A Dutch journalist exposed the mob and defied death threats. Now he’s been shot

It was evening in Amsterdam when Peter R. de Vries stepped out of the television studio and into the busy downtown streets. Decades of investigating cold-case killings and mob hits had earned the silver-haired 64-year-old accolades and a reputation as one of the most famous journalists in the Netherlands

Collective – shocking exposé of needless deaths in Romania

The cynicism and indifference to suffering is truly horrible, and a kind of insidious evil rises from the screen like carbon monoxide, and also a terrible sadness. There is a moment ... when Tolontan and his colleagues are shown a secretly filmed video of maggots wriggling in a patient’s incompetently dressed wound. If that was in a fictional film, the metaphor would be dismissed as too obvious. Finally, Tolontan and his team are shown discussing sinister communications they have had from the intelligence services, telling them to be careful, for their families’ sake.

Protecting UK fishing waters is one of the Royal Navy's oldest tasks

Protecting UK fishing waters is one of the Royal Navy's oldest tasks, but Downing Street's decision to send two warships to the Channel Islands is a deliberate posture after France's initial threat to cut off electricity to the islands

Charles Michel: out!

 

Slovakia: the mastermind of the killings was cleared

Marian Kočner, once one of the most powerful people in the country, and his former lover were both cleared of ordering the killings during the hearing on September 3, at the culmination of one of the most high-profile trials in Slovakian history. Long a fixture in the local tabloids due to his extravagant wealth and rumored connections to organized crime, Kočner was only found guilty of one count of possessing ammunition, which he had already admitted. He was handed a 5,000-euro fine.

What might trigger the collapse of the EU?

“the expected success of the far-right and far-left in the European parliamentary election in May this year augurs the beginning of the end for the currency union”.

Note: I'm neither from the far-right nor from the far-left but I think that the EU must collapse. The sonner the better [the political correct aberrations must be stopped and any credit for the purchasing of German cars (submarines and so on) will go to a definitely end].

By approving Articles 11 and 13

the EU Parliament not only rubber stamped bad legislation, but also ignored the voices of millions of its own concerned constituents. The EU Parliament has sided with lobbyists, and ignored the needs of creators and Internet users. This Directive only further entrenches the largest platforms like Facebook and YouTube – the only ones with the resources to actually comply to these dramatic regulations. The ramifications of this decision will be felt for years to come.

Europe’s Copyright Rules Will Stifle Free Expression

Even if you think the internet’s main function is to serve up entertainment and news, these rules are still a bad idea. But the internet is more than that: it’s our new global nervous system. These rules will affect education, civic and political engagement, family life, employment, and a thousand other fields of human endeavor. To pass them would be an act of gross regulatory malpractice in a parliament charged with the orderly governance of more than 508,000,000 people.

A year on, Catalonia's political prisoners go unnoticed by the rest of the world

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont remains in exile in Belgium. Another six pro-independence leaders remain in exile, including Clara Ponsati, former education minister in the Catalan government... Two activists and seven politicians remain in custody. 

EU: lack of freedom of speech

In the US, freedom of speech doesn't require it to be factual. That is the major difference between freedom of speech in the US and in several countries in Europe: if you say something that is offensive, it does not necessarily have to be true.

[Pick any conspiracy theory under the sun, and threads often lead back to Soros.]

Viktoria Marinova, a 30-year-old, who leaves a small child, died from blows to the head and suffocation and had also been raped

Marinova -- who presented a current affairs talk programme on the local TVN television channel -- is the third journalist to be murdered in Europe in the past 12 months after Jan Kuciak in Slovakia in February and Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta in October 2017.

Note: who believes that that assassination was unrelated to her investigations on the huge State corruption in Bulgaria and Romania (as in Malta and Slovakia where journalists have been murdered), even if now there's a disgusting junkie telling that killed her by chance? 

Viktoria Marinova: Bulgarian TV journalist raped and murdered

Marinova launched a TV show called “Detektor” in September and in the first and only aired episode she interviewed Attila Biro and Dimitar Stoyanov—two journalists of OCCRP partners and investigative outlets Rise Project and Bivol—who were detained in September while probing alleged fraud involving EU funds linked to Bulgarian businessmen and politicians.

European Court: Parliamentarian Allowances Are ‘Personal’

The European Parliament has no obligation to tell the public what its 751 members do with their tens of millions of Euros annually in tax-free allowances, according to a verdict released Tuesday by the European Court of Justice (EC).

The collapse of the European Union

The European Parliament just endorsed the article 11 (or the "Link Tax"). "Union" is just a word that, in the present situation, is no more than a joke: UE is divised as it was never before. As the US is no longer the "security umbrella" of Europe, we start to realise the the enemy is now inside doors. Never mind whats the "eurocrates" do vote - even if they may be  sometimes allright: the European Union is fatted to collapse and the European Parliament to disappear. We saw the powerful lobbies pushing many european regulations; we saw huge fines for ones (Google) and blind eyes for others (Facebook's unremovable "apps" inside the system of the devices); we realised that, even with the elected European Parliament and despite all the rhetorics,  the "real" citizens were the very last concern for the "eurocrates". "Eurocrates" that still bullying the british, because they voted to abandon the wreck called European Union (where the real "union" literally lacks). Today you voted against the link. Even if there are three links (*) in this article, it is my own writing, basically to tell you that your vote was completely wrong and may prevert the internet, and, if it happens, perhaps the European Union  will disappear for good of our internet. (anyway, some day it will collapse for any or many different reasons, not least because European Union is allowing Spain to continue holding Catalonia's political prisoners. In the other side, UK, that is now leaving this "club" of totalitarians and corrupts, did allow Scotland's referendum - what a difference of civilizations!)

(* actually four more one)

A journalist was killed for investigating the Mafia in the EU

Kuciak had been working with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the Czech Center for Investigative Journalism (CCIJ), and the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) on what may have turned out to be a far more dangerous story: An investigation that delved into the infiltration into Slovakia of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia

Agricultural land in Slovakia ended up in the hands of families linked to the Italian ‘Ndrangheta – who then used it to benefit from EU farm subsidies.

Baltic countries are a major entry point into the western financial system for Russian cash. Last week the US Treasury accused Latvia’s third biggest bank of “institutionalised money laundering”. 

The time has come to ask whether membership in the European Union is still a quality assurance seal for democracy and the rule of law among member states. The bloc has clearly failed to enforce its stated values on its periphery. 

Malta car bomb kills Panama Papers journalist

The journalist who led the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta was killed on Monday in a car bomb near her home.

Daphne Caruana Galizia died on Monday afternoon when her car, a Peugeot 108, was destroyed by a powerful explosive device which blew the vehicle into several pieces and threw the debris into a nearby field.