about the real agenda of the February 13-14 conference on Friday, saying it was organised at very short notice and noting that Iran did not appear to be invited.

An EU official said the bloc's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, had other commitments and would not attend.

McDonald's has lost the rights to its Big Mac trademark after Irish chain Supermac's defeated the giant in an EU ruling.

County Galway-based Supermac's challenged the worldwide burger chain to cancel the use of the Big Mac and Mc trademarks.

It submitted a request to the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in April 2017 to cancel the use of the Big Mac and Mc trademarks that McDonald's has registered in certain classes.

The Yellow Vest movement is not on course to end anytime soon, with British activists taking to the streets of London on Friday. They donned the appropriate yellow high vis vests and blocked traffic, chanting pro-Brexit slogans.

One yellow vest protester tells of their want to reclaim Great Britain as told to Sputnik: “We don’t want to be part of the federal European superstate that’s going to erode our rights and take away democracy.

To celebrate six months in power Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini holds an ‘Italians first’ rally in Rome. Around the same time Paris was on fire as thousands of protesters want Macron to leave office.

In his speech to 80,000 supporters, the Deputy Prime Minister and populist said in regards to the neighbouring “Yellow Vests” protests: “Those who sow poverty reap protests, those who sow false promises reap the response of those on the margins and the countryside”.

It’s surprising how easily the fuel tax protests from France could spread to Belgium and the Netherlands. The demonstrations of people in yellow vests signal a large dissatisfaction of the people over their governments.

France’s fuel protests have partly turned into anti-Macron protests as well. Under his leadership taxes are increased, but he forgets to protect the French people and their culture.

It’s the same for Belgium and the Netherlands. Their leaders lead their country like modern companies, making a profit is seen by them as a success.

But in the meantime some much more important issues are being ignored. An increasing number of people are worried about immigration, about poverty and about the future of their children.

“I’m going to die. Will my life end at 50 like this, I thought before I fainted”, Eivor explains.

When she regained consciousness, one of the men tried to break her neck. The attempt was interrupted and instead they duct taped her mouth, eyes, hands and feet while communicating in broken Swedish. “They spoke in a foreign language. There is no doubt about it.”

She managed to contact her mother, who called the police and an ambulance. The assault resulted in swelling of the head, a damaged cornea, bruising over the body and a bone fracture.

Hungary was a loser in the 20th century but it is determined to be a winner in the 21st, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in a Christmas interview published in daily Magyar Idok on Monday.

“There will be elections in 2019 but we are looking to 2030. Thanks to eight years of joint efforts, we are at the start of a new era and I am convinced that not only have we set off on an upward path but we will reach our goal,”

Orban said.

Commenting on recent opposition protests, he said politics is an area where battles can be under way even on a Christmas Eve and protests are part of everyday life in a democracy. However, this does not apply to violence, destruction and vandalism, he added.

It is easy to assess the situation: the government stands for work, family and security and opposition policies stand for the opposite, Orban said. Calm force on one side stands against aggression, violence, support for migration and tax hikes on the other, he added.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic will not sign the UN’s Global Compact for Migration (GCM), Croatian newsportal Direktno reports.

The website bases the decision on a Facebook post by Croatian TV journalist Velimir Bujanec. He asked her position on the GCM after a lot of people we’re interested in her stance.

In the answer his editorial board received, President Grabar-Kitarovic literally states: ‘Be assured I will not sign the ‘Marrakech Agreement’, Bujanec writes on Facebook.

Tunahan Kuzu, the political leader of the DENK party in the Netherlands, has caused some serious controversy, Dutch broadcaster NOS reports.

“If they don’t like a changing Netherlands in which people with different cultures live… like in the city of Zaandam or the neighbourhood of Poelenburg, they should get lost,” Kuzu says in an interview.

Kuzu’s DENK party is a controversial party that is rapidly growing in Dutch urban areas. It especially performs well in areas with high Muslim populations, for example in western Amsterdam (Amsterdam Nieuw-West).

In the latest Dutch national election, in March 2017, DENK won three seats grabbing almost 200,000 votes. One year later, in the municipal elections, the party was by far the largest in ‘Amsterdam Nieuw-West’ and swept away some of the traditional leftist parties.

As we recently reported, a 10-year-old girl was raped in a courtyard in Malmö last week. A 30-year-old migrant from Libya has now been arrested for the rape.

The police didn’t want to reveal the crime classification at first, but later admitted that it was rape of a child. According to the detention order, Mohammed, which is the perpetrator’s first name, was born in 1988.

He is a citizen of Libya and was arrested and detained on Tuesday. The prosecutor argues that there is a risk of crime recurrence.

According to Kvällsposten, the man has previously been suspected of two other cases of sex offense, including molestation of a 14-year-old girl.

In conjunction with one of the crimes he was also arrested for carrying a knife. On both occasions, however, he was released shortly after the arrests. On top of that he’s been convicted of robbery and assault.

In March, the district court acquitted the woman who was prosecuted for hate speech comments made on Facebook. She had criticised Islam and wrote that “the IQ level in Sweden will fall as a result of immigration”.

Now, however, she is sentenced to prison by the supreme court. “If this continues, the intelligence in Sweden will be at goldfish level,” said one of her Facebook comments. “Refuse all that is to do with Islam” said another.

During the investigation, the woman, whose name is Christina, was subjected to six police interrogations and searches, something she described as a terrible experience.

The police demanded she hand over her keys, mobile phone and iPad. The fact that she needed to get in touch with health care for a doctor’s visit was not taken into account whatsoever.

Slovakia is the last EU Member State without a single mosque, TRT World reports. Previous attempts to build have been halted by politicians.

The country does not recognise Islam as a religion and only have a few thousand Muslim residents. Islam must not be taught in schools and the 5,000 Muslims, mostly European ones, who reside in the country are not officially recognised. They account for only 0.1% of the population.

In 2007, politicians changed the country’s laws so that 20,000 signatures from members were required to be recognised by the state. In 2017 they more than doubled the number of necessary signatures.

Not being officially recognised poses major difficulties for the group. Among other things, they are not allowed to have official religious leaders, conduct Muslim marriages or receive financial contributions from the State, rights which 18 other recognised religions have.

In a report dated 2000, the UN stated that 159 million migrants should come to Europe as a replacement for ageing Europeans.

The recently resurfaced, 18 year old United Nations report, says that 159 million migrants should come to Europe by 2025.

The UN report’s highlights were posted in a French Twitter post, which has received a lot of attention, as it sheds a different light on the refugee ‘crisis’.

Politicians in Sweden blame Swedes for not helping migrants successfully integrate in their community when the public learn of a Muslim gang-rape of a young Swedish girl.

However, an friend of the young girl’s mother learned of the rape and in her anger and shock, posted about it on Facebook:

“TODAY I FOUND OUT THAT THE DAUGHTER OF ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS WAS GANG-RAPED BY FOREIGN MEN INSIDE OF A FLAT IN MALMBERGET THE NIGHT LEADING TO SATURDAY. THE GIRL IS STILL SO YOUNG AND HER LIFE IS NOW RUINED!”

In another post, she states:

”WHO SAYS THIS WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN? NEXT TIME IT COULD BE MY OR YOUR CHILD. WHAT IS HAPPENING IN OUR MUNICIPALITY? WHAT IS HAPPENING IN GÄLLIVARE AND HOW CAN WE THINK THIS IS STILL A SAFE PLACE TO LIVE IN?”

According to SIX people who know the girl’s family, there was a large group of Muslim men involved in the horrific and brutal rape.

The municipality can’t find housing for the 400 newly arrived migrants they’ve been ordered to take in this year.

The housing shortage in Kungsbacka has been huge for many years, but the municipality is still forced to receive even more immigrants.

Until this summer, the municipality managed to take in migrants at the rate required by law. But after the summer, they failed to offer housing at the same rate, which means that they now have to receive a large number of people in a short time.

This situation is not what we want, but in order to do what we are required by law to do, we will have to place them in dormitories.

Last Wednesday, a group of african migrants were “surrounding a woman and hitting her”, he explained to the media today. When he saw that nobody was defending her, he tried to save her and was almost killed; he suffered from internal bleeding in the head.

He said that they tried to “kill him”. “Now, I have a bad image of Spain, this country is becoming the Third World and that’s the politician’s faults, they are putting the tourists and their people in danger” he explained.

“They are lying to their people,” Emanuel Macron spoke in English as he ranted. His criticism was directed towards Hungary and Poland, accusing their leaders of lying about the European Union.

“In Hungary and Poland, some of their leaders played with an unacceptable idea. When I listen to leaders comparing Brussels with Moscow at the ancient (Soviet) times, this is crazy and unacceptable”.

Poland’s nationalist government introduced a string of judicial reforms that the bloc has warned pose a threat to judicial independence, the rule of law and ultimately to democracy.

Macron also stated that “the situation of the rule of law in Hungary is undergoing worrying developments”, and claimed they threatened the division of powers and the independence of non-governmental organisations.

“What are these leaders doing with these crazy spirits and lying to their people like those who promoted the Brexit and left the country right after they won,” he claims.

A number of cases of rape and abuse of children, with foreign perpetrators, have been revealed in Oulu in the northern parts of Finland since last autumn, Fria Tider reports.

The police are investigating another four cases with girls under the age of 15, where three perpetrators of foreign background have been arrested suspected of rape and serious sexual abuse of children.

In all cases, the suspects have background as refugees or asylum seekers.

The three-time Italian premier, Silvio Berlusconi, is running for the European Parliament in the May elections. The 82-year-old announced his candidacy with his center-right Forza Italia party on Thursday in Sardinia, AP reports. He said he wants to “bring my voice to a Europe that should change, a Europe that has lost profound thinking about the world.”

A leaked German military report has revealed Germany's top military planners believe the breakup of the EU by 2040 is a conceivable eventuality - given the apparently irresistible rise of euroskeptic parties across Europe, such fears could be well-founded.

The Bundeswehr believes an end to the European Union in its current form in decades to come is entirely plausible, according to "Strategic Perspective 2040" — a 102-page report speculating on how global economic, military, cultural and social trends, and international conflicts, could shape German security policy in future.

?The document was released for internal use by the Bundesministerium der Verteidigung (Ministry of Defense) and kept under wraps subsequently, although German daily Der Spiegel obtained a copy through undisclosed channels.

Austria’s decision to leave the UN Migration Compact while holding the European Union’s rotating presidency brought “shame” on the bloc by aligning it with U.S. President Donald Trump, EU forces have angrily proclaimed.

At a debate with Sebastian Kurz in Strasbourg on Tuesday, critics including the European Commission president lined up to slam the Austrian Chancellor’s withdrawal from the agreement, which declares mass migration to be “inevitable, necessary, and desirable”, as the low point of the country’s six-month stint in charge of the presidency.

Jean-Claude Juncker, who has previously claimed the so-called Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration would somehow reduce illegal immigrant flows, said Austria’s refusal to sign was the only stain on an otherwise “really impressive” presidency, denouncing Kurz for sending out “negative signals” about the document.

Prime Minister Theresa May has (narrowly) survived the vote of no confidence and delivered another of her bullish speeches about how the people voted for Brexit and how Brexit is what she plans to deliver.

“Overwhelmingly, the British people want us to get on with delivering Brexit, and also address the other important issues they care about. But the deal I’ve worked to agree with the European Union was rejected by MPs and by a large margin. I believe it is my duty to deliver on the British people’s instruction to leave the European Union and I intend to do so,” she tells us.

Don’t believe a word.

The story of Rahaf Mohammed, an 18-year-old Saudi girl who has become an international media darling for her flight to the West from "persecution", aired by Swedish national broadcaster SVT has made Swedes see red.

In their piece on Rahaf Mohammad, the Saudi refugee girl who claimed to have suffered "abuse" back home due to her non-conformist behaviour, SVT omitted the reference to Islam, triggering many Swedes' ire.

In the interview aired by SVT Aktuellt, Rahaf Mohammed said that she was kept locked up for six months after getting a short haircut and suffered abuse from her brother and her mother. The reason for it, she claimed, is that short haircuts for women are forbidden in Islam, because it makes women look like men.

However, SVT's translation left out the Islam reference completely, with words "Islam" and "haram" ("forbidden" in Arabic) conspicuously absent from the subtitles, despite clearly being uttered by the teen.

If we follow the logic and evidence presented in these seven points, we are forced to conclude that the fractures in France, Germany and the EU are widening by the day.

When is a nation-state no longer a functional state? It's an interesting question to ask of the European nation-states trapped in the devolving European Union. Longtime correspondent Mark G. recently posed seven indicators of dissolving national sovereignty; here's his commentary:

Throwing a monkey wrench in rumored plans to merge Germany's two biggest banks, Bloomberg reports that Germany's financial regulators would prefer for Deutsche Bank to merge with a European rival rather than local, and just as troubled, competitor Commerzbank, setting them apart from forces in the government keen on an all-German deal.

According to Bloomberg, the ECB is favoring a cross-border combination to drive integration in the region’s financial markets, while analysis by German regulator BaFin suggests a preference for a European deal because the two domestic banks - surprise - are currently too weak to benefit sufficiently from a merger.

Data released on Monday showed that industrial production throughout the entire eurozone dropped sharply to a glacial pace of growth in the continent at the end of 2018. Not only that, but two of the four largest economies in Europe are now on the brink of recession.

Economic data in China, the globe’s second-largest economy is showing significant signs of slow down while the trade war with the United States rages on. According to the San Francisco Gate, the United States government shutdown is doing damage to the economy as well, however, most evidence points to the fact that government is unnecessary and private companies and individuals fill the voids.

Near the United Nations Glass Palace in New York, there is a metallic sculpture entitled “Evil Defeated by Good”, representing Saint George transfixing a dragon with his lance. It was donated by the USSR in 1990 to celebrate the INF Treaty concluded with the USA in 1987, which banned land-based short- and mid-range nuclear missiles (a reach of between 500 and 5,000 km). Symbolically, the body of the dragon is in fact made with pieces of US Pershing-2 ballistic missiles (originally based in West Germany) and Soviet SS-20 missiles (originally based in the USSR).

But the nuclear dragon, which in the sculpture is shown as dying, is now being reborn. Thanks to Italy and other countries of the European Union, which, at the United Nations General Assembly, voted against the resolution presented by Russia on the “Preservation and Implementation of the INF Treaty”, rejected by 46 to 43 with 78 abstentions.

Germany and France are set to forge a pact aligning their defense, diplomatic and economic policies in an unprecedented “twinning” pact “regarded as a prototype for the future of the European Union,” according to The Times‘ Oliver Moody.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will sign the “Aachen treaty” later this month which will govern a coordinated diplomatic front as well as joint actions on peacekeeping missions.

What’s more – areas on both sides of the Franco-German border will be encouraged to establish “Eurodistricts” in which both countries would merge water, electricity and public transport networks.

Berlin and Paris will offer cash to incentivise these cross-border areas, which could involve shared hospitals, joint business schemes or environmental projects. Some officials regard these experiments as a petri dish for the integration of the EU. –The Times

No word on whether France will accept half of Germany’s refugees.

The first bill seeks to launch preparations for another referendum while the second seeks to carry out the vote. The former attorney general said: “Holding a public vote is now essential as the only credible way out of the current crisis. The public should be allowed to decide on any deal to take us out of the European Union and be given the alternative to remain if they wish."Mr Grieve, a staunch Remainer and one of many Conservative backbenchers who voted against Mrs May’s deal on Tuesday night, said: “It’s a very strange experience to be a backbench MP and participate in a huge rebellion against the Government that defeats it by such a substantial margin. “But that’s a reflection of the fact that the House of Commons collectively looked at the deal the Government has negotiated and concluded that it’s a deal which is not in the national interest.

In spite of the deep splits among the Tories, Prof. John Weeks says that a Brexit agreement will be made when the EU bails out Theresa May in the lead-up to the EU parliamentary elections

Situated across the street from the main entrance of Malmi Airport, the warehouse with its 3 meter high security fence appears an unlikely location for official embassy business. Neighbouring companies include a car yard and a tyre warehouse.

Helsinki Times visited the perimeters this weekend. Security personnel, young Finns in uniforms with American flags on their arms, appeared nervous and suspicious when asked to comment on the warehouse and refused to even confirm the order of the new fence structure which now surrounds the compound. At one point a security guard appeared in a second floor window to carefully monitor this reporter’s movements along Takoraudantie.

While president Trump is cracking down on Chinese technology theft "transfer" in the US, with Canada somehow caught in the middle of the ongoing crossfire (as random Canadians are now getting arrested on the mainland in retaliation for Trump's aggressive practices), it has emerged that China's Belt and Road initiative may be nothing more than one giant, global tax fraud/trade laundering operation.

Take Greece for example, where the European Union’s Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) just issued a fine of more than 200 million euros to Greece for failing to stop a wide-scale tax fraud by Chinese criminal gangs importing ultra-cheap goods through the country’s largest port of Piraeus, Politico reported on Monday.