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Europe Tag

Serious concerns over German Chancellor Angela Merkel's health have grown after she was seen shaking uncontrollably in public for the third time in the last few weeks. Chancellor Merkel, whose term ends in 2021, downplayed the trembling episodes claiming she was doing "very well" and "no one should be worried." The first bout of trembling occurred on June 18 when she stood alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during the playing of the national anthems. Days later she was seen shaking during a public appearance with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

As Iran breaches the limit on its enriched uranium stockpile set under the 2015 nuclear deal, European powers scramble to appease the regime. The European Union has started processing payments to Iran under a new trading mechanism, German media reports confirmed. While French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to rush to Tehran in an attempt to coax the regime into the Obama-era deal.

We all know how much Turkish dictator President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan loves his power. After all, his Justice and Development Party (AKP) has enjoyed a majority in the government for 25 years. Back in March, the party received a blow when the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) won the Istanbul mayoral election. Erdogan raised his iron fist and demanded a re-run. Well, CHP candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu won again, but by an even more significant margin.

The British intelligence agency MI5 foiled a significant bomb plot linked to Iran-backed Hezbollah terror outfit, London-based Daily Telegraph disclosed. The British intelligence service and the Metropolitan Police uncovered a secret bomb factory in North West London in the autumn of 2015. They recovered thousands of packets containing ammonium nitrate, an explosive ingredient often used in homemade bombs.

After celebrating the win of the "Australia First" Liberal Party, and cheering on the milkshake-covered Brexit candidates in Great Britain, it pleases me greatly to report that anti-EU parties made significant gains in Sunday’s European election. After processing the results, I have several essential takeaways. Perhaps the most significant that the win for the anti-EU parties is a hard loss for the centrists who want to run the entire world from Brussels.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May announced through tears this morning that she will leave her post on June 7 after a Brexit mess that has lasted for three years. From The London Times:
“It is and will always remain a matter of deep regret to me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit,” she said. “I believe it was right to persevere, even when the odds against success seemed high.

The new Islamophobia definition proposed by an all-party British parliamentary group could undermine police efforts in countering Islamic terrorism, the UK police warned. The legal adoption of the term could hamper law enforcement officers from going after terrorists and those spreading jihadist propaganda, UK's National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), a body representing country's police chiefs, said.

Over the weekend, Ukraine held its presidential election. Current President Petro Poroshenko, who won in 2014 after the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, lost to comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a landslide. Television became real life since Zelenskiy played "school teacher Vasyl Holoborodko, who by a sheer stroke of coincidence becomes Ukraine’s president," on the show Servant of the People.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's apparent re-election has irked the European mainstream media. Many leading European media outlets decried the Israeli leader's "right-wing" policies that mobilized Israeli voters ahead of Tuesday's vote. German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau described Netanyahu's victory using anti-Semitic terminology with the headline: "The Eternal Netanyahu," a reference to the 1940 anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film, The Eternal Jew.

Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, the wife of Prince Harry, is backing a campaign to "decolonize" the British curriculum by getting more women and ethnic minorities to join the faculties instead of "male, pale, and stale" professors, the UK newspapers report. Getting endorsement from the newly-minted Duchess of Sussex is more than a publicity coup for the leftist campaigners who are calling to purge Britain of its distinct cultural and historic legacy by replacing it with their politically correct worldview. The newest member of the royal family has a great sway over the academic policy making since she is the Patron of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, with over 500 member institutions in the UK and former British colonies.

The anti-EU parties are poised to win one-third of the seats in the EU Parliament election in May, according to a study titled "The 2019 European Election: How anti-Europeans plan to wreck Europe and what can be done to stop it," released by a pro-EU think-tank. By securing the controlling share of the seats, the anti-establishment rightist parties could "paralyze decision-making at the center of the EU" and end up "curbing the [bloc's] liberal orientation and returning power to member states," the London-based European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) said.

The leader of the Italian League party, Matteo Salvini, plans to form an electoral alliance with Poland's ruling conservatives in the run-up to the upcoming European Union elections. Salvini is spearheading a campaign to build an anti-establishment alliance ahead of the election. In October, he teamed up with Marine Le Pen's newly-formed French National Rally (NR) to launch the "Freedom Front" coalition. Salvini will meet the leader of Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jarosław Kaczyński, on Wednesday to "strike a deal" ahead of the EU parliament elections scheduled for this May, the public broadcaster Radio Poland disclosed.

Austrian police have changed a young woman with inflicting bodily harm for defending herself against a sexual molester, local newspapers report. The incident took place during the New Year's Eve celebrations in Vienna's landmark City Hall square, where a 21-year-old Swiss woman pushed back an Afghan migrant who tried to assault her.

The year began with an ominous warning from the German authorities. A team of researchers commissioned by the Ministry of Family Affairs found a "correlation between the refugee arrivals and violent crimes." Not that anyone needed a report to prove the obvious. The mainstream German media predictably trashed the findings and politicians in Berlin ignored them.

The European Union is in the midst of a political turmoil over the ratification of the United Nations pact on migration. The resistance to the pact is galvanizing in Europe ahead of the December 10 deadline when the representatives from some 180 UN member states will meet in Morocco, a Muslim-majority country in North Africa, to formally adopt the "Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration," as the pact is officially called.

Belgium became the latest EU country to get sucked into the crisis, with its ruling coalition teetering on the brink of collapse over the migration dispute. The country's right-wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) broke away from the ruling alliance amid sharp disagreements over the UN pact. The N-VA regards the agreement as an infringement of Belgian sovereignty. "In our democracy, we decide. The sovereignty is with the people," the party said.