M.E. Synon

A computer hacker has breached security at the European Central Bank and stolen information from a public website, an attack which emerged only after officials at the ECB received a blackmail email demanding money in return for the data stolen.

Gianni Vattimo, an Italian Marxist philosopher and former member of the European Parliament, has told national Italian radio that Israel is “a bit worse than the Nazis,” and he’d like to “shoot those bastard Zionists.” He said Europeans should raise

The economic situation in France is “catastrophic” and “if France were a company, it would be close to liquidation,” Pierre Gattaz, head of Medef, the employers’ federation, said this week. “There are no signs of recovery,” he said. Among other

An 89-year old American citizen and former guard at the Auschwitz death camp has died in a Philadelphia hospital while awaiting extradition to Germany. Johann Breyer died on Tuesday night, the same day a US judge agreed to a request

A surge in anti-Semitism in Germany has led Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, Israeli ambassador in Berlin, to say it is like a return to the Nazi era: “They pursue the Jews in the streets of Berlin… as if we were in 1938.”

A Moroccan man living near Bologna in Northern Italy has been arrested after allegedly keeping his pregnant wife captive, beating and starving her in a bid to force her to have an abortion. The Local reported that the man was

Italian police arrested five men on Tuesday on suspicion murdering and throwing overboard up to 60 migrants crossing from Libya after a fight broke out on board a fishing boat being used to smuggle men, women and children into Italy.

The free movement of people within the European Union is “extensively exploited by organised criminals to bring illicit commodities including drugs, human trafficking victims, illegal immigrants and counterfeit goods to Britain,” according to a government report. Spain, Italy, Belgium and

Poland will challenge a European Union ban on flavoured cigarettes in the European Court of Justice, saying it will be unfairly affected as one of the EU’s biggest consumers and producers of menthol cigarettes. The ban is part of the

Recent attacks on Jewish targets in France have fuelled an increasing exodus to Israel, with 2,200 Jews leaving France in the first six months of the year compared with fewer than 600 a year ago, according to France 24, a

Last year when the British Ministry of Defence signed a £9m contract with Austria’s Glock to provide the armed forces with 25,000 new side-arms and holsters, nobody could have been surprised by the choice. The highly-regarded Glock pistols are used

The town of Reus in the Catalan province of Tarragona has become the first in Spain to ban the wearing of full-face veils in public, a move which follows a judgment on July 1 by the European Court of Human

Israeli attacks on Gaza have let loose an unprecedented wave of hate on media websites and social networks in France that moderators say they are struggling to contain. According to The Local the bombardment of Gaza has enflamed tensions particularly

The Austrian government is struggling to find a way to stop young Austrians with Middle Eastern roots from travelling to join the jihad in Syria. More than 100 have already left to fight in Syria, according to a report in

The British newspapers, like the British government, are pinning the blame for the Malaysian Airlines disaster on Putin. Most Americans, whether Democrats or Republicans, would see things the way these UK headlines do: “Putin is a pariah – he must

The hard partying by Germans after their team’s victory in the World Cup in Brazil resulted in damage to the trophy, the most coveted prize in sport. German Football Association (DFB) president Wolfgang Niersbach has admitted that in the exuberant

Sinn Féin, the political wing of the terrorist Provisional IRA, pulled a pro-Palestinian stunt in the Irish parliament, the Dáil, yesterday during which Gerry Adams, party leader and alleged former IRA leader, manoeuvred members of both government and opposition into

In a display of insensitivity extraordinary even for a Brussels bureaucrat, a European Union official has told journalists that the downing of the Malaysian flight over Eastern Ukraine “provides an opportunity” for the EU to have “direct contact for the

France is urging the European Union to seize influence on the Arctic Council, the organisation that brings together the eight nations with sovereign territory in the resource-rich Arctic region. However, Russia, which along with the United States and Canada dominates

It’s not a new technique, but it’s still a winner: an encampment of Roma gypsies has been driven out of a small Belgian town after the mayor hired a DJ to blast them with rock music at 95 decibels, equivalent

Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian prime minister and billionaire media mogul, has won an appeal against his 2013 conviction for paying an under-age prostitute for sex. His seven-year sentence was overturned by judges in Milan, meaning the 77-year old politician is

A top legal official at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has said French authorities may not exclude blood donations from gay sexually-active men. Paolo Mengozzi, an Advocate General at the court, published an opinion on Thursday which followed a

One of the European Union’s top legal advisors has warned employers that they may not discriminate against grossly fat workers because “morbid obesity may come within the definition of disability” for the purposes of the EU’s Equal Treatment in Employment

First the German criminals targeted the sausages, now they’ve gone for the beer: just 24 hours after Breitbart London reported that federal authorities had uncovered a multi-billion euro price-fixing cartel among some of the country’s best known manufacturers of Germany’s

Supporters of France’s right-wing anti-immigration Front National (FN) were left angry and stunned on Tuesday when a court in the French South American territory of Guiana sentenced a member of their party to nine months in prison for comparing France’s