Hundreds of people marched along the Tiber River on Saturday to demand Rome mayor Virginia Raggi resign over the state of the Italian capital.

“Raggi is turning the city into somewhere to run away from, instead of a city where people can live with dignity, work and build their future,” the Tutti per Rome (Everyone for Rome) organisation said ahead of the rally.

“The whole world pities us,” it said.

The march came a day after trade unions in Rome staged a general strike, with workers including bus drivers and garbage collectors taking a stand against the mayor and her ruling Five Star Movement administration.

The Eternal City’s streets are riddled with potholes, buses regularly catch fire and officials have warned the perennial garbage crisis constitutes a health risk, with rat control services working overtime as bins overflow near tourist sites, homes and schools.

Raggi became the capital’s first female mayor in 2016 by tapping into anger over corruption scandals — in particular the infiltration of crime families in the city’s waste management system.

In April this year she defended herself against accusations she had failed to turn the situation around, saying Rome was “under attack” from mobsters determined not to release their grip on a lucrative sector.

Source: AFP

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators waving pro-independence flags and chanting “freedom for political prisoners” joined marches across Catalonia on Friday, the fifth day of protests against the jailing of nine separatist leaders over a failed bid to break away from Spain in 2017.

The marchers, some of whom began their trek on Wednesday from municipalities across the northeastern Spanish region, were set to reach the regional capital Barcelona later in the day.

Tensions between Madrid and Catalonia have been rising since Monday, when Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced nine politicians and activists to up to 13 years each in prision.

The sentences set off the worst sustained street violence Spain has seen in decades, with clashes between protesters and police, posing a major challenge both for the Spanish government and regional pro-independence authorities.

The Spanish soccer federation (RFEF) said in a statement on that Barcelona’s Oct. 26 home match against Real Madrid, one of the biggest rivalries in the sport, had been postponed due to security concerns.

Friday’s marchers, ranging from families pushing prams to cyclists wheeling their bicycles, took over a highway lane and other major roads as they walked peacefully towards the Catalan capital, many sporting yellow ribbons – a sign of protest against the jailing of Catalan independence leaders.

Major roads were blocked off across Catalonia and several main streets in Barcelona were closed to traffic in anticipation of the marches, as well as picket lines that had begun springing up, while regional trains and the city’s metro system were running on a reduced timetable after pro-independence unions called a strike.

Flights cancelled

Barcelona’s El Prat airport, forced to cancel around 150 flights this week after it was barricaded by thousands of people, was running normally for the most part, according to Spain’s Ministry of Public Works. Around 36 flights operated by Vueling were cancelled on Friday due to the strike, the low-cost Spanish airline owned by IAG said on Twitter.

Barcelona town hall said 700 garbage containers were set ablaze since protests began on Monday and estimated that the city had suffered damage totaling more than 1.5 million Euros ($1.67 million).

Thursday began with largely peaceful protests as young people draped in Catalan flags tossed balls and skipped rope. The mood shifted later in the night, with protesters setting fire to cafe chairs lining the fashionable Rambla de Catalunya street in the heart of Barcelona’s tourist district.

An official from Barcelona town hall said around 10 trees were set ablaze on Thursday.

Regional police said 16 people were arrested across Catalonia on Thursday, while health officials said medical aid was provided to 42 people.

Carmaker Seat, a unit of Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE), said it had halted production at its plant in Martorell, near Barcelona, from Thursday afternoon until Saturday over concerns that the marches would disrupt traffic, a company spokeswoman said.

Barcelona’s wholesale market, MercaBarna, said visits to its fish sellers were down 85% on Friday, while flower stalls at the market saw 90% fewer customers.

Pro-independence leaders went ahead with a 2017 referendum on independence, despite it being deemed illegal by Spanish courts, followed by a declaration that the region was breaking away from Spain. Madrid responded to this by seizing control of the Catalan administration, and putting the ringleaders on trial.

Catalonia’s former leader, Carles Puigemont, who fled to Belgium after the failed independence bid, told reporters on Friday that Belgian authorities had allowed him to remain free without bail after Spain’s Supreme Court targeted him with a European arrest warrant.

(Source: Reuters)

Firefighters reveled in setting off firecrackers for hours as they led the latest multi-profession demonstration against President Emmanuel Macron.

Other than the never-ending firecrackers, the protests were similar to countless other demonstrations over the past decade: against funding cuts to schools, social security, poverty programs, hospitals and countless other job creating public institutions.

Macron is trying to force through a radical overhaul to the pension system, which would raise the retirement age by two years. It would also create universal, one-size-fits-all system, even though it’s hard to imagine a 64-year-old fireman still working such a physically demanding job. 

Many here say that it’s false to blame France’s fiscal issues on the pension system. France’s deficit has ballooned following banker bailouts, immoral interest rates and years of cutting taxes for the wealth and for profitable corporations.

Protesters say that, even more than his two predecessors, Macron has refused to engage in a cooperative political process with those opposed to his right-wing reforms. Because of the lack of political cooperation, Macron has been plagued by massive protests. Only the risky and self-sacrificing protests by the Yellow Vest anti-government movement have gained some minor concessions. That has left non-Yellow Vest protesters wondering exactly how democratic public opinion plays a role in French-style democracy. 

Source: Presstv

Police in riot gear used batons and tear gas on Catalan independence supporters blocking Barcelona’s El Prat airport on Monday night.

Riot police could be seen advancing through clouds of tear gas, pushing and striking protesters with raised hands. The crowd was answering a call to protest from Tsunami Democratic, a movement opposing the prison sentence handed down to Catalan leaders.

Former Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras has been sentenced to 13 years in prison by Spain’s Supreme Court for his role in the 2017 attempted secession.

Junqueras was among nine Catalan independence leaders who were sentenced to between nine and 13 years in prison for sedition for their part in the region’s failed 2017 independence bid, which captured headlines around the world.

(Source: Ruptly)

Denmark is to impose temporary border controls at the Swedish border next month, after Swedes were suspected of being behind a number of serious attacks this year in the Danish capital Copenhagen, the justice minister said on Thursday.

Sweden, which itself has had controls at the border since 2015 to try to stop asylum seekers from entering the country, welcomed the move.

Denmark is connected to Sweden via the Oresund bridge across a 16-kilometer (10-mile) strait. Thousands of citizens commute across the border daily.

Two Swedish nationals are currently in custody in Denmark suspected of involvement in an explosion outside the Danish Tax Agency in August. Five Swedes are also in custody in Denmark on suspicion of carrying out two killings in a Copenhagen suburb in June. They have yet to be formally charged.

August’s attack prompted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to say at the time that she considered strengthening controls at its border with Sweden.

“To counter the threat of serious cross-border crime, we are now strengthening the protection of the border against Sweden by introducing temporary border control and strengthening police efforts in border areas with Sweden,” Justice Minister Nick Haekkerup said at a news conference on Thursday.

The controls will begin on Nov. 12, he said, adding police would aim to avoid causing delays for the commuters.

Both countries are members of the European Union, which needs to approve the move. Sweden applauded Denmark’s action and said it was looking into the possibility of giving police more access to operate in border areas, including camera surveillance of vehicles

“We welcome that Denmark is taking action to fight crime in the Oresund region,” Sweden’s Minister for Home Affairs Mikael Damberg said in a statement.

Violent crime in Sweden, with assailants using firearms and high explosives, has become a major political issue over the past years and prompted political moves such as one of the tougher gun laws and tougher sentencing for some offenses.

Among the highest profile incidents in recent months, a massive blast demolished parts of an apartment building in the southern town of Linkoping in June, injuring around 20 people, while a mother was gunned down in broad daylight on a street in Malmo, across the bridge from Copenhagen.

The cases have yet to result in convictions.

Haekkerup said a new center to prevent cross-border crime will be set up in Denmark and staffed by Danish police officers, who will be working closely with colleagues in Sweden.

(Source: Reuters)

French authorities on Wednesday banned a demonstration by activists claiming the police staffer who stabbed four colleagues to death was not an Islamist radical but was instead a man discriminated against because he was partially deaf.

The killing last week of the four police employees at the headquarters of Paris police shocked the country and prompted President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday to promise an “unrelenting” fight against what he termed the “Islamist hydra”.

The assailant, Mickael Harpon, converted to Islam about 10 years ago and, according to investigators, had adopted increasingly radical beliefs and been in contact with a radical Salafist imam.

A local activist, Hadama Traore, had called for a demonstration Thursday in Gonesse, the northeastern Paris suburb where Harpon lived, insisting that he was “not a religious extremist”.

Writing on Facebook, Traore claimed that Harpon suffered discrimination and mockery at work because he was hard of hearing.

“That’s the context which explains why he cracked,” he wrote, while condemning the “atrocious” killings.

‘Obscenity and insult’

The leader of the far-right National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen had urged the government to ban the protest.

“How can we believe that Emmanuel Macron will fight against the ‘Islamist hydra’ when he cannot even ban a demonstration supporting an assassin of four police organised by an earthworm?” she wrote on Twitter.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner insisted the demonstration would be banned, calling it an “obscenity and insult to the memory of our police”.

Castener is under huge pressure as the government is pressed to explain how Harpon’s radicalisation failed to raise red flags.

On Tuesday, the minister appeared before a parliamentary committee, conceding there had been a “malfunction” in not reporting the signals.

Analysts say Macron and his government want to show they are tackling Islamist extremism to prevent a drift of voters to the far right.

Macron’s speech Tuesday at a ceremony for the slain police marked a toughening of rhetoric, with the president calling on France to be a “society in a state of vigilance”.

(AFP)

A stolen truck ploughed into cars in the centre of the German city of Limburg on Monday leaving several people injured, police said, adding that the driver had been detained.

“Based on what we have learned and several witness accounts, the man seized control of the truck at about 5:20 pm (1520 GMT),” police said in a statement.

Soon after, the truck slammed into cars waiting at a stoplight near the main railway station of Limburg in Hesse state, “crushing them together”.

“Several people are being treated in hospital” and the driver, who is in custody, was slightly injured, police added.

German news agency DPA quoting regional police put the number of people hurt at 16 including one person in a critical condition.

Police said it was too soon to speculate about a motive.

“We currently do not have sufficient information about what was behind it,” they said.

“The investigation, including questioning witnesses and collecting evidence, is ongoing.”

Police conducted a major deployment of officers and vehicles, with a helicopter circling overhead in the city of 35,000, about an hour’s drive from the financial capital Frankfurt.

They urged users of social media not to jump to conclusions on the motive.

“We are not ruling anything out,” a spokesman for the state police force quoted by DPA said. “But we call on you: don’t take part in speculation!” the regional police wrote in several tweets.

‘Didn’t say a word’

The daily Frankfurter Neue Presse (FNP) quoted the rightful driver of the truck, who was not named, as saying: “A man dragged me out of my lorry.”

He said the man, in his 30s with short dark hair and a full beard, had yanked open the driver-side door and stared at him wide-eyed before forcing him out of the vehicle.

“I asked him ‘What do you want from me?’,” he told FNP. “He didn’t say a word.”

The newspaper quoted witnesses saying the truck then sped into the parked cars before coming to a stop several metres from the traffic light.

When the man behind the wheel of the white truck emerged from the crash, several passers-by provided first aid, FNP reported.

“The passers-by said the driver said ‘Allah’ several times” and spoke Arabic, FNP reported. Police did not confirm this account.

Bettina Yeisley from Limburg, whose office is directly next to the scene of the crash, told FNP that she heard a loud bang and ran out onto the street with colleagues.

They found the man sitting beneath a tree without knowing he had been driving.

“He was bleeding from the nose, his hands were bloody, his trousers torn. He said that everything hurt. I asked him his name and he said, ‘My name is Mohammed’.”

Germany has been on the alert following several jihadist attacks in recent years claimed by the Islamic State group.

The most deadly was committed in 2016 by 23-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri, who killed 12 people when he stole a truck and ploughed it through a Berlin Christmas market.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic security watchdog, warned in April of an increased risk posed by IS fighters returning from Syria and northern Iraq.

Its director Thomas Haldenwang said that an estimated 2,240 Islamists with “terrorist potential” were living in Germany.

Last Thursday in neighbouring France, a Muslim convert who had reportedly started adopting increasingly radical beliefs stabbed four colleagues to death at Paris police headquarters.

(AFP)

Embattled Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been hit by fresh controversy, this time, focused on his tenure as London mayor.

The allegations, related to favouritism and the granting of privileges, which can potentially amount to the criminal offence of misconduct in public office, were first raised by the Sunday Times on September 22.

According to the Sunday Times, London-based American model and businesswoman, Jennifer Arcuri, received favourable treatment on account of her strong friendship with Johnson.

The favours and benefits were bestowed on Arcuri, who is widely described as a “model-turned-technology entrepreneur”, during the time Johnson served as London mayor.

Most damningly, the Sunday Times reveals that Arcuri was granted £126,000 in public funds and was in addition given privileged access to three official overseas trade missions led by Johnson.

Jonson reportedly regularly visited Arcuri’s flat in the Shoreditch district, located in the East End of London.  

Whilst not denying his friendship with the American model, Johnson still maintains that “everything was done in the proper way”.

Despite Johnson’s claims of propriety, the allegations are serious enough for the Greater London Authority’s monitoring officer (whose job is to monitor the conduct of the mayor) to refer the PM to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

Meanwhile, the story keeps on developing as other media organisations try to expand the investigation.

In an exclusive report, the Guardian reported yesterday that Arcuri won a highly sought after entrepreneur visa to stay in the UK after securing Johnson’s endorsement for her firm, ‘Innotech’.

For its part, the BBC has spoken to “several” people who went on the same overseas “trade missions” as Arcuri.

The BBC’s Home Affairs correspondent, Daniel Sandford, says that people who went on those trade missions report that Arcuri “seemed a bit out of place” as her companies were “much less substantial” than the companies which had gained entry more legitimately.

Source: Presstv

Thirty-seven of France’s top charities issued a report on the fight against poverty, describing a situation which continues to dramatically worsen seemingly every year during the age of austerity.

The report called the Yellow Vest protests a, “long overdue expression of a real social unhappiness to the highest levels of society.” They noted that a majority of those who accessed their charity services supported the anti-government and anti-austerity movement.

The report found that the biggest problems the poor face are access to their legal rights, followed by decreased wages which are further compounded by inflation, isolation from society, poor health care and poor lodging.

There seems to be little help on the horizon for France’s poor from Macron. He has begun his unpopular efforts to roll back the pension system, with the unemployment system to be targeted next.

Right-wing economic austerity continues to cut social services just as the French need them more than ever, while also failing to produce the long-promised economic growth. Over the previous “lost decade” French inequality rates have soared even as their corporate profits have set records repeatedly.

Homelessness has hit new highs, as have evictions, while France has been repeatedly condemned internationally for failing to lift their small refugee population out of makeshift slums.

Source: Presstv

Police officers escaped injury after an explosive device detonated in Wattlebridge, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.

The bombing appears to have been a highly sophisticated trap involving a telephone warning and a hoax device discovered close to where the actual bomb exploded in a follow-up operation.

Army bomb disposal officers, who were deployed to the area at the weekend, initially declared the item to be a hoax. But, according to multiple reports, another device exploded on the main A3 Cavan Road on the morning of August 19th.

This well-planned attempt at killing and maiming Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and army bomb disposal officers has caused deep worry and anxiety amongst the security establishment in Northern Ireland.

PSNI Deputy Chief Constable, Stephen Martin, said he is of the “firm belief” the attack was designed to “lure” PSNI and army personnel into the area “to murder them”. 

According to Martin, there have been five attempts to murder police officers this year and that the adverse security situation is becoming “more entrenched”.

The PSNI, and the broader security establishment in Northern Ireland, have lost no time in attributing the bombing to “dissident republicans”, which is often a reference to two groups, the Continuity IRA and the New IRA.

For their part, mainstream republicans in Sinn Fein have condemned the attack as “totally wrong”.

Sinn Fein MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Michelle Gildernew, said: “Those responsible for this incident have nothing to offer society and need to end these actions immediately”.

This latest bombing occurs against the backdrop of an intensifying political crisis in Northern Ireland.

Power sharing arrangements and devolved government collapsed in January 2017 in the wake of a flawed green-energy scheme.

Furthermore, the looming prospect of a no-deal Brexit, and by extension the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, has caused deep anxiety in the nationalist/republican community.

In late July, Sinn Fein President, Mary Lou McDonald, called for an Irish unification referendum in the event of a no-deal Brexit and the return of a hard border.

Source: Presstv