Eighty Swiss banks have agreed to pay the US fines totaling $1.36 billion in order to avoid court prosecution, according to the US Justice Department. After the investigation has been completed all the banks are required to cooperate in related criminal or civil proceedings, said the department. [...]

A waitress at a bar in Austria, which controversially banned asylum seekers after some of them sexually harassed the female clients there, is pressing charges after migrants sexually assaulted her on New Year's Eve, she told Sputnik. Steffi G, a 19 year old waitress at Charly's Bar in the Austrian town of Bad Ischl, told Sputnik German that she is pressing charges after migrants sexually assaul [...]

Pretty much all that Americans – and much of the West – get to hear about Russian President Putin is heavy-handed propaganda often read over images of him riding shirtless on a horse. He’s either a bully or a buffoon. But editors of a popular German newspaper encountered a much more sophisticated figure, writes Gilbert Doctorow. I was hesitant to write about Vladimir Putin’s recent inte [...]

When the French Prime Minister starts talking of the "end of Europe" and Germany announces indefinite border controls amid the growing refugee crisis - it is time to get concerned. The crisis is not new, so why the sudden panic? The answer lies in the fact that next year – 2017 – the French will go to the polls to elect its president and Germany votes-in a new Bundestag. [...]

Germany shuts its eyes to the mass killings of the Kurds in southeastern Turkey, the illegal oil trade and Turkey's collaboration with Daesh terrorists, hoping that the Turkish President will help Europe to reduce the inflow of migrants, German newspaper Handelsblatt wrote. German Chancellor Angela Merkel ignores the fact that Turkish President Erdogan is waging war against his own people and c [...]

American business magnate and investor George Soros no longer views Russia as an enemy of the EU and is now openly calling on Brussels to cooperate with Moscow, German newspaper Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN) wrote. According to him, the European Union may soon collapse due [...]

A breakup of the Schengen area amid the crisis the European Union is now going through will have an immediate impact on the euro and the European economy as a whole, Deutsche Welle warned on Saturday. Brussels is fully aware of the fact that if the European countries fail to get the situation under control and agree urgent measures to end the migrant crisis, it would spell the end of the Scheng [...]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Time magazine’s “person of the year” in 2015, is facing her biggest political crisis as her welcoming of Mideast refugees has troubled and angered many Europeans, raising the possibility that Merkel’s days as the Continent’s undisputed leader may be numbered, writes Gilbert Doctorow. The online edition of Bloomberg News carried a lead story entitled � [...]

Finnish women have offered lone refugee boys €20 for sex, a Helsinki-based tabloid wrote on Friday. Elderly Finnish women are believed to have offered lone migrant teens money for having sex with them, Inta-Sanomat wrote. [...]

Vladimir Putin's first big interview of the year was with Germany's leading newspaper Bild. Nikolaus Blome, Bild's deputy editor-in-chief who spoke to the Russian president, told Deutsche Welle that he was "happy with the result" and shared what impressed him the most. "Although I was aware of that, I was still surprised by how well [Putin] speaks German and understands the subtleties of the la [...]

UNITED NATIONS - The West continues its strong political and military support to one of its longstanding allies in the Middle East – Saudi Arabia –- despite withering criticism of the kingdom’s battlefield excesses in the ongoing war in neighboring Yemen. A Saudi-led coalition has been accused of using banned cluster bombs, bombing civilian targets and destroying hospitals – either by acci [...]

After the incidents of sexual assault in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve committed by Muslim refugees against German women, feminist apologetic have acquired renewed vigor in the European debate. Pundits and politicians assure the public that refugee males now storming the gates of Europe from the Middle East, Northern Africa and Central Asia will be required to learn that Western women ar [...]

After the shock of the New Year’s Eve assaults, and the subsequent backlash, some migrants are trying to teach refugees about the challenges of life in Germany and about mutual tolerance. Skinny-dipping, gay relationships and parenting all form part of Magdi Gohary’s crash-course introduction to a strange new home [...]

The proposal comes two weeks after hundreds of women were attacked by aggressive men of allegedly Arab and North African origin in a number of German cities. After the attacks on women in Cologne and a number of other German cities, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has called to consider the deployment of Bundeswehr forces within the country. [...]

Austria is set to use its army to stop refugees intending to transit through Germany and not apply for asylum there, as hundreds are being rejected at the German border. More than 1,000 migrants with forged IDs are being turned around at the Austrian border each week. [...]

On New Year's Eve the German city of Cologne witnessed mass organized sexual assaults on hundreds of German women. For five days following the assaults the German media failed to report them. When under public pressure they eventually did, it turned out that a string of similar assaults had also happened simultaneously in various other German cities. [...]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's migration policy has brought into question the German leader’s political future. What if Angela Merkel steps down? Experts weigh the pros and cons of the potential move. Angela Merkel's "open-door" refugee policy has already prompted fierce debate among the Chancellor's political opponents and ordinary Germans; the violent massive sex assault on women in Colo [...]

A German court has ruled Facebook’s ‘friend finder’ function, which allows the social network to market services to non-users, illegal. The court said the promotion is “intrusive” and that Facebook had not adequately informed its members about it. [...]

The head of a Bavarian district has sent a bus with 30 refugees aboard on a 550km trip to Angela Merkel’s Berlin office – fulfilling a threat made in October, when he said he would act if the number of refugees exceeded housing capacity in his area. Peter Dreier, head of the Landshut district in Bavaria, reportedly had an angry phone conversation with Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the [...]

After an Austrian bar announced that it was "free of refugees," with people expressing their outrage on social networks, claiming that such measures reminds them of the Nazi regime. A local bar in the small town of Bad Ischl, Austria, has banned asylum seekers from entry and has caused outrage among the local population, media reported. [...]

The US and UK fear some kind of an arrangement between the EU and Russia, and are attempting to use Poland and Hungary as a wedge to prevent an understanding between Moscow and, in particular, Berlin, says independent journalist and commentator Martin Summers.   [...]

This has to be seen to be believed. The Young Turks really need to get a non-progressive on to bring some reason to their echo chamber.   /* */ [...]