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Europe of today is an economy running at half speed. Despite being in possession of all the technological and financial know-how accessible to man and despite being home to many of the richest countries on Earth as well as the leading world currency, the Globe's financial capital and a population of 500 million inhabitants, Europe at large remains an economical failure. It seems Paris needs to be liberated again. As a European, I give my full support to Sarkozy! The article: "France has endured a second day of travel chaos as transport unions continued to strike against President Nicolas Sarkozy's...

The US government took the unusual step of accusing Northern Ireland's mainstream unionist parties of an "abdication of responsibility" towards the weekend violence that saw loyalist gunmen shooting live rounds at police officers in some of the worst unrest in years. Fifty officers were injured and 400 plastic bullets were fired by police as they attempted to quell the demonstration. Without identifying any party by name, Mitchell Reiss, George W. Bush's special envoy on Northern Ireland, said: "No political party, and certainly no responsible political leadership, deserves to serve in a government unless it co-operates and supports fully and unconditionally...

Southern heritage buffs vow to use the Virginia gubernatorial election as a platform for designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month. The four candidates have differing views on the Confederacy, an issue that has been debated for years in the commonwealth. "We're not just a few people making a lot of noise," said Brag Bowling, a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the oldest hereditary organization for male descendents of Confederate soldiers. "This is not a racial thing; it is good for Virginia. We're going to keep pushing this until we get it." Each candidate recently shared his...

The defining moment of my visit to New Orleans a year ago occurred in a gift shop. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit this, but at least it wasn't the kind that sells feather boas and t-shirts with jazz-playing lobsters. I wasn't a sorority girl nursing my hangover at Café Du Monde during Mardi Gras; I was a tourist visiting what used to be a sprawling, stately slave plantation. I was busy mulling over that subtly troubling experience, browsing through the gift shop's bookshelves, when I came to a curious array of volumes. The title The South Was Right! jumped out...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) -- The United States has demanded that the IRA disband after the guerrilla group's astonishing offer to shoot the killers of a murdered Northern Ireland Catholic man. "It's time for the IRA to go out of business," U.S. special envoy Mitchell Reiss said Wednesday. For the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland's biggest Irish nationalist party, the U.S. demand was yet another blow to its democratic credentials. Reiss told BBC radio: "It's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated. "You can't sign...

Unionists outrage local Muslims Unionist councillors in County Antrim have outraged local Muslims by refusing to accept an Islamic gift which had been presented to an SDLP member. One Democratic Unionist Party member of Ballymena council said he was suspicious of Muslims because of the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States. The gift at the centre of the row is a brass plate, decorated with Islamic designs intended to express friendship with the people of the town. It was presented to SDLP councillor Declan O'Loan at an exhibition in the town's museum. He wanted to pass it to...