“People have seen their properties destroyed, their sheep and goats have been slaughtered, their homes broken into. A few years back, when there were 5,000 migrants on the island, things seemed bad enough. Now there’s a sense that the situation has really got out of hand.” — Nikos Trakellis, community leader in Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos.
In the last decade of the 20th century, Western Europe threw open its doors to those fleeing the collapse of Yugoslavia. Today, Denmark says integration has failed and is pursuing a worrying experiment in dismantling immigrant ‘ghettos’.
“The problem is when, in the name of a religion, some people want to separate themselves from the Republic and therefore not respect its laws.” — French President Emmanuel Macron, February 18, 2020.
According to a new investigation by Swiss media, a cell of jihadists based in Geneva plotted to bomb cisterns full of oil near the city’s airport in a major terror attack.
The father and brother of a man who fought against Isis in Syria have been charged with terror offences, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.
Amid the heavy losses of the insurgency in the current round of fighting in northwest Syria (Idlib and its environs), one criticism has been made is the supposed absence of the leaders of the insurgent factions.
Serbia has over the weekend received a delivery of Russian-made Pantsir S1 air-defense systems, despite warnings of possible U.S. sanctions against the Balkan state, which is seeking membership to the European Union.
Head of Sudan’s Transitional Government, General Abdul Fattah Al-Burhan, announced that Israel is to play a key role in removing his country’s name from the US blacklist, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper revealed on Friday.
Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Adel Al-Jubeir, confirmed that the kingdom opposes what he described as “Turkey’s incursion into Syria, and its support for extremist militias in Libya and Somalia.”
Turkish trucks carrying $10 million worth of tomatoes are stranded at the Russian border, again. The miles-long queues of vehicles awaiting clearance from Russian authorities are reminiscent of the strained ties between the two countries after Turkey shot down a Russian jet in 2015. After the incident, Russia slapped sanctions on Turkey and imposed a ban on Turkish agricultural imports. As the two countries slowly resumed ties, Russia lifted the restrictions on Turkish food imports, but the tomato ban remained in effect, reminding Turks that not all was forgiven and forgotten. Eventually, Russia lifted the ban on tomatoes too, but as tensions between Moscow and Ankara have escalated in the last few weeks over Syria, the tomato war has once again flared up. Producers in the southern Turkish city of Antalya, who sell 80 percent of their tomatoes to Russia, are expecting the government to resolve the rift. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has developed a close rapport with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, is in a tough spot.