Free Republic

Dorin Cioba the leader of three million Roma around the world, landed in Israel on Wednesday. Roma are widely known as Gypsies. On his first visit to Israel, Cioba, who is president of the International Romani Union, plans to visit the Roma community in Jerusalem as well as the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. The photographer Roni Ben-Ari invited Cioaba to Israel for the opening of her exhibit that documents the life of Gypsies in the city of Lugoj, Romania. The exhibit opens on Thursday at the Museum of Israeli Art in Ramat Gan. "This is the first time that I...

Family who financed their millionaire lifestyle with $7 MILLION shop-lifting spree face court: Mother, father and daughter lived in luxury $1.3M home on proceeds of stolen loot sold on eBay Branko Bogdanov, 58, his wife Lela, 52, and daughter Julia, 34, stole thousands of items over a period of ten years, according to police The family, who live in an upmarket Chicago suburb, allegedly made $7MILLION over that period Julia allegedly wore a custom-made skirt with several pockets to hide items in, according to police her dresses looked 'noticibly fuller' when she was captured leaving stores on CCTV The family...

The Black Death of the 14th century may be written into the DNA of survivors' descendants, new research finds. The study reveals that Roma people (sometimes known as gypsies, although this is considered a derogatory term) and white Europeans share alterations to their genetic code that occurred after the Roma settled in Europe from northwest India 1,000 years ago. The plague of the 1300s, which killed at least 75 million people, is a likely candidate for forcing this evolutionary change. "We show that there are some immune receptors that are clearly influenced by evolution in Europe and not in northwest...

Police now believe that Maria, who is thought to be four or five, was being prepared for marriage at the age of 12. Her pale skin, near-white hair and blue eyes would have made her a ‘prize bride’ among the gipsy community. She would have fetched Salis and Dimopoulou a large dowry, according to police sources. Officers investigating the case believe the prospect of a bridal pay-off is why Maria had not yet been sold. She was treated as an ‘investment’ to be nurtured and protected until she reached the traditional Roma ‘coming of age’ - usually at the age...

A Greek appeal for help in identifying the girl has triggered a global outpouring of sympathy and tips -- over 8,000 calls so far -- but no concrete breakthroughs, authorities said Monday. Greek police on the case are investigating everything from a potential link with child trafficking rings to a welfare scam or even simple charity as they seek the The Greek appeal follows the discovery last week of the girl in a Gypsy settlement in central Greece during a police raid looking for drugs, firearms and fugitives. The blond, blue-eyed child was strikingly unlike the couple she lived with,...

Britain is facing a new wave of Eastern European immigration which will put British workers’ jobs at risk... Twenty nine million Bulgarians and Romanians will gain the right to live and work unrestricted in Britain in 2014 under European “freedom of movement” rules. Last night forecasters said it could lead to a significant number of new arrivals, in the same way as when Poland and other Eastern European countries gained the same rights in 2004, with the scale likely to be increased by the economic crisis gripping the rest of Europe. And a Government report was disclosed to show concern...

Residents of a housing estate in the southern French city of Marseille forced a group of Roma (Gypsy) families that had installed themselves nearby to move on, before burning all that remained of their encampment, local press reported on Thursday. According to La Provence newspaper, police were called to separate dozens of the residents from the Roma families, who left the site in Marseille’s 15th arrondissement (district) “without violence”, police said. Everything that was left behind was gathered up and burned. Police said no arrests were made and that there had been no violence. The locals, according to La Provence,...

French police were yesterday breaking up gipsy camps and deporting illegal immigrants found in them. Dozens of officers in riot gear descended on a settlement near Lille shortly after dawn to oversee the evacuation of some 200 Roma living in mobile homes. One hundred people were evicted from a site in Lyon, with similar round-ups happening in other major cities including Marseille. Caravans and huts were destroyed in the Belleville area of central Paris on Wednesday, making another 100 people homeless. ‘Many of those evicted will be flown home to Romania,’ said an interior ministry source, who insisted the deportations...

<p>The 16-year-old star of Channel 4 reality TV show Big Fat Gypsy Weddings today married the boy who 'grabbed' her in a disco last year.</p> <p>Cheyenne Pidgley of Hersham, Surrey, wed 18-year-old fellow Traveller John McFadyen in a ceremony held at St Peter's church this afternoon, with 200 family and friends in attendance.</p>

WHAT THE ISLAMIST-APPEASER BBC OMITTED IN INTERVIEWING JORDANIAN ARAB "KING" Nov-14-2011BBC News Special: Lyse Doucet speaks to King Abdullah of Jordanhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/2011/11/111114_king_abdullah_of_jordan_interview.shtml___1) "King" Abdullah of Jordan outrageously said -typically- propagated to BBC that if Israel would have just solved the "Palestinian" problem, it wouldn't had to deal with Iran nukes... that Iran wouldn't want -then- to attack Israel... The BBC Reporter --of course-- "forgot" to press about the clear genocide the Islamic Republic has repeatedly reiterated in 1994 (in Argentina by Iranian official Mohsen Rabbani),[1][2] in 2005 [3][4][5][6] and 2007 [7] (by Ahmadinejad) for Israel to be WIPED OFF, Period. What's...

Since World War Two you have had three major conflicts in the Balkans involving Orthodox Christian communities and Islamic communities; this applies to Cyprus, Bosnia and Kosovo respectively. On all three occasions the United States supported the followers of Islam and maybe one day the same will happen to Orthodox Christians in Macedonia? Yet unlike the large Christian communities of Bosnia and Cyprus, it is the land of Kosovo which is being Islamized and Albanianized under NATO, the UN, and other international institutions who are meant to be neutral. The media in the West is once more turning a 'blind...

The Supreme Court let stand on Monday a ruling that a traditional Internet download of sound recording does not constitute a public performance of the recorded musical work under federal copyright law. The justices refused to review a ruling by an appeals court in New York that the download itself of a musical work does not fall within the law's definition of a public performance of that work. The not-for-profit American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) appealed to the Supreme Court. It said the ruling has profound implications for the nation's music industry, costing its members tens of...

Hundreds of anarchists and student protesters are plotting to join the battle against the bulldozing of Europe’s largest illegal traveller camp. Police fear bloody confrontations with bailiffs and officers as outsiders attempt to turn the protest into a politically motivated riot. About 50 anarchists have already joined the 1,000 travellers at Dale Farm and Basildon District Council has spent ten years trying to remove around 500 travellers from Dale Farm after they settled beside dozens of legal plots. It ended up in the Court of Appeal last year when 80 families on 52 plots were ordered to leave. The council...

An immigration officer returned home to find gipsies had moved in, ransacked the place and dressed in her clothes. Julia High was even offered a glass of her own wine by the Romanian squatters. They claimed they had rented the property from her ‘son’ because she had died, and produced a set of fake documents. Miss High, 55, has no son.

Members of the Roma, Sinti, Manouches, Kale, Yenish and Travellers communities from 20 European are taking part in a pilgrimage to Rome to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of their patron, Blessed Ceferino Gimenez - including an audience with the Pope. One of the main organisers of the event is the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People. The Vatican office has long been at the forefront of promoting the rights of Gypsy communities and fostering integration in broader European society. Emer McCarthy spoke to Council President, Archbishop Antonio Maria Vegliò. Listen: Q: Would you...

"Milan cannot turn into an Islamic city, a zingaropoli [Gypsytown] full of Roma camps, besieged by foreigners to whom the left wants to give the right to vote," Mr Berlusconi said on his People of Freedom party website. "Milan is... one of the most important capitals in Europe in terms of intelligence, creativity and entrepreneurialism," he said. "A city like this will surely not want to hand itself over to the far left with the risk of becoming a disorderly, chaotic and unsafe city." Mr Berlusconi is understood to have taken first-round defeat in Milan - his home town and...

Having confronted travellers cutting down trees on her farm, terminally-ill Tracy St Clair Pearce found herself subjected to a terrifying ordeal. Some of the group pelted her with rocks while a youth threatened to slit her throat and slaughter her cattle. When she dialled 999 she expected the full weight of the law to be on her side. Instead, however, police officers criticised her for inflaming the situation and confiscated her legally held shotguns – even though they had been locked away in a cabinet at home throughout the incident.

The European Commission is to launch legal proceedings against France over its expulsion of Romanian and Bulgarian Roma (Gypsy) migrants. Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said France had failed to respect European rules on freedom of movement. The controversial expulsions of thousands of Roma led to a serious row between Brussels and Paris. Recently Ms Reding compared France's action to events during World War II. The accusation drew a sharp rebuke from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "France is not enforcing European law as it should on free movement, so we are launching an infringement process against France," Ms Reding told France...

France has begun expelling approximately 700 Roma to Romania and Bulgaria on Thursday, AFP reported. The first 79 Roma to participate in what has been termed a "voluntary return procedure" agreed to leave France on a flight headed for Bucharest later in the day. Another 132 Roma are expected to leave France for Romania this Friday. Each adult to participate in the repatriation program is to receive 300 euros from the French government, and 100 euros for every minor that leaves the country.

Officers moved in before dawn to seal off the squatter camp, where the local authorities had installed water standpipes and chemical lavatories near the central city of Saint Etienne. The operation took several hours. Shortly after launching his measures aimed at gipsies, Mr Sarkozy announced plans to target members of other minority groups, promising to strip French nationality from certain categories of foreign-born criminals. Opinion polls this week showed that 79 per cent of voters approved of measures to dismantle the camps. Similar majorities backed other aspects of his law and order policy. Mr Sarkozy has pledged that those foreign...