Ex-Manchester United star Cantona pledges to house, feed refugees

Yahoo – AFP, 22 Sep 2015

Ex-Manchester United player Eric Cantona has forged a successful career in 

acting (AFP Photo/Stephane de Sakutin)

Paris (AFP) - Former Manchester United star Eric Cantona evoked the memory of his own grandparents fleeing war when promising on French radio Tuesday to house and feed refugees for a period of "at least" two years.

"I'm organising that with authorities in Marseille," Cantona told France Inter radio, explaining he intended to provide a small house, garden and food for a period of at least two years.

"If you house someone who does not have the right to work, then they need to eat too," said the enigmatic former France captain.

Cantona explained that his own family history had inspired his decision.

"My maternal grandparents were Spanish Republicans who fled Franco (in the Spanish civil war) by crossing the Pyrenees on foot," he said. "That being our story, it certainly played a role."

The man credited with sparking Manchester United's period of dominance in English football has carved out a successful second career as an actor since hanging up his boots.

He is currently performing in the stage play "Victor" at a Parisian theatre and also stars in the movie "Rois du Monde" (Kings of the World) directed by Laurent Laffargue, which is released in France on Wednesday.

EU states agree relocation of 120,000 refugees 'by large majority'

Yahoo – AFP, 22 Sep 2015

Migrants walk through the Hungarian countryside after crossing the border

with Croatia on September 21, 2015 (AFP Photo/Attila Kisbenedek)

Brussels (AFP) - EU interior ministers on Tuesday approved by a "large majority" a plan to relocate 120,000 refugees around the bloc but only after overriding fierce opposition from central and eastern European countries.

"Decision on relocation for 120,000 persons adopted today, by large majority of member states," the EU's Luxembourg presidency said in a tweet after an emergency meeting in Brussels.

"We, Slovaks, Romanians, Hungarians against, and Finland abstained. The resolution was accepted," Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said in a separate tweet.

The four countries, led by Hungary, are bitterly opposed to the European Commission plan, insisting Brussels has no right to make them take in thousands of the people seeking refuge in Europe.

To do so, amounts to a violation of national sovereignty, they argue.

An EU diplomat told AFP the decision was taken by so-called qualified majority vote.

It means that the Commission failed to get unanimous backing from all 28 member states for its relocation plan ahead of an emergency EU leaders summit Wednesday on the worst migrant crisis since World War II.

The squabble was a repeat of the interior ministers meeting last week but this time, pressed by France and Germany, the plan was put to a vote.

The outcome is binding on all 28 member states although implementation may prove problematic given the depth of opposition and the issue will very likely feature again at Wednesday's summit.

Last week's meeting did endorse plans to relocate a separate 40,000 refugees which the Commission unveiled in May as the crisis deepened.

The diplomat said that of the 120,000, some 66,000 migrants who have been granted asylum will be relocated from Greece and Italy which along with Hungary have borne the brunt of the flood of migrants fleeing war and turmoil across the Middle East and Africa.

That leaves 54,000 places -- which Hungary had rejected in its opposition to the Commission plan -- to be redistributed.

EU sources said earlier Tuesday Greece and Italy may get most of these places, while others now finding themselves in the frontline such as Austria and Croatia could also get additional help.

The new EU refugee quotas pic.twitter.com/TKBzHw23pt

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) 23 september 2015

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Volkswagen CEO apologizes for cheating on US auto emissions tests

Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn has apologized for manipulating US diesel emissions tests. Fines and recalls loom on the horizon. But the biggest price to pay is VW's loss of face - and that of the German auto industry.

Deutsche Welle, 20 Sep 2015

Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn has been forced to apologize after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that the firm had been using software to trick regulators into thinking the carmaker was complying with clean air laws.

Fresh from presenting the Volkswagen Group's latest models to champagne and flashing lights at the Frankfurt International Motor Show earlier this week, Winterkorn on Sunday avoided directly admitting willful deception. But the EPA's evidence was presumably strong enough to merit an apology.

Long winter ahead?

"I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public," said Winterkorn in a statement. "We will cooperate fully with the responsible agencies, with transparency and urgency, to clearly, openly and completely establish all of the facts of this case."

He added that VW has also ordered an external investigation. And in the spirit of further damage control, the carmaker has pulled from YouTube its ads marketing the diesel-powered cars as being better for the environment.

VW is facing fines of up to $18
billion in the US

The technology used by VW in the EPA tests allowed its diesel cars to release fewer smog-causing pollutants during tests than in real-world driving conditions.

Environmental, consumer health hazards

Despite the apology, things are already looking grim for the carmaker. The EPA said VW installed the software in nearly half a million cars in models from the last seven years, including the Audi A3, VW Jetta, Beetle, Golf and Passat - and that the software may have hidden up to 40 times the acceptable level of harmful pollutants, causing both environmental and consumer health hazards.

VW is facing fines of up to $18 billion (15.9 billion euros). It will also have to fix the cars at its own expense. But the bigger cost of the EPA's discovery is to VW's image - and potentially that of the German car industry as a whole.

Daimler, which shares the German auto industry's Big Three label along with VW and BMW, commented sparingly on the issue.

"I know too little about the case to judge just how justified the accusations against Volkswagen are, and whether we can be a 100 percent certain of them in every way," said CEO Dieter Zetsche.

Coming clean

But a transparent approach to an impending crisis is key, said Stefan Bratzel, a professor specializing in innovation research at the Bergisch Gladbach University of Applied Sciences.

"This is obviously negative for the German car industry, but speculation has to be kept in check," Bratzel told DW. "Volkswagen and - if it comes to it - other German carmakers have to be proactive and transparent and say whether this was an isolated problem in the US, or whether this is a pattern."

Volkswagen will also eventually have to make clear who within the organizational structure is responsible, and just how high up they are.

"An administrator didn't just decide this on his own," said Bratzel. "Somebody would have signed off on this."

Trouble on the homefront

Calls for an investigation have already come in VW's native market. Germany's Green Party wants a probe to determine whether emissions test manipulation has also taken place in Germany.

"We will emphatically demand an investigation in parliament and examine whether German authorities have helped along illegal activities by deliberately looking the other way," said Bärbel Höhn, the chair of the Green Party's environmental committee.

All this comes at a time when the biggest threat to the German car industry was thought to be the Chinese economic slowdown. But as VW's shareholders are bound to learn when markets open on Monday, what's bad for the environment and for health will likely end up being bad for business.

(dpa, AP)

US government has expanded its investigation of pollution-skirting devices in

 diesel vehicles to other manufacturers after Volkswagen admitted it used them

to thwart environmental standards (AFP Photo/Thomas Samson)

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Belgrade Gay Pride march expresses solidarity with migrants

Yahoo – AFP, Katarina Subasic, September 20, 2015

A participant of the Belgrade Gay Pride parade waves the rainbow flag in front the

Serbian parliament building on September 20, 2015 (AFP Photo/Alexa Stankovic)

Belgrade (AFP) - Belgrade's Gay Pride parade, only the second since a ban was lifted, took place under tight security but without major incident Sunday, with participants urging European solidarity with the wave of migrants crossing the Balkans to reach the European Union.

"Europe open your gates," read a huge black banner with pink letters held by activists next to a giant rainbow-coloured flag waved at the front of several hundred participants.

"We, the entire LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community, stand by our friends in trouble, by migrants who come every day and, like us, only ask for their right to be happy," prominent playwright Biljana Srbljanovic told the crowd.

Several other speakers also called for solidarity with the migrants and refugees, mostly from the Middle East, who have been passing through Belgrade for months on their wat from Turkey and Greece and on towards northern Europe.

A year ago Serbian gays and lesbians staged their first incident-free Belgrade Pride Parade in four years, in what was seen as a test of the EU hopeful's commitment to protecting minority rights.

At Belgrade's first-ever Gay Pride march in 2010, hardline nationalists attacked participants and clashed with police, wounding 150 people and prompting officials to ban the parade for the next three years.

Sunday's event passed without incidents amid tight security as thousands of riot police officers were deployed in the city centre.

Warmer reception

Several armoured vehicles, some with water cannons, were parked at main crossings in the downtown area where roads were closed to traffic from early morning.

Organisers said there had been significantly fewer threats of disruption by far-right groups than in previous years. It was such threats which had forced the government to cancel such events after 2010.

However, more than 50 people were arrested over alleged plans to attack participants in the gay pride parade, local media reported.

Police was not able immediately to confirm the figure to AFP.

A participant of the Belgrade Gay Pride parade walks underneath a giant

rainbow flag on September 20, 2015 (AFP Photo/Andrej Isakovic)

Organisers hailed what they called a warmer reception for this year's LGBT event.

The two-kilometre (1.5 miles) long march through the city centre, from the seat of the Serbian government to Belgrade City Hall, was also attended by several leading Serbian officials, including Belgrade mayor Sinisa Mali and Jadranka Joksimovic, the minister in charge of Serbia's bid for EU membership.

Belgrade has been under pressure to improve protection for minorities including the LGBT community since starting accession talks with the European Union last year.

"I am glad that a parade is now regularly held, but this enormous police security shows that the way LGBT community is seen and treated by the majority in Serbia has not changed. There is a long way ahead," Ivana Malisic, a 34-year participant, told AFP, pointing to the cordons of anti-riot police that surrounded the marchers.

Homophobia is widespread in Serbian and other conservative Balkan societies.

Among the crowd marching on Sunday were fellow LGBT activists from the United States, Britain, Sweden and elsewhere.

"I came from Albania, where I serve as a volunteer in the Peace Corps, to offer my support, to give them a voice and to help their voice be heard," Jon Breen told AFP.

Tsipras and Syriza declare victory in Greece, announce coalition partners

Greece's leftist Syriza party has claimed its second national election victory in less than a year. The independent nationalist ANEL party has announced they will be junior coalition partners in the new government.

Deutsche Welle, 21 Sep 2015

Official results late on Sunday showed that Greek left-wing leader Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza party were headed for a relatively comfortable victory in the country's general election, with around 35.54 percent of the vote after half the ballots had been counted.

"We have fought against much stronger powers and Syriza has proved that it is too tough to die, because it has deep connections with the people," Tsipras said in his victory speech.

Standing alongside Tsipras was Panos Kammenos, leader of the Independent Greeks party (ANEL), set to be the junior coalition partner as Syriza did not clear the 38 percent hurdle necessary for an automatic parliamentary majority. Syriza was projected to win 145 seats and ANEL to win 10 in the 300-seat parliament, slightly down from the 163 seats Syriza's broader coalition managed to secure at the last polls in January.

Projections showed that the conservative New Democracy part had managed to garner only 28 percent of the vote, causing leader Evangelos Meimarakis to concede defeat less than two hours after polls had closed. Far-right extremists Golden Dawn received 7 percent, a figure that's likely to boost their presence in parliament by two seats.

Turnout was estimated to be at around 55.8 percent of eligible voters, the lowest rate since 1950. This was a steep drop from January's polls, when 64 percent of those registered cast a ballot.

DW's Milan Gagnon was in Athens on Sunday and met up with voters who summarized the fatigue some Greeks have with the constant political turmoil, and the inability of any one party to provide concrete solutions to the debt crisis.

Nefertiti says she might have voted in the #GreekElections if she'd been in her hometown, but she's not sure for whom pic.twitter.com/Njr5XijbhM

— Milan Gagnon (@milangagnon) 20 september 2015

Sunday's election, the third national vote in 2015 after January's general election and July's bailout referendum, were prompted by Tsipras' resignation as prime minister in August. Tsipras hoped the snap polls would help shore up support for Syriza going into the implementation of new financial reforms demanded by Greece's creditors for the country's third bailout since 2012.

Tsipras originally campaigned in January against further austerity and rescue funds, but eventually capitulated in July after facing bank closures and an economic downward spiral.

Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogroup, Greece's largest creditor, congratulated Tsipras on his victory on Sunday, saying he was "ready to work closely with the Greek authorities and to continue accompanying Greece in its ambitious reform efforts."

es/cmk (AFP, Reuters, dpa)

Dutch police break up people smuggling gang from Syria

DutchNews, September 18, 2015

Two Syrian nationals have been arrested in the Netherlands and charged with smuggling ‘hundreds’ of people into the country via Italy, Greece, Austria and Hungary. 

The main suspect is a 35-year-old man based in Eindhoven. His 26-year-old nephew was also picked up, as was an unidentified woman. She is suspected of handling the money and was released on Sunday pending further investigation, the public prosecution department said in a statement. 

A 27-year-old man has also been arrested in Budapest in connection with the case. 

The public prosecutor said the smuggling operation began in Turkey where people paid €7,000 to be taken to Greece or Italy. The second leg of their journey, a car trip from Italy, cost a further €700. Some of the cash had to be paid before leaving Turkey, the rest on arrival. 

The investigation into the gang began a year ago and involved the authorities in Hungary, Germany, Austria and Hungary as well as Europol. 

The 35-year-old man is a Syrian with refugee status. He is said to have organised the transport, cars and drivers. According to the Nos, he was making up to €120,000 a year, but demand in recent months had driven his earnings to €20,000 a week.

Bonn elects first mayor with Indian background

History has been made in the former German capital after CDU's Ashok-Alexander Sridharan became the city's first mayor to come from an immigrant background. But he told DW that his roots were irrelevant to his campaign.

Deutsche Welle, 14 Sep 2015

Following last weekend's mayoral election, Sridharan became the first candidate from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to win the Bonn mayoral election in over two decades, leaving the Social Democratic Party (SPD) out in the cold after 21 years in office.

Even more unique perhaps was that Sridharan became the city's first mayor to come from a migrant background. Born in Bonn in 1965, the Catholic father of three spent his whole childhood and university life in Germany's former provisional capital city, branding himself during his election campaign as a "Bonn lad." It was his father, an Indian diplomat, who first moved to western Germany in the 1950s before marrying Sridharan's German mother.

Despite drawing media attention from India, in an interview with Deutsche Welle, Sridharan said his Asian roots weren't relevant to his campaign.

"That's not important to me at all," Sridharan told DW. "I didn't think about it because it played absolutely no part in the campaign."

The World Conference Center Bonn

The attention on Bonn from overseas could reap rewards for the city, however.

"Of course I think it's great that people in India are interested in who has been elected as Bonn's mayor," Sridharan said.

"I think that could even contribute efforts to make Bonn better-known internationally than it already is and that would do us good. We have many international companies and organizations here and I feel we have to strengthen that."

End of SPD office

Some 50.06 percent of Bonn's electorate voted for Sridharan in Sunday's election. Throughout the course of his campaign, however, Sridharan received a handful of xenophobic posts on social media such as: "The German population's still only 25 percent migrants. Why didn't the Bonn CDU find a German candidate?"

For the Sridharan, however, the comments aren't a matter of concern.

"I just ignored them. I didn't react at all. There were also really so few of them, just a handful of very infrequent posts," he told DW.

As the former treasurer of nearby Königswinter prepares to move office into Bonn's historic town hall, the SPD will now be looking to see where they went wrong after 21 years.

Beethoven's birth house is in Bonn

Sridharan said he believed that much of his success in Sunday's election came from his own personal efforts.

"I think overall it helped that I was at so many events and made myself as well known as is possible in Bonn, and clearly that worked… but we'll look at the results and then at exactly what the reasons were behind our success."

Re-branding Bonn

Top of the agenda for Sridharan, when he officially takes office on October 21, is to improve Bonn's international presence - both politically and economically, as well as culturally.

Since the fall of the Berlin wall 25 years ago, the Berlin-Bonn law has regulated the move of the German Bundestag to Berlin and certain federal facilities between the two cities. Sridharan warned, however, that the law should not be implemented to Bonn's detriment.

"In the recent weeks, months and years, the majority of the arrangements have been at Bonn's expense. Therefore ,I think we must watch out that the law doesn't unravel and the facilities that have come to Bonn as compensation are not put in danger. We need to discuss the issue with broad agreement as we did at the beginning of the 90s, both regional and partisan."

As the birthplace of composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven, the newly-elected mayor also hopes to rebrand the city.

"We need a stamp for Bonn and I'd like to develop it as 'Beethoven city' and make it known internationally," Sridharan said.

Kenya unveils memorial to Mau Mau people tortured during British rule

Thousands of people in Kenya have attended the ceremony to unveil a memorial to those killed, tortured and jailed during the emergency period of British rule. The statue formed part of a reconciliation agreement.

Deutsche Welle, 13 Sep 2015

Image from 1950s British colonial rule in Kenya 

The statue shows a dreadlocked Mau Mau fighter armed with a homemade rifle being handed food by a woman supporter. Written on the stone plaque are the words: "This memorial is a symbol of reconciliation between the British government, the Mau Mau, and all those who suffered."

At the ceremonial opening on Saturday in Nairobi, Gitu wa Kahengeri, Mau Mau Veterans Association secretary general said "It is a special day," adding they "truly believe in reconciliation for a better future."

Many of the Mau Mau veterans, now aged more than 70 years old, wore T-shirts with the word "heroes."

The statue was commissioned following a June 2013 decision by Britain to compensate more than 5,200 elderly Kenyans tortured and abused during the insurgency from 1952 until 1960. Although the rebellion failed, Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963.

"The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice," Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) chief Makua Mutua said. He added that now "perpetrator and victim, colonised and colonisers, can be together."

The costs for the statue of £90,000 (124,000 euros) were paid by the British in addition to the £20 million paid to Mau Mau veterans following a four-year legal dispute. Several thousand Kenyans said they were beaten and sexually assaulted by officers acting for the British administration trying to suppress the Mau Mau rebellion.

"This memorial is about reconciliation, allowing us to discuss together the issues arising from a difficult period in our shared history, and to move forward together," British High Commissioner Christian Turner said. The Commissioner was applauded at the ceremony.

Kenya's founding president Jomo Kenyatta opposed the violence carried out by the Mau Mau and the group remained outlawed until 2003. Kenyatta's son Uhuru is the current president.

jm/bw (AFP, AP)

Jeremy Corbyn wins Britain's Labour party leadership contest

Britain's opposition Labour party has elected veteran left winger Jeremy Corbyn as its new leader. The one-time outsider succeeds Ed Miliband, who stepped down after the party's electoral defeat in May.

Avowed Socialist and anti-austerity advocate Jeremy Corbyn won 59.5 percent of the ballots cast, or 251, 417 votes, to take over the leadership position, the party announced at a special conference in London on Saturday.

He defeated three more centrist candidates. His closest rival, Andy Burnham, scored 19 percent. In all, party members cast 422,664 votes.

More 'decent society'

Addressing the party after the result, Corbyn said he wanted Labour to strive for a diverse, "decent and better society" open to all.

Corbyn, who has often voted against past party decisions, scored during the leadership campaign on a message of promising to increase state-funded investments and re-nationalizing parts of Britain's economy, including railways.

The defeated trio - Andy Burnham, Yvetter Cooper and Liz Kendall - were widely regarded as advocates of policies of former Labour Premier Tony Blair.

Labour out of power?

Critics, including Blair, had argued that Corbyn's socialist ideas and aversion to Britain's membership of the Western military alliance NATO, would alienate moderate voters and keep Labour out of power.

Corbyn only entered the contest at a late stage, saying he wanted to ensure wider debate among candidates.

Saturday's result means that he will debate head-to-head in the House of Commons every week with conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.

Advocate for the poor

Corbyn grew up in a political family. His parents met as activists during the Spanish Civil War. He worked for trade unions before being elected to the Commons in 1983.

Corbyn, who has never held major office but instead remained a serial backbench rebel, opposed the now deeply unpopular 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that was advocated by Blair while in office.

Corbyn also opposes Cameron's austerity measures which have seen deep cuts to welfare and has in the past said he believes "we can learn a great deal" from Karl Marx.

ipj/sms (AFP, AP, Reuters)

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"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“…5 - Integrity That May Surprise…

The Unthinkable… Politics, A Review

Humans will begin to search for integrity and fairness and it's going to happen in the places you never expect. I said this last week, so this is a review. There'll come a time when you will demand this of your politics - fairness and integrity. So when the candidates start calling each other names, you will turn your back on them and they won't get any votes. They're going to get the point real fast, don't you think? How about that?

Let me give you another potential. This country that I sit in right now [USA] will set the mold for that particular attribute. I have no clock. Watch for the youngsters to set this in motion, and they will, for they are the voters of tomorrow and they do not want the energy of today. To some of them, it's so abominable they won't even register to vote in this energy. You're going to see this soon. That was number five.. ..."

European Parliament backs Juncker's refugee plans

European lawmakers have backed European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's proposals for coping with a massive influx of migrants. The vast majority of the people on the move have been heading for Germany.

Deutsche Welle, 10 Sep 2015

Members of the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to support Juncker's proposals, with 432 voting in favor of the non-binding resolution and just 142 against, with 57 abstentions.

A statement posted on the European Parliament's website said the lawmakers backed the Commission's proposal to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy, Greece and Hungary. This came a day after it backed an emergency proposal for relocating 40,000 asylum seekers.

It also said that a majority of lawmakers believed that the bloc's "Dublin rules," which determine in which member state any given migrant is required to register, should be amended through a "fair, compulsory allocation key" taking into account "the integration prospects and the specific cases and needs of asylum seekers themselves."

The MEPs also expressed support for the idea of drawing up a common EU list of safe countries of origin and a compulsory resettlement plan under which members states would be required to take in refugees from third countries.

As #refugeecrisis intensifies, #migrationEU becomes a common challenge. Learn more http://t.co/UE1bqUyRc6 pic.twitter.com/EdiaGYX3Vl

— European Parliament (@Europarl_EN) 10 september 2015

More important than the consensus in Strasbourg though, is how the bloc's 28 national governments react to Juncker's proposals.

EU interior ministers are to meet on Monday to discuss the proposals and several eastern members of the bloc have already expressed their opposition to a compulsory resettlement plan.

The MEPs also called on the EU's foreign policy coordinator, Federica Mogherini to convene an international conference on refugees "with the aim of establishing a common global humanitarian aid strategy." They said that in addition to EU officials, it should include representatives from all of its member states, United Nations agencies, non-governmental agencies, the United States and Arab countries.

The European Union is experiencing an influx of migrants from the south that is unprecedented in the history of the bloc. While Germany alone is expecting to receive around 800,000 migrants by the end of 2015, some European countries have said they are determined to take in as few as possible. While many of the migrants have come from war zones such as Syria, many have also come from the western Balkans, where no major conflict currently exists.

pfd/kms (AFP, AP)

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German state lifts headscarf ban for public school teachers

Deutsche Welle, 9 Sep 2015

Lower Saxony has lifted a ban on female Muslim teachers wearing headscarves while teaching in public schools. The move follows a high court ruling that such a ban is against principles of religious freedom.

From now on, public school teachers in the German state of Lower Saxony will be permitted to wear a headscarf while at work. The state's Ministry of Education made the announcement in Hanover on Monday following a decision by Germany's high court that the ban violates religious freedom.

Before the change, teachers were only allowed to wear headscarves if they were religious education instructors giving lessons on the Islamic faith. From now on, all teachers in all subjects may wear a headscarf if they wish, unless it 'provokes dangerous conflict' or 'disturbs the peace' - in which case each incident will be reviewed by the ministry on an individual basis.

But this is unlikely to lead to any major constitutional changes in Germany, as the court's decision was vague enough not to demand that the other eight states that have bans on head scarves for public school teachers - among them Berlin, Bavaria, and Germany's most populous state, North Rhine Westphalia - change their statues.

According to Lower Saxony's Ministry of Education, only one of its 17 female Islamic religious education teachers chose to wear a head scarf last year, and no one had ever brought the ban to their attention as a problem. Allegedly the head scarf ban was a sticking point with a deal the state hopes to make with Islamic associations this coming fall.

es/jr (epd, KNA)

Muslim women wearing various type of Islamic veils (closewise from top left):

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Norway hotel tycoon offers 5,000 hotel nights to refugees

Yahoo – AFP, 8 Sep 2015

Hundreds of migrants walk after leaving the transit zone of the Budapest train 

station, on September 4, 2015 (AFP Photo/Ferenc Isza)

Oslo (AFP) - A Norwegian billionaire who made his fortune in the hotel business offered on Tuesday 5,000 nights in his hotel chain to refugees who do not have a spot in asylum centres.

"We are offering 5,000 nights to refugees who need it," Petter Stordalen, who owns the Nordic Choice Hotels chain, wrote on Twitter.

The migrant drama unfolding in Europe "concerns absolutely everyone," he told Norwegian news agency NTB, adding that he would also cover the meal costs for the refugees who stay in his establishments.

The Norwegian migration board UDI said it would consider Stordalen's offer if its centres were overflowing.

Norway received 2,313 asylum requests in August, most of them from Syrians, Eritreans and Afghans, the highest number registered in a single month since the 1990s.

According to UDI, the number of asylum requests could reach up to 16,000 for the full year of 2015, compared to 11,480 in 2014.

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Danish police close motorway as refugees march to Sweden

Yahoo- AFP, 8 Sep 2015

Migrants, mainly from Syria, walk on a highway near Rodby, Denmark on 

September 7, 2015 toward Sweden, where they hope to seek asylum (AFP Photo/

Bax Lindardt)

Copenhagen (AFP) - Police in southern Denmark late Monday closed a motorway as groups of refugees marched towards the border with Sweden, known for its more generous asylum policies.

"This is being done for the safety of the people who are walking along the motorway," local police said in a statement after closing the first 29 kilometres (18 miles) of the road from Rodby harbour in southern Denmark to Copenhagen.

Earlier in the day, up to 150 refugees began marching towards the border but many later agreed to be taken to police stations to register for asylum in Denmark.

They were among around 300 refugees who landed Sunday in Rodby, which has Scandinavia's busiest ferry crossing to Germany.

But scuffles broke out with police when some ran off to avoid having their fingerprints taken in fear they would be registered as seeking refuge in Denmark and unable to go on to Sweden, where many said they had family.

Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said at a Monday press conference that around 400 refugees had entered Denmark over the past 24 hours but doubled that number to 800 a few hours later.

"We cannot just ignore our obligations and send them to Sweden without its consent, because then we would be doing the same as many other countries, which is the reason the European asylum system is under massive pressure," he said.

As more refugees arrived in Denmark's south there were also more people taking to the roads to walk towards Sweden, which asylum seekers typically reach by taking the train across a bridge linking Copenhagen and the Swedish city of Malmo.

The bridge is not open to pedestrians.

Refugees, mainly from Syria, speak with a Danish policeman after arriving in 

Rodby from Germany on September 7, 2015 (AFP Photo/Jens Noergaard Larsen)

Many of those walking on the motorway raised their hands as they shouted: "Malmo, Malmo, Malmo," the Politiken daily wrote.

Around 100 Danes had gathered on a bridge crossing the road to hand out food and diapers to the walkers, who had only covered a fraction of the 160 kilometres between Rodby and the capital.

Laila Saied, an engineer from Syria, said she had travelled through Europe with her husband and two children for one month in the hope of reaching Sweden.

"I slept on the street, I was on the sea with my children," she told broadcaster TV 2 News earlier in the day.

Prime Minister Rasmussen said he had told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Denmark was willing to accept 100 refugees from Germany "given the very special situation Germany and Europe is in."

While Sweden has become a top EU destination for refugees by issuing permanent residency to all Syrian asylum seekers, Denmark has sought to reduce the influx by issuing temporary residence permits, delaying family reunifications and slashing benefits for newly arrived immigrants.

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— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) 8 september 2015