EU urged to condemn crackdown

The European Union is facing increasing pressure to speak out against the erosion of media freedom in Turkey following the takeover of the country’s largest-circulation newspaper, but few expect it to take a bold stance towards Ankara while trying to assure it’s help in dealing with the migration crisis.

Police used tear gas and water cannons for a second day running yesterday to disperse hundreds of protesters outside the headquarters of Zaman newspaper – now surrounded by police fences.

Law enforcement officers stormed the building on Saturday to enforce the court-ordered seizure of the publication, which is linked to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s top foe, US-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen.

The protesters chanted “free press cannot be silenced” and “Zaman cannot be silenced” as riot police used shields and fired tear gas to push back the crowd, sending demonstrators running into side streets for protection.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11601055

European leaders hopeful that Syria truce will lead to restart of peace talks

The leaders of Germany, France, Italy, Russia and the United Kingdom discussed the temporary Syrian truce on Friday (the sixth day in which it has largely held) and agreed that it has shown the potential to pave the way for more comprehensive peace talks aimed at ending the six-year-old conflict in that country.

“The main point that the European leaders made on the call to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was that we welcome the fact that this fragile truce appears to be holding,” a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said according to the BBC.

“We have got to use this as a positive dynamic now to create some momentum behind the talks… so we can move from a truce into a more lasting durable peace with a political transition away from Assad,” the spokesman added.

“We have asked Russia to exert its influence to ensure this [truce] will also apply to the Assad regime,” said the German Chancellor Angela Merkel after praising Russia’s commitment to abide by the agreement.

The United Nations’ special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura also said he wants to recommence peace talks which faltered late last month after Russia backed a major Syrian ground offensive against opposition groups in the major Syrian city of Aleppo.

The European powers are urging the opposition to return to the peace talks but also stated that the delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged areas and the continued upholding of the ceasefire are the two most essential elements to successfully re-initiating talks.

“If these two conditions are not met, then the negotiation process is bound to fail, which we do not want,” said France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault  to journalists in the French capital Paris.

Clashes which took place across the country since its implementation last week have not compromised the overall agreement. Regime and opposition groups have both accused each other of violating the truce in certain flash-points across the war-torn country.

On Friday the controversial Jaish al-Islam group (which is represented at the peace talks as a genuine opposition group) claimed the regime was re-ordering its forces and aiming to retake more territory from the opposition. One representative of the group, Mohamad Alloush, told Reuters that “big violations by the regime” have been underway in opposition-held areas, they are also deploying “all types of weapons, particularly barrel bombs in some areas.”

http://rudaw.net/NewsDetails.aspx?pageid=199208

Syrian ceasefire with Russian backing key to peace talks, say European leaders

The Syrian ceasefire and its continued backing from Russia will help build a momentum behind peace talks in the war-torn country, European leaders have said.

The truce, which is broadly holding, began last weekend. The leaders of Russia, Germany, France, Italy and the UK held a conference call on Friday in which they agreed to use the “positive dynamic” to restart peace talks, a spokesperson forDavid Cameron said.

“The main point that the European leaders made on the call to [Russian president Vladimir] Putin was that we welcome the fact that this fragile truce appears to be holding,” the spokesman said.

“We have got to use this as a positive dynamic now to create some momentum behind the talks … so we can move from a truce into a more lasting, durable peace with a political transition away from Assad.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/05/syrian-ceasefire-russia-peace-talks-european-leaders

 

U.S. Stocks Little Changed as Fischer Outweighs Renewed Oil Rout

U.S. equities staged an afternoon rally to finish little changed, shrugging off a resumption in oil’s selloff after a Federal Reserve official said policy moves are not predetermined amid the recent market turmoil. The dollar weakened.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell just short of a third day of gains after erasing a 1 percent decline amid advances in consumer and technology shares. Alphabet Inc. surged in extended trading on above-estimate earnings, raising the prospect it could unseat Apple Inc. as the world’s most valuable company. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index slid 0.4 percent as Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said the impact of recent market turbulence on U.S. growth could factor into decision-making. Crude fell more than 6 percent, halting the longest rally this year on evidence of an ongoing slowdown in Chinese manufacturing.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-31/asian-stocks-set-to-rise-yen-nurses-drop-as-boj-effect-lingers

Wall Street banks out to dominate European equities trade

US banks have for the first time come close to taking half of Europe’s equity trading in a market increasingly dominated by its biggest players.

Cash trading on behalf of clients of the five US banks with a big presence – Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citigroup – represented 49.2% of European equities trade in 2015, according to data from financial information group Markit, up from 47.5% in 2014 and 42.9% in 2011.

The combined share of competitor European banks – Credit Suisse, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale – fell to 33.5% according to Markit data, down from 34.3% in 2014 and 36.2% in 2011.

http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2016-02-01/us-banks-in-european-equities-push

Germany fears up to 1.5mn refugees to arrive in 2015, calls for limits on influx to EU

Citing an internal and confidential government forecast, one of Germany’s top newspapers reported that officials have revised their estimates on the number of asylum seekers and migrants to enter the country by the end of the year.

“Migratory pressures will increase further. We now expect seven to ten thousand illegal border crossings every day in the fourth quarter,” Bild cited the report as saying. “This high number of asylum seekers runs the risk of becoming an extreme burden for the states and municipalities.”

https://www.rt.com/news/317633-refugees-migrant-influx-germany/

Germany fears up to 1.5mn refugees to arrive in 2015, calls for limits on influx to EU http://t.co/TS8qXzwlHp pic.twitter.com/AOEymlJv0G

— RT (@RT_com) October 4, 2015

The Cashless Society Cometh: European Nations Such As Sweden And Denmark Are ‘Eradicating Cash’

Did you know that 95 percent of all retail sales in Sweden are cashless?  And did you know that the government of Denmark has a stated goal of “eradicating cash” by the year 2030?  All over the world, we are seeing a relentless march toward a cashless society, and nowhere is this more true than in northern Europe.  In Sweden, hundreds of bank branches no longer accept or dispense cash, and thousands of ATM machines have been permanently removed.  At this point, bills and coins only account for just 2 percent of the Swedish economy, and many stores no longer take cash at all.  The notion of a truly “cashless society” was once considered to be science fiction, but now we are being told that it is “inevitable”, and authorities insist that it will enable them to thwart criminals, terrorists, drug runners, money launderers and tax evaders.  But what will we give up in the process?

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-cashless-society-cometh-european-nations-such-as-sweden-and-denmark-are-eradicating-cash

European jihadists form ISIS brigades in Syria

Establishment, used published estimates from European intelligence services to put the total number of European recruits fighting in Syria at fewer than 2,000. The study estimated the total number of French recruits fighting with all the factions, not only ISIS, at between 200 and 400.

Referring to the French jihadists, Abu Shaheed told Paris-Match, “There are lots and lots of them. The place is covered with French [recruits]. I couldn’t even count them all.” In addition to individual French fighters in other ISIS units, Abu Shaheed said that there are five or six purely French-speaking brigades or katiba, consisting of French and Belgian fighters. He went on to explain that the formation of French-speaking brigades is a necessity, since the French and Belgian recruits ordinarily do not speak enough Arabic to be integrated into Arabic-speaking units. The recruits are known essentially to consist of second- and third-generation descendants of Arab immigrants and Muslim converts.

Abu Shaheed belongs to one such French-speaking unit in the Aleppo suburb of Hraytan. He claims that prior to the withdrawal of ISIS from Hraytan in mid-February, some 200 French or French-speaking fighters had been based there. Hraytan’s European colony came to broad public attention when video emerged in late March of French-speaking jihadists providing running commentary as they gleefully dragged seven or eight bodies to a mass grave using a pickup truck. “In the past, we towed jet skis, motorcycles and quad bikes,” the driver of the pickup says with a wry smile, “now we tow murtads [apostates] and kuffar [unbelievers], those who fight against us and fight against Islam.”

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ru/originals/2014/04/europe-jihadist-isis-syria-qaeda-terror-france-germany.html#ixzz3ved2GRFR

It Will Take Trillions Of Euros To Save The European Union

The EU’s political leaders and other elites are committed to holding the European Union together. To them, united Europe is an article of faith. They hold the idea with as much ferocity and fervor as any religious belief. But while the European Union is a wonderful political idea, it’s economically terrible. And the EU nations will have to face up to bearing enormous costs to save the Europe we wished for. 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-02/it-will-take-trillions-euros-save-european-union

IT WILL TAKE TRILLIONS OF EUROS TO SAVE THE EUROPEAN UNION

Many of us take our national currencies for granted and we assume there have always been dollars, pounds, or yen. In fact, for a long time, individual banks issued notes promising the holder to exchange the notes for gold upon demand. The concept of a national currency is actually one that came about very late in history.

Before the euro was created, the economist Robert Mundell wrote about what made for an optimal currency area. His work was so important that he won a Nobel Prize for it. He wrote that a currency area is “optimal” when it has:

It Will Take Trillions Of Euros To Save The European Union