Europe

    The drama of Brexit may soon be matched or eclipsed by crystallizing events in France, where the Long Slump is at last taking its political toll. A democracy can endure deflation policies for only so long. The attrition has wasted the French centre-right and the centre-left by turns, and now threatens the Fifth Republic itself. The maturing crisis has echoes of 1936, when the French people tired of 'deflation decrees' and turned to the once unthinkable Front Populaire, smashing what remained of the Gold Standard. Former Gaulliste president Nicolas Sarkozy has caught the headlines this week, launching a come-back bid with a package of hard-Right policies unseen in a western European democracy in modern times. But the uproar on the Left is just as revealing. Arnaud Montebour...

    Photographs have emerged of armed French police confronting a woman on a beach and making her remove a burkini as part of a controversial ban on the swimwear. Authorities in several French towns have implemented bans on the garment, which covers the body and head, citing concerns about religious clothing in the wake of recent terrorist killings in the country. The images of police confronting the woman in Nice on Tuesday show at least four police officers standing over a woman who was resting on the shore at the town’s Promenade des Anglais, the scene of last month’s Bastille Day lorry attack. The photographs emerged as a mother of two also told on Tuesday how she had been fined on the beach in nearby Cannes wearing leggings, a tunic and a headscarf. Her ticket, seen by Fr...

    A magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck central Italy early Wednesday, with reports of fatalities and significant damage surfacing quickly in its aftermath. Officials say the towns of Accumoli and Amatrice appear to be the hardest hit by the quake, which struck at 3:36 a.m. local time as most residents slept inside their homes. At least 38 people have been killed, according to Italy's Civil Protection Department. Italian Premier Matteo Renzi announced plans Wednesday to travel to the affected area. Renzi thanked rescue workers who continued searching through the rubble and vowed a sustained, national effort to find any survivors and assist the wounded and homeless. "No family, no city, no hamlet will be left alone," he said. The damage was so extensive in the town of Amatrice th...

    Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C) and French President Francois Hollande (L) The EU must sharply increase cooperation on defence and intelligence to combat Islamic terrorism and other threats, the leaders of France, Germany and Italy said, as they insisted that they were not disheartened by Britain’s historic decision to leave the bloc . Standing on the deck of a huge Italian aircraft carrier, the Giuseppe Garibaldi, Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel and Matteo Renzi acknowledged that Europe faced the forces of “disintegration” and grave threats, including terrorist attacks, the war in Syria and the migration crisis. It was a highly symbolic venue – the Garibaldi is coordinating the EU's migrant rescue operation in the Mediterranean, a...

    At least 50 people have been killed in a "barbaric" suicide bomb blast at a wedding in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, authorities say. Another 94 people were injured in the explosion, which a regional official in southern Turkey has described as a terror attack. Photos from the scene in the Sahinbey district of Gaziantep show a packed street with several bodies covered in white sheets. Veli Can, 25, said: "The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing. "There was blood and body parts everywhere." At least 12 victims have already been buried but other funerals have been delayed because identification is difficult, as many of the bodies were blown apart. Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek visited the site of the attack, which he d...

    French police fear growing numbers of jihadi terrorists could be hiding among the thousands of British-bound refugees in Calais. Islamic extremists lurking among 7,000 migrants in the northern French port could be making daily attempts to sneak into the UK, officials said. The squalid camp near the ferry port known as the Jungle had now become an ‘unpoliceable black whole’ where it was not safe for officers to venture, it was warned. A senior police source told Le Figaro newspaper: “What is going on in the camp is truly worrying. Our officers rarely penetrate into the heart of the camp. “It is impossible to know if a jihadi from say Belgium, for example, is hiding there. The area is not policeable and has become a national security black hole.” Calais police union spokesma...

    Although the Israeli Prime Minister’s office rejected the claims that Netanyahu is promoting a legislative change that would prohibit recordings that are unknown to both parties involved and the broadcasting of such recordings, it turns out that Netanyahu’s office dealt with the matter more than two years ago. Former Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein turned down the process because of legislative implications. Netanyahu discussed the act over two years ago Photo Credit: Amos Ben Gershom/Channel 2 News The Israeli Prime Minister’s office explained that Netanyahu isn’t promoting an act that would prohibit someone from recording another person without his knowledge or consent and broadcast such recordings. They also noted that this was expressed from a fundamental sta...

News Desk: Get-rich-quick scheme Traffic Monsoon stinks to high hell, one worried investor told me when I reported on it in January. That verdict seems to have been confirmed now that it’s been shut down after taking around £160million from 162,000 people worldwide – many in the UK. The man behind Traffic Monsoon is Charles Scoville, an American “entrepreneur” with a history of similar schemes. Before running my article in January, I gave him the chance to respond to criticisms, the most obvious being that it was a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. I put a simple question to him: What is Traffic Monsoon’s main source of revenue? Scoville never replied, but elsewhere has claimed that members make money by buying “AdPacks”, which earn revenue from online advertising. But now we know the true answer t...

    The Russian army can outgun British troops on the battlefield, a leaked report suggests, following military advances by the Kremlin. The assessment by the British Army's warfare branch, seen by The Times newspaper, warned that Russian weapons, including rocket launchers and air defence systems, were more powerful than their British equivalents. It came as Vladimir Putin and Theresa May on Tuesday spoke for the first time since she took office and both expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of Russian-British relations . The announcement by the Kremlin could herald the start of improved relations between the two countries that have been strained since the 2006 poisoning death of ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko and the Ukraine crisis, among other issues. In the...

    An unnamed Chinese tourist visiting Germany ended up touring the country's refugee system for weeks after his wallet was stolen at the airport, according to reports in the German media. The strange journey began when a backpacker had just arrived in the southwestern city of Stuttgart. Hoping to report the theft, he searched for a police station, the broadcaster WDR reports. However, due to an unspecified mixup, he ended up speaking to refugee authorities in the city of Heidelberg, over an hour's drive away from Stuttgart. There he filled out an asylum application and was taken to a reception center in Dortmund and later to a refugee home in Duelmen — meaning he was now over four hours away from Stuttgart. To make matters worse, the Chinese citizen's passport and visa were ...