Police arrested an 18-year-old Syrian man on suspicion of raping a 17-year-old girl in a stairwell in a popular nightlife district, authorities said.
The incident occurred around 1:30 a.m. Sunday in a multi-family building on Königsbrücker Strasse in Dresden’s Neustadt neighborhood, near Albertplatz, according to police and media reports. The area is known for bars, pubs and clubs that remain busy into the early morning hours.
The man reportedly dragged her into the stairwell of a building and raped her there. Neither he or the victim lived in the building.
The girl escaped her alleged attacker, fled the building and encountered a police patrol on the street, where she reported the rape, police said. Officers immediately launched a search and arrested the suspect nearby a short time later.
The Syrian man was brought before an investigating judge Monday and ordered held in pretrial detention at Dresden’s justice prison, according to Bild newspaper. Criminal police are investigating the case as rape. Investigators are still determining whether the two knew each other beforehand.
Police have released few additional details about the circumstances of the incident or the girl’s condition. The suspect has not been publicly identified by name. The investigation continues.
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A parliamentary inquiry by Alternative for Germany (AfD) lawmakers in the German state of Baden-Württemberg has brought to light official data showing that authorities have recorded 358 so-called child marriages since April 2012, with courts formally annulling only eight of them between 2018 and 2024.
The figures, released in early October 2026 in response to questions from state parliament members Nikolaos Boutakoglou and Emely Knorr, have drawn sharp attention to the prevalence of underage marriages — overwhelmingly involving people from migrant backgrounds — and the limited number of legal interventions.
Among the annulled cases was the 2020 marriage of an 11-year-old Iraqi girl to a 17-year-old Iraqi boy. In 2018, authorities annulled the marriage of a 14-year-old Afghan girl to a 30-year-old Afghan man. Two further annulments occurred in 2024: one involving a 16-year-old German girl and a 25-year-old Pakistani man, and another between a 16-year-old Syrian girl and a 27-year-old Syrian man, according to Welt newspaper.
The other annulled marriages involved individuals from Afghanistan, Romania, Moldova, Croatia, Serbia, and elsewhere. The state Interior Ministry stated that no court proceedings for annulment were pending at the time of its reply.
The remaining approximately 350 cases, documented by the government of Tübingen were closed under the category of “other resolutions.” Possible reasons cited by the government include the death of a partner, a decision to forgo annulment, or a subsequent marriage abroad.
These files still include striking examples of very young brides. In 2020, a 12-year-old Afghan girl was recorded as married to an 18-year-old man. In 2022, a 12-year-old Syrian girl was married to a 28-year-old Syrian man, and in 2023 a 12-year-old Afghan girl to a 21-year-old Afghan man. Multiple cases involving 13- and 14-year-old girls also appear in the data, and some reports note nine marriages in which the girl was under the age of 14 at the time of the union.
The demographic pattern is pronounced. Men from Syria accounted for 132 of the recorded cases, nearly 40 percent, followed by nationals of Bulgaria, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Child marriages between two German citizens made up only about 0.3 percent of the total. It is also unclear if these German citizens have a migration background, but given the pattern seen among foreigners, it is very probable.
Most of the 358 cases date from 2015 onward when the migration crisis truly began to grow in Germany. Boutakoglou highlighted the figures on social media, stating: “Almost without exception, every child marriage in Baden-Württemberg since 2017 can be traced back to mass migration! Nearly 40% of the child marriages were contracted between Syrians, while child marriages between two Germans account for only 0.3%.”
Fast ausnahmslos jede Kinderehe in Baden-Württemberg seit 2017 ist auf die Massenmigration zurückzuführen! Das ergab meine Kleine Anfrage an die Landesregierung. Fast 40 % der Kinderehen wurden zwischen Syrern geschlossen, Kinderehen unter zwei Deutschen machen nur 0,3 % aus! https://t.co/BeJ4wS3CJL
— Nikolaos Boutakoglou (@Nik_Boutakoglou) October 5, 2026
Emely Knorr, co-author of the government inquiry, wrote: “Child marriages are incompatible with our values. Children have a right to safety, education, and a self-determined future. That is why we need effective protection, early intervention, and decisive action against forced marriages.”
Germany raised the minimum marriage age to 18 in 2017 and generally does not recognize foreign marriages involving minors under certain conditions. The Tübingen authority deals exclusively with marriages contracted abroad that come to the attention of German registry offices.
The AfD inquiry was prompted in part by a Terre des Femmes leaflet warning of the risk of forced marriage during school holidays, but the state government said it had no financial involvement in the leaflet.
As Remix News has reported in the past, the issue is not just child marriages. Mass migration has brought new backward cultural norms to Europe that are completely incompatible with European human rights. For example, already in 2020, the German government admitted that there were at least 68,000 female genital mutilation victims in the country, rising 44 percent since 2017.
According to then German Minister for Family Affairs Franziska Giffey, mainly migration is to blame for the massive increase as many migrants coming to Germany commonly practice FGM in their own home countries. The practice, which is a human rights violation, involves the ritual cutting off some or all of the external female genitalia.
Germany is far from the only country dealing with this trend. Remix News reported this year that a female genital mutilation crisis had hit Paris, with over 140,000 such cases seen across the country.
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Nearly 38 percent of people who have received Germany’s basic income support for at least five years are foreign nationals, according to a Federal Employment Agency evaluation released in response to a parliamentary inquiry. In addition, separate data shows that 63.4 percent of people on welfare have a migration background, which includes foreigners and German citizens with a migration background, with the country on track to spend approximately €21.2 billion in 2026.
The figures for long-term welfare recipients, covering the end of 2025, show that roughly 1.4 million people have depended on the benefit for five years or longer. That group represents about two-fifths of all employable recipients of the support, formerly known as the citizen’s income and earlier as Hartz IV. Of those long-term recipients, 37.8 percent do not hold a German passport, while 62.2 percent are German citizens, the agency data indicate.
The new report does not mention the share of German citizens among long-term recipients who have a migration background. However, current data released for 2026 shows that 63.4 percent of people on welfare have a migration background.
Furthermore, in the first half of 2026, €10.6 billion has been spent on foreigners on welfare alone. If that figure continues at the same rate, that means for the entirety of 2026, it will cost €21.2 billion to pay for welfare for foreigners. In total, Germany spends at least €50 billion a year on foreigners, including housing, education, welfare, integration services, and border control.
However, this data does not reveal the true amount of money going to foreigners.
As Glut Magazine reports, the number of foreigners is decreasing in the welfare data while the number of “Germans” goes up. The reason for this? More of the foreigners are becoming German citizens through naturalizations.
“Part of this shift could be due to naturalizations. Anyone who receives a German passport while receiving citizen’s income no longer appears in the statistics as a foreigner, but as a German – along with their payments. Notably, in January 2026 the number of German recipients increased by around 12,000, while the number of Syrians decreased by 12,500 in the same month – more than in any other month. Syrians are the largest group among naturalized citizens. Since June 2025, their number in citizen’s income has decreased by 15.6 percent, more than any other large group,” the magazine wrote.
The evaluation, provided to the German Press Agency, also highlights sharp regional differences. Berlin recorded the highest share, with about 45 percent of its basic-income recipients in the long-term category, followed by Bremen at 43 percent. Nationwide, the statistics include 199,229 recipients under age 25.
René Springer, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) parliamentary group’s spokesperson on labor-market policy, criticized the findings.
“It cannot be that so many people receive citizen’s income at the taxpayers’ expense, even though they could go to work,” he said.
Springer renewed his party’s call for mandatory community service. Under the proposal, employable recipients who have been on basic income support for more than six months would be required to perform 15 hours of civic work per week. Those who refuse would face a shift to benefits in kind or, in the most severe cases, loss of support, according to the AfD.
Similar motions have drawn opposition from other parties in the Bundestag. During debate, CSU social-policy lawmaker Peter Aumer pointed to the core principle of the German welfare state that people who need help must receive it.
The federal government introduced stricter participation rules and benefit reductions in a recent reform of the system. The AfD has argued those changes do not go far enough and continues to press for a community-service requirement.
The citizen’s income was introduced in early 2023 and was replaced by a new basic income support framework in July 2026.
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A video clip of a Black male student at ongoing protests in Belgium showed him saying he does not know why he is protesting, and that his message is to “smash everything.”
The clip is being used as another piece of evidence that the protests are not really about reforms or improving education standards, but instead serve as a pretext for ethnic minorities to riot, destroy, and attack police.
After he calls for protesters to “smash everything,” the crowd of Black youths and other ethnic minorities, many heavily masked, began hooting and screaming in response. The video further shows burning shared bicycles and electric scooters, the same products many on the left promote as an alternative to CO2-producing cars and trucks.
In a post from Belgian political activist Dries Van Langenhove, he writes about the video: “European people can’t comprehend this because we’re simply not the same. They destroy. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. Politicians now come up with all sorts of fake ‘solutions’: more money for education, more youth detention centres, military conscription, … but it’s all nonsense. There is only one real solution: they have to go back.”
Our ‘Belgian students’ when asked what they’re protesting against: “we don’t know, we’re here to destroy everything”. European people can’t comprehend this because we’re simply not the same. They destroy. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. Politicians now come up with all sorts of fake ‘solutions’: more money for education, more youth detention centres, military conscription, … but it’s all nonsense. There is only one real solution: they have to go back.
— Dries Van Langenhove (@DVanLangenhove) October 12, 2026
The footage has circulated amid student protests in French-speaking Belgium, particularly in Liège and Brussels. The media reports that the protests are fueled by rising education costs, overcrowded classrooms and reforms in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. However, just as with the student protests in France, many of the participants cannot articulate any clear demand.
In France, many of the protests have devolved into large-scale riots, including attacks on teachers, police officers, and schools. Dozens of arsons have also partially destroyed schools across France, further raising questions about what the true demands and motives of the protesters are.
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 5, 2026
BREAKING: Rioters set fire to the entrance of Vauquelin High School in Paris and blocked the exits when staff tried to put the fire out. A film crew recorded the terrifying attempted murder. “The school staff was unable to put out the fire. The rioters blocked them just as the extinguisher nozzle came out; they blocked the exit.” “The fire continues. You see all the silhouettes moving behind it; they continue to feed this fire, making it stronger and stronger. The school staff is not even going to try to put it out anymore; they can’t manage it. We can hear the principal here asking the hundred confined students to step back and move up to the first floor.” The building was full of staff, students, and journalists, but these rioters appear ready to kill anyone still inside the vocational chemistry school. Follow: @RMXnews
In Belgium, authorities have also reported property damage, arson and clashes with police. Local media and police cited more than 100 arrests in Liège in recent days alone, many involving minors, with overall detentions since early October approaching or exceeding 200 in some counts.
Shop windows were smashed, fires set and objects thrown at officers; one video game retailer reported about €30,000 in stolen goods.
Interior Minister Bernard Quintin has said an Antifa-type movement is manipulating children into violence. “Adults who manipulate children in order to put across violent political messages. That is totally unacceptable,” he said.
One brave man tried to put out the fires in Liège, Belgium. He was brutally attacked by a frenzied crowd. The "student protests" are devolving into large-scale rioting, arson, and attacks on innocents. Follow: @RMXnews https://t.co/PEElkGrtL8
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 8, 2026
The student actions overlapped with a national strike Friday organized by Belgium’s major unions against government austerity measures aimed at reducing the deficit under Prime Minister Bart De Wever. Police estimated about 30,000 participants in the Brussels march, which was largely peaceful, though smaller groups of masked youths threw bottles, bricks, stones and fireworks, set fires and damaged property near the central station. Officers used water cannons and tear gas; authorities reported 21 detentions or arrests, including 13 minors.
De Wever has argued that painful budget measures are needed to avoid a debt spiral that would burden future generations.
The post ‘Our message is: Smash everything’ – Black Belgian student doesn’t even know why he’s protesting in revealing video appeared first on Remix News.
Prosecutors have opened an investigation into a local Christian Democratic Union (CDU) mayoral candidate of Turkish origin who is accused of staging a racially motivated attack on his own car days before an election he lost badly.
The Itzehoe public prosecutor’s office is examining allegations that Baris Karabacak faked the incident, according to the German newspaper Bild. Authorities obtained and executed a search warrant against the politician and seized at least one electronic device.
Karabacak, an entrepreneur who had previously served as chair of the Uetersen city council, was the CDU’s candidate in the Sept. 27 mayoral election in the town of roughly 18,000 people in the Pinneberg district of Schleswig-Holstein. He finished a distant third with 10.7 percent of the vote. Incumbent Mayor Dirk Woschei of the Social Democrats was reelected in the first round with 51.3 percent; independent candidate Marvin Schöpp received 38.1 percent.
A few days before the vote, local media including public broadcaster NDR reported that the windows of Karabacak’s car had been smashed overnight. A campaign flyer bearing an added message in all capital letters reading “NO TURKS — ALL OUT” was left behind. Police initially investigated the matter as possible incitement to hatred.
At the time, state CDU General Secretary Lukas Kilian publicly backed his party colleague and expressed pride in the CDU’s diversity. Woschei also offered solidarity, stating that political competition must be conducted with arguments and that “violence, hate and racist messages are an attack on the city’s democratic culture.”
Kilian’s tone has since shifted sharply. He told Bild he was “stunned” by the new allegations.
“Anyone who fakes a racist crime abuses the solidarity of many people and mocks the victims of real racism. There is no place for that in the CDU,” Kilian said. The state party has said that if the accusations are confirmed, Karabacak will be asked to resign his membership; failure to do so would trigger expulsion proceedings.
The case remains under investigation, and no charges have been filed. Karabacak has not publicly commented on the prosecutor’s probe.
The episode has drawn attention in a town where Karabacak had earlier faced internal party and council criticism over his leadership style before resigning as city council chair earlier in 2026 and then securing the CDU’s mayoral nomination.
This is also notably not the first alleged hate crime hoax from a German politician. In 2023, Remix News reported on Manoj Subramaniam, a 33-year-old former local Green councilor in the German town of Erkelenz, who claimed he had been subjected to sustained acts of harassment by anonymous right-wing extremists. He showed police evidence of the abuse he had received, which included a threatening letter with a razor blade inserted and a swastika drawn onto his vehicle in red paint.
The case made national headlines last year with several prominent politicians offering their solidarity with Subramaniam for the alleged abuse he had received.
“Right-wing extremists are threatening political volunteers to silence them. Thank you, Manoj Subramaniam, for not being silent and raising your voice,” stated Lamya Kaddor, a member of the Bundestag.
Federal police took protective measures for the politician’s safety, and an intensive investigation was initiated by state security, all at considerable cost to the taxpayer. The only issue, however, was that Subramaniam had made it all up.
“The defendant actually wrote this note himself,” revealed Justus Wassenberg, the press spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office.
It transpired that Subramaniam had also drawn SS runes and a swastika onto the doorbell panel outside his house.
Subramaniam subsequently resigned from his position as a local councilor, and the Erkelenz District Court issued the disgraced politician a penalty order of €3,600 for faking criminal offenses, a fine he appealed.
He reportedly cried during his trial when his appeal failed.
The investigation into the early 2026 firebombing of Brandenburg Antisemitism Commissioner Andreas Büttner’s home stunned the public.
While the case was initially treated as an Islamist or antisemitic hate crime, the German Public Prosecutor General’s Office now identifies two men from Büttner’s “own circle,” which belongs to the left, as the primary suspects.
One of the men is also linked to the threatening letter sent to Büttner. Meanwhile, Büttner said he was shocked and described it as the biggest betrayal of his life. He also stated that if the two were responsible, the act had nothing to do with antisemitism in his view. So far, the prosecutor’s office has continued to list Büttner as a witness or injured party, not a suspect. News outlets have highlighted that there was a €3,000 transfer from Büttner to one of the men shortly before the incident, which he called a loan, and other joint activities.
These details prompted public questions and speculation in some outlets about possible staging or a “false-flag” element, but no official finding has supported the claim that Büttner ordered or knew of the act in advance. The case still reportedly remains under investigation.
The post ‘NO TURKS – ALL OUT’ – CDU candidate with Turkish background allegedly faked hate crime attack right before local German election appeared first on Remix News.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
Death rates for Americans between 25 and 44 years old jumped 71.2% in just eleven years, rising from about 140 deaths per 100,000 people in 2010 to 239 per 100,000 by 2021. No other age group came anywhere close to that surge. Overdoses, suicides, car crashes, and chronic diseases appearing at increasingly younger ages are now cutting down people in the prime of their lives.
Steven H. Woolf, a physician and researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, published the analysis in The Milbank Quarterly. He combined data from the United Nations, the CDC, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and a U.S. mortality database to show how far American life expectancy has fallen behind the rest of the developed world, and increasingly, much of the developing world too.
By 2023, U.S. life expectancy ranked 38th among countries with populations over 1 million, trailing not just Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia but also Chile, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Israel, South Korea, and several Persian Gulf nations. Sixty countries had a lower risk of a person dying before age 40 than the United States did. That gap didn’t open overnight. It has been widening since the 1990s, and it sped up sharply after 2010.
How Researchers Tracked the Rising Death Rates
Woolf built this analysis by comparing decades of death records rather than running a new clinical trial or survey. He pulled data from the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the U.S. Mortality Database, the CDC’s death-records database known as WONDER, and OECD data covering 16 other wealthy countries, including Canada, Japan, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He tracked age-specific death rates from 1999 through 2023, sorted into five groups: infants, youth ages 1 to 24, young adults 25 to 44, middle-aged adults 45 to 64, and adults 65 and older.
A separate part of the study looked at all 50 states from 1941 onward, matching each year of life expectancy data to the sitting governor’s political party to see whether state policy choices lined up with health outcomes over time.
What’s Driving the Rise in Death Rates Among Young Americans
Drug overdoses top the list. Among adults 25 to 44, the overdose death rate rose sevenfold after 1999, from about 7.7 per 100,000 to more than 54 per 100,000, and surpassed circulatory diseases (such as heart disease and stroke) in 2015 to become the leading cause of death in that age group. Suicide rates for this same group are higher than in any other age bracket and climbed more than 40% between 2000 and 2023. Homicides rose 75.5% between 2014 and 2021, and deaths from car crashes and other transportation accidents rose 43.5% over that same stretch.
What surprised even close followers of these trends is how much of the damage now comes from disease rather than injury. Deaths from diabetes and other metabolic and hormone-related illness rose nearly a quarter between 2010 and 2019 among young adults. Deaths tied to liver damage from drinking more than doubled between 2010 and 2023. Deaths from alcohol-related mental health disorders more than tripled in that same window. Even high blood pressure, historically a problem of later adulthood, saw its death rate more than double among 25- to 44-year-olds between 2000 and 2023.
Middle-aged adults, 45 to 64, saw many of the same patterns: rising deaths from drug overdoses, liver damage from drinking, and diseases of the brain and nervous system, along with a COVID-19 death rate that nearly doubled between 2020 and 2021 even after vaccines became available. Older adults largely avoided these steep increases, though deaths from brain and nerve diseases doubled between 2000 and 2023, and deaths from endocrine disorders and suicide also climbed.
Infographic by StudyFinds
Where U.S. Life Expectancy Has Fallen the Furthest
National averages hide some brutal local realities. Comparing individual states to countries with similar life expectancy, Woolf found that Hawaii, the top-performing state, matched life expectancy in Western European countries like Sweden and Ireland. Mississippi, by contrast, resembled Libya, Venezuela, Belarus, and Syria in 2019. Conditions worsened after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. By 2021, life expectancy in West Virginia and Mississippi matched Bulgaria, Bangladesh, and Iraq, and fell below North Korea and Syria. Life expectancy was higher in Palestine and Iran than in nine U.S. states, including Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Woolf’s review of state data going back to 1941 found that states led by Republican governors tended to see life expectancy stagnate or decline, a pattern that became especially visible after 2010 and turned into what Woolf calls a “natural experiment” during the COVID-19 pandemic. States’ sharply different decisions on masking, business closures, and vaccination, he writes, could be measured in death counts within weeks. Red states, the analysis notes, suffered the largest COVID-era drops in life expectancy, a pattern that held up even after researchers accounted for other factors like poverty rates and existing health conditions.
Other researchers cited in the review, who looked at generational patterns rather than state policy, found that Americans born after 1970 had higher death rates from heart disease, cancer, and injury-related causes than earlier generations. They concluded that the current stall in U.S. life expectancy stems from “multilayered social, biological, and generational forces.”
Why America’s Death Rates Keep Climbing
Woolf’s analysis lays out five broad categories behind America’s health disadvantage: a health care system without universal coverage, riskier individual behaviors like higher calorie consumption and firearm ownership, greater income inequality and poverty, a built environment that favors cars over walking and green space, and public policies that put less emphasis on collective welfare than peer nations do. None of these explanations are new, but the paper argues that treating overdoses, suicides, and chronic disease as separate problems misses the bigger picture: they are symptoms of the same underlying neglect.
That’s the sharpest point in the paper, and probably the one worth sitting with. Other wealthy countries didn’t stumble into longer lives by accident. They built universal health coverage, stronger safety nets, and tighter consumer and environmental protections decades ago, and it shows up in their citizens’ death certificates today. America’s problem was never a shortage of ideas for fixing this. It’s a shortage of political will to act on them, and until that changes, the gap between how long Americans live and how long people in dozens of other countries live looks likely to keep growing.
Original article: studyfinds.com
European Union leaders are preparing for a two-day summit in Brussels dominated by the economic consequences of the Middle East conflict, Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine and mounting pressure on governments to reconcile defence commitments with deteriorating public finances.
The European Council meeting on 15–16 October will bring together the leaders of the 27 member states to consider immediate measures addressing high energy prices alongside longer-term decisions on competitiveness, enlargement, migration and the EU’s budget for 2028–2034.
European Council President António Costa has placed economic competitiveness and energy costs at the centre of the discussions, reflecting concerns that the disruption of global oil and gas markets is threatening the bloc’s industrial recovery.
The meeting also takes place against the background of renewed disputes over national spending limits, with Italy and Greece seeking greater freedom to finance energy relief and France facing increasing pressure over the credibility of its budget.
The Middle East conflict has created a renewed energy shock for European economies, raising transport and industrial costs while pushing inflation higher.
The disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has also affected global oil supplies, exposing Europe’s continuing dependence on internationally traded fossil fuels despite efforts to diversify imports following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
European leaders are expected to consider targeted and temporary support measures for households and businesses, as well as longer-term policies intended to reduce energy dependence.
The political disagreement concerns how those measures should be financed.
The European Commission has resisted requests from Italy and Greece for further exemptions from the EU’s fiscal framework. Both governments argue that extraordinary energy costs require additional budgetary flexibility.
Brussels maintains that existing provisions already permit exceptional expenditure within defined limits.
The disagreement is particularly difficult for indebted governments that must simultaneously finance military expansion, maintain public services and protect their economies from energy inflation.
France’s position has added urgency to the debate. Its borrowing costs have increased sharply as investors question whether the government can adopt a credible budget ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
A summit agreement on emergency energy assistance would therefore have to accommodate substantially different national fiscal circumstances.
Support for Ukraine remains a central item on the summit agenda as Russia continues attacks against Ukrainian cities, energy infrastructure and industrial facilities.
EU leaders are expected to review military and financial assistance, the implementation of sanctions against Moscow and the resilience of Ukraine’s economy.
The discussions take place amid renewed uncertainty surrounding American weapons deliveries.
Washington’s reported threats to suspend supplies under the NATO-backed PURL procurement arrangement have raised further questions about Europe’s dependence on the United States for advanced military equipment.
European governments have increased defence expenditure and committed additional support to Ukraine, but replacing American capabilities remains difficult, particularly in air defence, precision-guided weapons and certain intelligence systems.
The summit is unlikely to resolve those industrial limitations, but the broader question of Europe’s ability to sustain Ukrainian defence over several years will influence discussions.
Member states must also consider how increased defence expenditure will be financed alongside other demands on national budgets.
The EU’s published summit agenda includes Russian-linked hybrid attacks within Europe.
The issue has gained prominence as European governments investigate sabotage, cyber operations, information interference and threats against infrastructure and defence-related industries.
Recent warnings concerning possible Russian assassination operations targeting European defence executives and employees of companies supplying Ukraine illustrate the changing nature of the security threat.
Such activities place additional demands on national intelligence services, police forces and European institutions responsible for cross-border cooperation.
The EU has strengthened its sanctions instruments against hybrid activities, but enforcement remains dependent on coordination between national authorities.
Any further measures would need to address intelligence sharing, protection of critical infrastructure and the relationship between internal security and the Union’s wider Russia policy.
Enlargement will form another important part of the discussions following the Commission’s proposals for preparing a wider Union.
Brussels has outlined possible institutional safeguards intended to prevent future members from undermining democratic standards or blocking common decisions.
Montenegro and Albania are advancing through their accession negotiations, while Ukraine and Moldova remain central to the EU’s geopolitical enlargement strategy.
The financial implications will become increasingly important as governments negotiate the next multiannual financial framework covering 2028–2034.
Existing members are already divided over how much the EU should spend, which programmes should receive priority and whether additional common resources should be raised.
Agricultural expenditure, cohesion funding, defence investment and support for Ukraine will compete for resources within the same budget negotiations.
The Commission argues that enlargement can be accommodated through targeted reforms, but securing agreement among member states will require decisions on future expenditure and the distribution of financial benefits.
Leaders will also examine progress on the One Europe, One Market agenda, which aims to reduce barriers to economic activity within the EU and improve conditions for European businesses.
The initiative is intended to address structural weaknesses affecting investment, industrial development and the ability of European companies to compete internationally.
High energy prices have made those concerns more immediate, particularly for industries competing against producers in economies where electricity and fuel are cheaper.
The European Council will be asked to provide direction on measures planned for 2026 and 2027, but implementation will depend on subsequent legislation and decisions by member states.
The October meeting brings several unresolved European policy questions into the same negotiation: how to protect economic competitiveness, maintain fiscal credibility, finance defence, sustain Ukraine and prepare for enlargement.
The immediate test will be whether leaders can agree on a credible response to energy prices without reopening broader disputes over national budgets.
More difficult decisions concerning defence financing, institutional reform and the EU’s long-term expenditure commitments will extend well beyond the two-day summit.
The European Commission has rejected requests from Italy and Greece for greater freedom to increase public spending in response to the energy crisis, resisting pressure from two member states that argue existing budget restrictions are limiting their ability to protect households and businesses.
The decision, confirmed on 8 October, follows renewed appeals from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for measures recognising the exceptional financial burden imposed by higher energy prices.
Meloni wants Brussels to take greater account of unexpected inflation when assessing national budgets and to permit additional tax revenue generated by rising prices to be used for energy relief. Mitsotakis has sought the exclusion of temporary support measures for consumers and businesses from the expenditure limits agreed under the EU’s fiscal framework.
Economic Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis rejected the argument for further concessions, maintaining that the existing arrangements already take inflation into account and provide mechanisms for responding to exceptional circumstances.
The disagreement comes as Europe’s governments confront the economic consequences of the Middle East conflict, including higher fuel costs, inflationary pressures and increased demands for state intervention.
For Italy, the dispute adds to a fiscal problem that has been developing throughout the year.
The government expects its budget deficit to rise to 3.4 per cent of GDP in 2027, reversing an earlier objective of reducing borrowing below the EU’s three per cent reference value.
As EU Today reported earlier this month, Rome plans to use additional fiscal room for defence and energy-related expenditure, while public debt is projected to remain close to 138 per cent of GDP.
The new request concerns the treatment of inflation and the financial support required to offset its effects.
Energy inflation creates an unusual budgetary problem. Governments can receive additional nominal tax revenue as prices rise, particularly through consumption taxes, while simultaneously facing public pressure to compensate consumers for higher living costs.
Meloni argues that such unexpected revenue should be available for targeted assistance without forcing equivalent reductions elsewhere in national expenditure.
Brussels is reluctant to accept arrangements that could turn temporary increases in tax receipts into an opportunity for permanent spending expansion.
Italy’s position also reflects the political competition between defence spending and domestic economic support. Rome has accepted the need for higher military expenditure but faces immediate pressure from households and energy-intensive industries.
That competition was already apparent when the government chose to prioritise energy relief over the full use of defence-spending flexibility.
Greece’s request is more narrowly focused on the treatment of temporary assistance under the EU’s expenditure rules.
Athens argues that measures intended to help businesses and households manage exceptional energy costs should not be counted against the normal spending limits.
The Greek government faces an economic environment in which higher imported energy prices threaten household purchasing power and business profitability, particularly in sectors dependent on transport and fuel.
Excluding temporary relief from expenditure calculations would give Athens additional room to intervene without breaching its agreed fiscal trajectory.
The Commission, however, has resisted establishing further exemptions beyond those already provided in the fiscal framework.
Its objection is institutional as well as financial. If additional categories of emergency expenditure are repeatedly excluded from fiscal calculations, the system becomes increasingly difficult to enforce consistently across the Union.
The EU revised its fiscal governance framework in 2024, introducing nationally agreed expenditure paths intended to provide greater flexibility while maintaining sustainable public finances.
The Commission’s rules on exceptional circumstances permit member states to depart temporarily from normal requirements under specified conditions.
Those provisions have already been used to accommodate higher defence expenditure, while the Commission has also issued guidance on their application to energy-security investments.
Temporary financial assistance intended to reduce household energy bills, however, is not necessarily treated in the same way as investment in infrastructure that reduces Europe’s long-term dependence on imported fuel.
That distinction has become a source of friction between Brussels and national capitals.
Governments argue that the immediate economic effects of an international crisis require exceptional measures. The Commission is concerned that repeated concessions could weaken the credibility of the spending framework.
The Commission’s decision also comes as France faces increasing pressure over its debt and budget deficit.
The deterioration in French borrowing conditions has reinforced concerns about the risks associated with heavily indebted governments continuing to expand expenditure.
France, Italy and Greece have different fiscal positions, but the problems confronting them originate partly in the same combination of expensive energy, weak economic growth and competing spending commitments.
The dispute will now feed into preparations for the European Council meeting on 15–16 October, where energy prices and economic competitiveness are prominent agenda items.
EU leaders are expected to consider targeted and temporary measures to reduce the burden on businesses and consumers, alongside longer-term initiatives intended to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
The Commission’s refusal to provide Italy and Greece with further fiscal exemptions establishes the limits within which those discussions will take place.
National governments remain free to introduce assistance, but Brussels is insisting that they account for its cost within the fiscal rules already agreed.
For Rome and Athens, the question is whether those rules provide sufficient room to respond to an energy crisis whose duration remains uncertain.
Britain risks harming a generation of children by over-diagnosing ADHD and autism, a major review has warned, with autism diagnosis rates soaring by up to 40-fold despite no evidence of a genuine increase in prevalence.
The post Rush to Diagnose ADHD and Autism is Damaging Children, Major Review Warns appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Germany’s Interior Ministry has ordered consulates to withhold citizenship certificates under a postwar restitution law after investigators found that dozens of applicants, most of them Chinese nationals, allegedly posed as descendants of people persecuted by the Nazis.
The Federal Office of Administration and the Interior Ministry instructed German missions abroad last week not to hand over naturalization documents “until further notice” and to postpone ceremonies, according to emails reported by Der Spiegel and confirmed in subsequent accounts. A ministry spokesperson said the procedures for so-called restitution naturalizations are under review “to further secure the procedure against corresponding criminal activities.”
The pause follows a Der Spiegel investigation published in early September that detailed an alleged scheme exploiting Article 116, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law. That provision states that former German nationals whose citizenship was revoked between Jan. 30, 1933, and May 8, 1945, “for political, racial or religious reasons, and their descendants, shall be renaturalized on application.”
Prosecutors in Düsseldorf and the Federal Criminal Police Office are investigating 32 suspects on suspicion of document forgery and violations of the nationality law, authorities have confirmed. At least 28 of those under investigation are Chinese nationals, according to the Düsseldorf prosecutor’s office. German citizenship had already been granted in roughly half the cases. The suspects are said to live in Cyprus, Israel, Britain, and the United States.
Investigators allege the applicants submitted forged or notarized copies of documents and invented genealogical links to real Jewish families who fled or were stripped of citizenship under Nazi rule. In one example cited by Der Spiegel and other outlets, applicants claimed descent from Karl Siegfried Süßkind and Gertraud Süßkind, a couple who left Germany for British Palestine.
The Chinese applicants, including one identified as Liu H. who obtained citizenship in 2024 under the name Derrick Wong, were not actual descendants. Another person, identified as Tian C. and living in London, is accused of using the same fabricated lineage.
Some of those under investigation were already sought internationally on suspicion of serious crimes, including kidnapping and murder, Der Spiegel reported. Prosecutors have said they could not confirm details of foreign cases because they fall outside the German inquiry. The scheme was reportedly advertised on a Chinese social-media platform for more than half a million euros.
An Interior Ministry spokesperson, responding after the initial Spiegel report, said the ministry regretted the “identity thefts” in which “applicants misused biographies of those affected by National Socialism.” The spokesperson added that once sufficient information is available, the Federal Office of Administration will “immediately initiate withdrawal proceedings” in cases of fraudulently obtained citizenship. Unlawful naturalizations can generally be revoked within 10 years.
The Cologne-based office received 14,148 applications for restitution citizenship in 2025, Der Spiegel reported. Officials have noted that the special procedure differs from ordinary naturalization: staff often help applicants assemble proof rather than requiring them to produce every original document, a practice rooted in the law’s reparative purpose. Legitimate descendants may now face delays while certificates already prepared are held and files are rechecked.
The Interior Ministry, led by Alexander Dobrindt of the Christian Social Union, has described the suspension as a temporary measure to protect the integrity of the process, not a repeal of the constitutional right.
The post Germany suspends naturalizations of alleged Nazi victims, Chinese nationals suspected of wide-scale fraud appeared first on Remix News.
A French member of the European Parliament and former police commissioner called for attempted-murder charges Thursday after masked protesters set fire to the entrance of a Bordeaux police station, blocking officers inside as smoke filled the building.
Matthieu Valet, now affiliated with the National Rally, said the attackers blocked the main door of the Capucins station and ignited trash bins piled against it while officers were still inside.
“It’s a criminal act of extreme gravity; we could have had a massacre,” MEP Valet wrote on X. “The perpetrators must be found and prosecuted for attempted murder. Ten years after the Viry-Châtillon attack, where police officers were burned alive while trapped in their patrol car, nothing has changed.”
BREAKING: Rioters attempted to murder police officers in Bordeaux, says French MEP.
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 8, 2026
Criminal rioters blocked the entrance to the Capucins police station and then set the station on fire.
They were actively trying to prevent the police from exiting the building, reported French MEP @mvalet_officiel.
Smoke filled the entire police station while the crowd cheered from outside. Officers tried to put out the flames but suffered from smoke inhalation and needed to evacuate.
French MEP Valet: “It’s a criminal act of extreme gravity; we could have had a massacre! The perpetrators must be found and prosecuted for attempted murder. Ten years after the Viry-Châtillon attack, where police officers were burned alive while trapped in their patrol car, nothing has changed!”
Follow: @RMXnews
Bordeaux prosecutor Renaud Gaudeul said a group of about 10 hooded individuals deliberately stacked bins at the station’s entrance around 4 p.m. and set them alight during a high-school demonstration. The fire spread quickly along part of the facade. Three national police officers inside escaped through a rear emergency exit. No injuries were reported but the officers reportedly suffered from smoke inhalation.
Prosecutors opened an investigation for destruction of property by a means dangerous to people, committed because of the victims’ status as public officials, and for joining a group formed to prepare violence or property damage during a public demonstration. Those offenses can carry up to 20 years in prison. Authorities have not so far filed attempted-murder charges.
This is not the first time that protesters have been accused of setting buildings on fire and blocking exits. Earlier this week, rioters set fire to the entrance of Vauquelin High School in Paris and blocked the exit with 100 students and staff inside. A harrowing video from BFMTV captured the moment.
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 5, 2026
Graffiti reading “Vengeance for Eden” was sprayed on the station wall, referring to a student seriously injured by a police grenade launcher earlier in the protests in the Paris region.
The attack came on the margins of nationwide student blockades and marches over teacher shortages and school conditions, now in their third week. A high school in nearby Lormont was vandalized the same morning. Across France, the protests have produced thousands of arrests since late September, along with repeated use of fireworks mortars, stones and burning barricades.
BREAKING: France in a state of chaos. Police charge protesters on Place de la Bastille in Paris after students slam them with projectiles. After the charge, students continue to hurl paving stones. Follow: @RMXnews https://t.co/HITGmat3zQ
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 8, 2026
The 2016 Viry-Châtillon case, in which officers were burned to death inside their vehicle during unrest outside Paris, remains a frequent reference point in French debates over attacks on police. Interior Ministry officials have defended recent tactics while announcing a temporary suspension of certain stun grenades after some minors picked them up and blew off their hands.
There have been horrific scenes throughout the country in recent weeks, including women being attacked with homemade flame throwers, teachers beaten in the streets, arson attacks on schools, teachers and staff doused in gasoline, and officers beaten unconscious.
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 9, 2026
"It’s no longer a firework. It’s a homemade bomb." Protesting "students" in France, some draped in Algerian flags, craft firework mortars into weapons to target police in Aix-en-Provence. Follow: @RMXnews https://t.co/B7SwOutQmo
In nearly every video, racial and ethnic minorities, mostly Blacks and Arabs, are seen driving much of the unrest and physical violence.
The latest figures from the interior ministry indicate that 761 police officers have been injured in the ongoing unrest, according to Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez in an Oct. 7 hearing before the National Assembly’s law committee.
The count covers injuries since Sept. 28.
On Thursday, Oct. 8 alone, the Interior Ministry reported 48 additional officers and gendarmes injured. Nuñez said arrests and detentions stood at 6,629 as of the evening of Oct. 6.
According to Education Minister Édouard Geffray, about 65 teachers and education staff have been injured in the riots.
The post ‘We could have had a massacre’ – French MEP demands attempted murder charge after protesters burn police station and block exit appeared first on Remix News.
Is it any wonder there’s a mental health crisis when the state of the country is so depressing, asks Arthur Ellis, whose own 'mental health walks' around the dystopian streets of London only made things worse.
The post My Therapist Told Me to Go for a Walk. London Had Other Ideas appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
It has been revealed that police in the northern German city of Bremen have for more than a decade advised participants in workplace safety seminars that deliberately inducing vomiting can be one way to interrupt an attempted sexual assault or rape.
Franka Haedke, a spokeswoman for the Bremen police, said the guidance is part of broader self-defense instruction offered by the department’s Central Police Prevention unit.
“In an emergency, such as attempted rape, defend yourself with all available means,” Haedke told the Kreiszeitung newspaper. “Vomiting can also be an effective way to ward off a sexual offense.”
Seminar instructors tell participants they can trigger a gag reflex by placing a finger down the throat. The resulting disgust, police say, is intended to disrupt an attacker’s actions. Haedke described the suggestion as one option among others rather than a prescribed response.
The sessions, which have run for more than 10 years, are held at companies, government offices and medical facilities. Employees of public transit agencies, the fire department, job centers, and social-service organizations are also eligible to attend. Topics include recognizing and avoiding danger, de-escalation, bystander intervention, and specific conduct during a sexual assault. Participants are invited to describe their own experiences so that advice can be tailored to situations they have encountered.
Haedke said the courses help people “recognize dangers early, manage conflicts, and act thoughtfully.” She added that the seminars “contribute to the prevention of crime and should be actively promoted and conducted on a recurring basis from the police’s point of view.”
Notably, the police appear powerless to address one of the key issues driving the increase in rapes and sexual assaults in Germany, and that is the incredible increase in foreigners. Since 2018, there has been a 72 percent increase in rapes in the country. In Bremen itself, where the police are advising women to vomit to stave off a rape, the city has been labeled the “most dangerous city in Germany.” It also happens to have the highest share of migrants of any German city. It is also a place where 49 percent of all rapes were committed by foreigners, even though the official foreign population is 23 percent.
The Bremen guidance is not the first unconventional self-protection tip from German police to draw public scrutiny. Remix News previously reported that in Berlin, officers previously listed singing as a way to irritate an attacker, advice that remained visible on the police force’s website even after internal materials had been revised. A screenshot of the recommendation went viral on social media in 2024 and was widely mocked.
Berlin police later said the tip had been drawn from professional associations for psychiatry and did not match operational experience.
“A screenshot of our homepage has been circulating for a few days, according to which we recommend that in the event of an attack, you irritate the perpetrator through unexpected behavior, such as singing,” the Berlin police stated. “This is recommended by the professional associations for psychiatry, among others. However, this advice does not correspond to our police experience and has therefore no longer been part of our recommendations since 2023. The flyer was already updated, now our website is too.”
The police stated that the suggestion was not meant for terrorist attacks, rampages or armed assaults, including those involving knives, where protecting life is the priority.
After the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015–16, Mayor Henriette Reker — although not a police official — also gave advice that was widely condemned. Reker said women should keep “a certain distance of more than an arm’s length” from unknown men and avoid behavior that could be “misunderstood.” After thousands of German women were sexually assaulted and even some raped by North African migrants, the remarks were widely criticized, including by Germany’s justice minister.
Swedish police have also previously advised women to stop going out alone. Before mass immigration, Sweden was once one of the safest countries in the world for women. However, right around the same time as the mass sexual assaults in Colgone, Swedish police issued similar advice. In Östersund in 2016, after a series of assaults and an attempted rape, police chief Stephen Jerand advised women who wanted to move around at night to arrange a ride or walk in groups. He called the warning factual rather than a ban on going out alone.
German police have given similar pairing advice after attacks on joggers. Leipzig officers in 2017, after a woman was raped in Rosental park, said it would be better to run in pairs or make sure someone else was nearby, and to look back when passing people. The city’s mayor criticized the police for restricting women’s freedom.
After an attack in the English Garden in Munich in 2016, police in the city told runners to choose busy, lit routes after dark, jog at least in pairs at dusk, skip headphones, and carry a whistle or personal alarm. Although it was less controversial advice that what other authorities provided, critics note that women are increasingly unsafe in Europe while out exercising or enjoying public spaces.
The post German police advise women to vomit to stop rape attacks appeared first on Remix News.
Three foreigners were placed under arrest for killing a goat in the Polish city of Wałbrzych. However, Polish prosecutors now want to drop the case.
The incident occurred in late 2025 outside a restaurant in Wałbrzych that was closed for renovation and not operating, authorities said. A witness called police, who arrived and detained the men, two citizens of Bangladesh and one of India, at the scene.
Chief Inspector Marcin Świeży of the District Police Headquarters in Wałbrzych said the men told officers that such behavior is normal in their countries and they did not know it is prohibited in Poland.
The goat was intended as a meal for two of the men, according to Do Rzeczy. The Indian citizen said he is a vegetarian and pleaded not guilty.
In Poland, goats and other livestock may be killed for food only under rules that implement EU animal-welfare law, chiefly Council Regulation No. 1099/2009 on the protection of animals at the time of killing. The core requirement is that the animal be spared avoidable pain, distress, or suffering.
Unlike in many Third World countries where animals are slaughtered on the streets, often in extreme pain and fear, in the EU, the animal must remain unconscious until death. Bleeding must then be performed promptly and effectively. Slaughter outside a registered slaughterhouse is tightly restricted, and home or backyard killing for personal consumption is generally not permitted except in narrow, authorized circumstances, for example, certain emergency or remote situations under veterinary supervision.
Despite the clear violation of law, the District Prosecutor’s Office in Wałbrzych filed a motion seeking conditional discontinuance of the proceedings against all three foreigners. Prosecutor Mariusz Pindera said the outcome depends in part on the court’s assessment of the degree of “social harmfulness” of the act.
“If the court finds that it was not significant, it may grant the prosecutor’s request,” he said.
The court confirmed it received the application but has not yet considered it, in part because of a judge’s illness. No hearing date has been set, and no substantive decision has been issued regarding the men.
The post Poland: 3 foreigners arrested for illegally killing a goat, but prosecutors want to dismiss the case appeared first on Remix News.
An Indian man who described himself as “masculinist,” “neo-Nazi” and “excited by blood and violence,” went on trial Monday behind closed doors at the Paris Assize Court, accused of leading a Discord group that blackmailed dozens of teenage girls into filming their own sexual abuse and self-mutilation, including carving swastikas into their skin.
Rohan Rane, 29, originally from Pune, arrived in France in 2017 on a residence permit to study at SKEMA Business School in Antibes. Investigators say he later cut off ordinary social ties and described himself as “a psychopath devoid of all emotion,” the newspaper reported.
Rane faces life imprisonment if convicted of sexual extortion, torture and acts of barbarity, corruption of minors and related offenses committed as part of an organized group. The trial is scheduled to run through Friday. Prosecutors say the acts occurred between 2019 and 2021.
Investigators identified 13 victims in the United States, England and the Netherlands, aged 12 to 18 at the time, according to news outlet franceinfo. Le Monde reported that the case against Rane alone involved about 20 victims, mostly American or British. Some were 12, 14 or 15.
Videos recovered by investigators show girls scarring themselves live on camera under orders from Rane and other men in an online community on Discord, the messaging platform. From his room in Antibes, he pressed them to engrave his first name and swastikas on their skin with razor blades. Some went further and penetrated themselves with knives.
Rane administered a Discord server called CVLT, “cult” in English, whose members, drawn from several countries, promoted neo-Nazi and nihilist ideas and referred to victims as “slaves,” Le Monde reported that U.S. authorities have said the network treated neo-Nazism, nihilism and child sexual abuse as core principles. The investigation began after the FBI was alerted to images of a 12-year-old girl whose torso bore the name “Rohan.”
“My goal is to create an inexhaustible reserve of slaves to satisfy my sadism,” he wrote in an August 2020 post. He has also said he has been fascinated since adolescence by “the Aryan brotherhood and fascism,” that he is “excited by blood and violence,” and that “Western feminists all have a rape fantasy.”
Prosecutors allege he forced girls under his influence to cut themselves, insert blunt objects into their genitals, eat their own feces, and attempt suicide, and that he used threats to enforce the orders.
Hippolyte Marquetty, a lawyer for six American victims and for the child-protection group Ecpat, which has joined the case as a civil party, said: “For some, it starts with a meeting, then they talk, and little by little they may be led to take photos of themselves, sometimes naked, to give information about their family, where they live.”
She further stated: “With this data, the relationship transformed, and he threatened to broadcast images of them to their entire community. There is such psychological pressure that they cannot get out of this system. If the FBI had not heard of this affair, some might have been pushed to commit suicide.”
At a hearing in March 2025, Rane said he was “guilty” and declared, “I take responsibility for everything.”
He has also acknowledged his masculinist and fascist ideology. Investigators found a written guide explaining how to manipulate young girls into slaves. He initially described some of the exchanges as consensual role-play before expressing regret, RFI reported. His lawyer, Irina Kratz, has contested the addition of a charge that exposes him to a life sentence.
The victims, now in their twenties, have experienced different levels of recovery.
Marquetty said. “We still have to imagine that some people don’t even know the face of their attacker, they have never seen him.”
Several are expected to testify by videoconference. One plans to appear in person because she needs “to come and express the suffering she suffered, and to “look straight in the eye and say, ‘this is what you did to me, I want you to realize it,’” the lawyer told franceinfo.
The women also hope their testimony will warn others about online violence of this nature.
Lawyers for several victims had asked that the hearing be public. The Paris Assize Court ordered a closed session Monday after a request from American authorities. Beyond the planned broadcast of scenes of torture and humiliation that often involved girls under 15, the court said in its ruling that “the criminal group” of which Rane is suspected of having been the leader “has previously sought to intimidate victims and witnesses” and threatened American prosecutors.
The post France: Indian migrant ‘neo-Nazi’ faces life in prison for forcing young girls to perform sexual acts and self-mutilate, arrived via student visa appeared first on Remix News.
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