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City Of Thieves
More scams, fiddles and downright theft from the European Parliament in Brussels. The EU Referendum Blog has a run-down of the worst offenders among British MEPs in the Parliament, who are enjoying all-expenses paid trips to exotic locations, being treated to free slap-up meals every day and, in some cases, supplementing household income by paying spouses executive salaries for part-time assistant roles.
Racist Attacks In South Africa?
Around twelve people have been killed in a series of mob attacks by South Africans on Zimbabwe refugees. The attackers appear to be inhabitants of the poor black townships around Johannesburg, who fear that Zimbabweans fleeing Robert Mugabe's brutal regime are taking jobs and housing, as well as contributing to the high levels of crime in the neighbourhoods. However, news reports say that immigrants from other African countries, including Mozambique, have also been targeted. The murders appear to be particularly vicious, with one reporter claiming to have seen a migrant burned to death.
The Lying Game
For a long as we can remember, 'lie-detectors' bave been considered the ultimate device in police stations, private detective agencies, security services and in films to find out if you are lying.
French Paper Gets Hiroshima Photos Wrong
On Saturday, France's newspaper of record Le Monde published two previously unknown photographs of bodies in piles, labelling them with the headline, "Hiroshima: What the world never saw." An accompanying column claimed that "American censors covered up images of the victims."
Watching You Watching Us
BBC to public: "It's impossible to hide; It's all in the database."
This is the latest, chilling advertisement from the BBC's TV Licensing wing warning viewers that they cannot escape the tax-funded broadcaster's scrutiny.
Police Apologise For "Fake" Documentary Claim
Another little vignette from Topsy-Turvy Britain. A couple of years ago a Channel Four documentary crew smuggled cameras into a number of English mosques and recorded footage of extremist preachers at work. One called for homosexuals to be executed; another praised the Taleban as "heroes of Islam" for killing British soldiers.
The footage was broadcast under the title Undercover Mosque as part of the Dispatches series.
The documentary caught the attention of the Crown Prosecution Service and the West Midlands Police. Frenzied clerics preaching fundamentalist hatred in the heart of Britain? Surely these are the sort of people anti-hate speech laws ought to be protecting us against. Perhaps the culprits could be deported, as their counterparts are in France?
Unfortunately not. The CPS and Police investigated the film makers, accusing them of selective editing, distortion and "undermining community relations."
Britain Opens X-Files
Last year it was France's turn to reveal its secret documents detailing encounters with UFOs; now Britain's Ministry of Defence has opened the first set of 200 secret files detailing sightings of strange lights in the sky by policemen, the military and members of the public.
The files document cases from the 1970s to the late 1980s, with a peak in sightings coming in 1978, the year the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released in the UK.
A Field Guide To The Birds Of Paris
Pierre-Louis Colin, a speechwriter for the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, has written a book titled: "The Paris Guide to Pretty Women".
"Just as every region has its gastronomy, every quartier has its feminine speciality," writes M Colin, who has recently co-authored another book with his boss.
Barcelona To Import Water
The scorching summer is not yet upon us, but Barcelona is already forced to import drinking water as part of an emergency plan to provide for the city as the tourist peak approaches.
Bust Of Caesar Fished Out Of Rhône
France's cultural minister has announced an "archaeologist's dream" - a marble bust of Julius Caesar, sculpted in the Roman's lifetime, has been found in Arles, several metres below the surface of the Rhône river.
Zero Tolerance
Russian football side Zenit St Petersburg arrive in Manchester tonight, along with their unpleasantly racist fans, who notoriously refuse to countenance black players in the team. Britain's sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, has warned the Russians that the UK has a "zero tolerance approach" to racism, and fans who step over the line "will feel the full force of the law."
Shoeshine & Shinola
Your correspondent is incredibly lazy when it comes to polishing shoes. While in the US, he notices shoeshines in every airport: In France, they're nowhere to be seen.
His battered Church's (the same as Tony Blair's, embarrassingly) were looking unusually scuffed and rather than give them a decent spit and polish job himself, he Googled "Paris Shoeshine" looking for an easy option.
Turns out there's a reason you can't get a decent shoeshine in Paris. And sure enough, it's all about politics.
We Don't Need No Education
Two vignettes from different ends of the British education system. In the first, two lecturers in London's Kingston University are recorded urging students to game the government's ranking system by inflating the ratings they award their college.
In the second, Cambridge University has dropped its foreign language requirement in order to make it easier for state school applicants to find places in its colleges.
Baby Losers
More on the educated, middle class Europeans facing tough times and low pay in the Guardian this weekend.
Last week EURSOC reported on how a generation of Europeans are discovering that jobs and degrees which previously offered a comfortable existence now barely keep them above the poverty line. Thirtysomethings in France, Spain and Germany are becoming aware that they are likely to belong to the first generation to be worse off than their parents in recent European history. Following on from their parents' "Baby Boomer" generation, they're calling themselves the "Babylosers."
Get Your Priorities Right
Australian couldn't give a XXXX for child's safety
An Aussie driver has been fined for putting a seatbelt around a case of beer instead of his five year old passenger.
The Trouble With Turkey
Liberal newspapers are very keen to convince Europeans that the AK Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is only "mildly Islamist" and thus nothing for either us, or secular Turks to worry our little heads about.
The AK, which not only runs Turkey's government but also its Presidency, is more or less a Turkish version of the German Christian Democrats. The Economist, to name one example, praises AK's relative economic liberalism and how it faced down Turkey's generals in the 2007 general election, calling their bluff when rumours of a coup were muttered.
Allowing women in headscarves to enter public office and universities isn't creeping Islamification but a long-overdue liberal measure which overturns archaic laws allowing the state to interfere in how people dress, they argue. Let's just forget about the claim by one AK member that "democracy is a bus we get off when we reach our destination."
Quote Of The Day
"Lunch with the Evening Standard. Am asked how I will appeal to Conservative voters.
"I say I'm a former police officer, Oxford educated, business degree, scrub up well, can put sentences together in an intelligent way.
""Yes," says one of the journalists. "But how are you going to appeal to Conservative voters?""
Great stuff from gay Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor, Brian Paddick. Paddick's campaign diary has been published in the Daily Mail.
All Aboard
Colombia is not renowned for its naval power. However, some citizens of the South American country have entered into the maritime business. Instead of buying frigates, they have chosen submarines. There are no torpedoes within these semi-submerged vessels. There is only cocaine.
Wounded, But Soldiering On (For Now)
Things are looking bleak for Hillary Clinton, reports EURSOC's US correspondent Chris Timmers.
With the results of the primary voting on 7 May, where Hillary Clinton won a razor thin margin of votes in Indiana and was decisively trounced by Barak Obama in North Carolina, her chances of winning the Democratic nomination for president look bleaker than ever.
Oldies But Goodies
On Thursday, 10 July, at the grand salon of Christie's auction house in London's South Kensington, an old yellowish piece of paper written with a black felt-tip pen will be sold for over £300,000. (Experts at the auction house say privately that they expect a higher sale price).
The item in question is the original hand-written lyrics from John Lennon's anthem 'Give Peace A Chance'. It was penned at the legendary 'Bed-In' in 1969 at the stately Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal.
Brown's Declaration Of Interdependence
For some reason the British media saw fit to ignore the keynote foreign policy speech Gordon Brown delivered at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston last month.
In the speech, the Prime Minister gave hints as to the future foreign policy of the UK, implying that the US too should join in its great endeavour to respond to global challenges by investing in international bodies. US critics have condemned Brown's speech as an attack on US sovereignty on a par with King George III's imperiousness.
On With Reform
Gordon Brown has had something of a battering from the British press in recent weeks. However, the local elections, which saw Labour lose hundreds of councils to the opposition Conservative Party, coupled with the defeat of Ken Livingstone by Boris Johnson in the race to become London's Mayor, was something of a wake-up call for Brown's allies in the left-leaning papers.
Not least, of course, because the Guardian campaigned strongly against Johnson and for the left-wing incumbent, Ken... the newspaper is still reeling from the rejection of its man by what it sees as the small-minded Daily Mail reading fascists who inhabit Greater London.
So, thwarted in the birthplace of multiculturalism, it's very quickly back to business as usual - Constitutional reform.
Fogh Off
Blairovision in tatters as govts look to Danish PM for EU President
Tony Blair's candidacy for the Presidency of the European Union seems dead before it got off the ground. France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, who stunned fellow leaders last year by nominating his good friend Tony to be the first EU President, now seems set to throw his weight behind Luxembourg PM Jean-Claude Juncker or current Commission President José Manuel Durao Barroso, reports from Paris say.
While both men have their supporters, neither holds much appeal for other EU nations, which is why speculation is coalescing around Denmark's charismatic centre-right leader Anders Fogh Rasmussen as a "compromise candidate."
The Bear Necessities
As President Dmitry Medvedev is inaugurated, Russia is shaping up to be one of the major foreign policy issues facing Europe this decade.
Following on from yesterday's review of an investigation into the Litvinenko killing which took a more-or-less pro-Moscow line, we provide some balance in the shape of a much more critical overview of Vladimir Putin's legacy, this time from the Guardian.
Who Killed Litvinenko?
Was former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko really murdered? The Russian died in London in 2006 apparently from poisoning with the radioactive isotope polonium-210. On his deathbed, Litvinenko told media that the order for his assassination had come from the Kremlin. The British government too blamed Moscow for what amounted to an act of nuclear terrorism on British soil.
From Chelsea To Israel
Tense times at the upper end of the British Premiership. Manchester United and Chelsea are vying for the title, while both clubs will be playing in the final of the Champions League in Moscow later in the month, the first time two UK sides have appeared together in Europe's top club event.
The Israeli manager of Chelsea FC Avram Grant knows that while (as Bill Shankly famously said) football is more than a matter of life and death, there are greater concerns.
Lady Non-Drivers
In Saudi Arabia, a woman can buy a car but she is not allowed to drive it. It's true, some Saudi ladies can't help themselves getting behind the wheel. And there have been a few (unreported) accidents. (Driving lessons in Riyadh are more of of an imaginary concept).
Murphy's Law Explained
Human errors are often attributed to a momentary lack of concentration. But now a combined team of researchers in America, Britain, Germany and Norway have used an 'imaging machine' to test a group of volunteers as to why the most simple activities go wrong.
