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Australia on Monday announced it had ended direct aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) government over concerns the funds could be used to assist Palestinians convicted of political violence. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Australia would no longer be giving its yearly funding of A$10 million (€6.9 million, $7.5 million) to the World Bank’s trust fund for Palestinian recovery and development. “I wrote to the Palestinian Authority on May 29, to seek clear assurance that Australian funding is not being used to assist Palestinians convicted of politically motivated violence,” Bishop said in a statement. “I am confident that previous Australian...

Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday to fire off two tweets about the “tenuous” state of politics in Germany. Not for the first time, he showed his ignorance of developments in German society. Trump waded into the political crisis facing Chancellor Angela Merkel, declaring that the German people were “turning against their leadership” over immigration. “We don’t want what is happening with immigration in Europe to happen with us!” he said in a pair of tweets. “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition,” he said, adding that “crime...

<p>BERLIN (AFP) - Leading German politicianson Tuesday called for the US ambassador to be expelled, after the staunch ally of Donald Trump was accused of meddling in domestic politics and aggravating already tense ties.</p> <p>Richard Grenell had taken up his diplomatic posting in Berlin on May 8, and immediately irked Germany when he tweeted on the same day that German companies should stop doing business with Iran as Trump quit the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.</p>

The threat of terrorist attacks in France has put paid to fans’ hopes of watching the World Cup on big screens in public spaces, France’s ministry for the interior announced. “I remind all publicly-elected officials of the fact that ‘big screen’ zones are completely forbidden in public spaces,” said a statement from the ministry. France has been subject to several terrorist attacks in recent years, leading to an increased security presence all round.“In the current climate of terrorist threats, the security procedures used at the last European Championship must be deployed again, with the same degree of efficiency.” …

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany “urgently needed” extra affordable housing and used her weekly video podcast Saturday to reel off a series of steps — outlined last February as her coalition took shape — to get them built before the next federal elections in 2021. Simultaneously Saturday, the board chairman of Germany’s BA Labor Agency, Detlef Scheele, told Stuttgart-based SWR public broadcasting that affordable housing had become the “burning topic of our times.” More and more people were seeking second jobs to supplement their incomes, especially in Germany’s urban hubs, said Scheele Last year alone, Berlin property prices soared 20.5...

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) was informed about possible improprieties in the approval of asylum applications at its branch in the northern city of Bremen earlier than it admitted, German media reported on Monday. The news magazine Der Spiegel reported that emails it had seen suggested that BAMF head Jutta Cordt had received internal information regarding “massive irregularities” in Bremen as early as February 2017. Broadcaster NDR and the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung also reported on internal emails allegedly showing that BAMF headquarters knew about questionable procedures at that time, but were reluctant to look into the matter....

The Trump administration threatened Iran with “unprecedented financial pressure” on Monday, issuing a laundry list of harsh demands for Tehran to change its foreign and domestic policies. In a speech touted to outline the administration’s strategy toward Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised “the strongest sanctions in history” should Tehran not buckle to US demands. […] Pompeo said the United States would not try to renegotiate the JCPOA. Instead, any new deal would require Iran to meet 12 demands, including halting its ballistic missile program and ending interventions in Syria and Yemen, as well as wide-ranging concessions on its...

Germany is leading the charge to rescue the Iran deal and the economic inroads German and European companies have made into the restricted economy since 2016. EU leaders are keen to salvage the deal shaped by Obama’s administration after President Trump on May 12th pulled the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The deal, in which Iran committed to denuclearize in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, was signed by Iran, the US and the international community in 2015. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and a host of other EU leaders have...

European Union Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced Thursday that the bloc plans to reactivate a law that would seek to block European companies from complying with any sanctions the US would reintroduce against Iran. Juncker’s announcement came during the second day of an EU meeting in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, which had already been marked by sharp criticism from European leaders over American President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. […] German-headquartered insurance firm Allianz and Danish shopping company Maersk have already said they plan to close operations in Iran in order...

Preparations are underway for the grand opening of the new United States embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. While the President won’t be able to attend as he prepares for his summit with North Korea, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have arrived to do the honors along with a number of other delegates. But not everyone is quite so thrilled with this development, particularly in some parts of the European Union. They were preparing to put forward a resolution condemning the embassy move, delivering a statement which was explicitly designed to “embarrass and isolate the Trump administration” ahead of the ceremony....

No-go zones are growing rapidly in the suburbs of all of France's main cities. Shanty towns built by illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East have sprung up in parts of Marseilles and Paris in the last few years. Islamization is everywhere. In hundreds of mosques, imams deliver fiery anti-Western speeches. Churches are vandalized. The number of rapes is rapidly increasing. Groups of veiled women roam the streets and insult the "immodest", unveiled, women. Macron's most important project since he was elected has been the creation of new Islamic institutions destined to adapt France to Islam -- not to...

The man behind a deadly knife attack in central Paris was born in Chechnya and had been on police radar for radicalism, and his parents have been detained for questioning, French authorities said Sunday. Counterterrorism investigators are working to determine whether the man who stabbed five people in a busy neighborhood in the heart of the French capital Saturday night had any help. The attacker killed a 29-year-old man and wounded four others, before being shot by police. Among the injured was a 34-year-old man from Luxembourg, the foreign ministry of the small country north of France said in a...

The person who stabbed five people in Paris on Saturday night, killing one, yelled the Arabic phrase "Allahu Akbar," meaning "God is great," during the attack, city prosecutor François Molins told reporters at the scene. Four people were wounded during the Saturday night knife attack in the touristy 2nd arrondissement, or district, of Paris. Two of the victims were gravely wounded and two others were lightly injured, police said The attacker, who French President Emmanuel Macron called a terrorist, is dead, according to police. The media wing of ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement published online. The...

Two former Obama administration officials suggested in a New York Times op-ed published Thursday that European countries allied with the United States could expel American ambassadors in retaliation for President Donald Trump withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. "Europe Doesn't Have to Be Trump's Doormat," wrote Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson. Simon served as the National Security Council's senior director for the Middle East and North Africa, while Stevenson served as the regional director for political-military affairs. "After months of swaggering hesitation, President Trump finally announced the United States' withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran, to which Britain, France,...

French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Sunday that war could ensue if U.S. President Donald Trump withdraws from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, Reuters reported. “We would open the Pandora’s box. There could be war,” Macron was quoted as having told German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. At the same time he added, “I don’t think that Donald Trump wants war.” Trump has imposed a May 12 deadline to reimpose sanctions on Iran unless the flaws in the existing agreement are fixed. …

The Republican leader of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee said President Trump should not walk away from the Iran nuclear deal. President Donald Trump is facing a May 12 deadline on whether to re-impose sanctions against Iran. Texas Congressman Mac Thornberry said on Fox News Sunday it would be a mistake for Trump to scuttle the nuclear accord reached with Tehran. “I would counsel against it,” he said. As Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Thornberry is considered a key Republican voice on national security issues. Thornberry said that while he was opposed to the deal when it...

After a large group of migrants aggressively tried to prevent the deportation of a Togolese man this week, right-wing politicians called for mass deportations. But a senior Christian Democrat (CDU) figure said on Friday that deportations can have a bad impact on families. “Deportations often hit the wrong people — families who have lived in Germany for an eternity and who are well integrated,” Daniel Günther, the Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein told the Funke Media Group. Günther, who is a key figure in Angela Merkel’s CDU made the comments in reaction to calls for more deportations of migrants after ugly scenes...

France said on Tuesday that new claims about Iran’s nuclear program from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reinforced the importance of a the 2015 deal. In an elaborate televised presentation on Monday, the hawkish Israeli leader claimed he had new “proof” via captured documents that Iran had developed a nuclear weapons plan which could be activated at any time. The French foreign ministry said the details needed to be “studied and evaluated”, but a spokesperson added that the evidence appeared to confirm what European powers had known for more than a decade and half. “At first sight, they (the details)...

Not enough German high school students receive Islam religion lessons, according to a new study by the media info service Mediendienst Integration.Around 54,000 students at 800 schools across the country currently receive Islam religion lessons, a significant increase on the 42,000 who attended such lessons two years ago, according to official statistics from Germany’s 16 state education ministries. But this is still much less than the 580,000 students who would potentially be interested in such lessons, a number that came out of a 2008 report entitled “Muslim Life in Germany” carried out by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees...

The leaders of Britain, France and Germany reaffirmed their support for the existing nuclear deal with Iran, which is “the best way of neutralizing the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran,” according to a statement released Sunday by the prime minister’s office in London. Prime Minister Theresa May spoke by phone with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the weekend, and the three leaders agreed that the best way forward was to maintain the existing agreement, which was signed in 2015. But US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to scupper the deal and his next chance...