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Europe old Colonial power: Germany, France, UK, dispute US President ‘Islamic State’ not defeated in Syria

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Germany, France, and the United Kingdom have both said that “Islamic State” remains a threat in Syria. All three appeared to dispute US President Donald Trump’s claimed that the militants had been vanquished.

Washington’s European allies in the fight against “Islamic State” (IS) on Thursday appeared to dispute President Trump’s claim that the jihadi group had been defeated.

While announcing that the US would soon pull troops out of the country, Trump claimed that the IS militant group in Syria had been vanquished.

But international allies in the fight against IS — such as France, Germany and the UK — were somewhat surprised by the optimistic appraisal.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Washington’s “abrupt change of course” had put the fight against IS at risk.

“IS has been pushed back but the threat is not yet over,” Germany’s Foreign Office tweeted. There is a danger that the consequences of this decision will damage the fight against IS and jeopardize the successes already achieved.”

Germany currently has some 1,200 personnel involved in the fight against IS in Syria, including those invovled in refueling, naval, and training operations.

France: IS and its roots endure

Meanwhile, French Defense Minister Florence Parly acknowledged that the group had been significantly weakened, she said the battle was not over.

“Islamic State has not been wiped from the map, nor have its roots elsewhere. The last pockets of this terrorist organization must be defeated militarily once and for all,” Parly said on Twitter.

Some 2,000 US forces are in Syria at present, most of them on a train-and-advise mission for local forces fighting IS. France has an undisclosed number of special forces on the ground in Syria as part of the US-led coalition there, as well as fighter jets in Jordan and artillery along the Syrian border in Iraq.

UK: Still a threat without territory

Britain, which takes part in air strikes as part of the coalition effort, said it was important not to underestimate the threat that IS still poses.

In a statement late Thursday, the British Foreign Office said important advances had been made in recent days, but added that “much remains to be done and we must not lose sight of the threat they pose.”

“Even without territory, Daesh will remain a threat,” the statement said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

While the Foreign Office statement diplomatically avoided a contradiction of Trump’s assessment, junior Defense Minister Tobias Ellwood was more blunt, saying he “strongly” disagreed.

Russia and the UK are Running out of Beer because of the World Cup

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A World Cup-fueled boon for beer sales is not faring well for thirsty drinkers in Russia and the U.K.

First, celebrations of Sweden’s victory over South Korea sucked Nizhny Novgorod, Russia dry. Now, Moscow bars and restuarants are running low on beer supply, too.

“We just didn’t think they would only want beer,” a waiter in central Moscow told ESPN. “There are really a lot of people in Moscow…and they are all drinking,” he said. “It’s hot, and it’s football.”

In the U.K., another problem hangs in the air: CO2 is running low, meaning beer isn’t getting its bubbles, nor its gas boost to leave draft lines. Beer producers are starting to stall production, the BBC reports.

Brigid Simmonds, head of the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), is attempting to rectify the situation by pushing CO2 producers to get back online. (CO2 producers often ramp up production in the winter, and slow in the summer.)

“You could have foreseen this. We’ve got the World Cup, which is as exciting in Germany as it is here,” Simmonds told the BBC. “Quite why they didn’t anticipate this, I don’t know.”

Turns out, all we had to do to get the world drinking more beer was televise a global sporting event. Speaking of which, we know we encouraged your World Cup beer drinking with our World Cup drinking game. If you’re in Russia or the U.K., it may be time to switch to canned cocktails.

U.K. Queen has a secret speech if World War 3 breaks out. This is what it says

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Posted by Greg Evans

The Queen has many planned speeches, including one that the Queen will read to the citizens of Britain in the event of nuclear war, a prospect that was made more real through the actions of Russia in the last few months.

 

The Queen’s Speech.

The speech was originally written in 1983, during the height of the Cold War, and was made public in 2013 under the 30-year rule by the National Archives.

Certain aspects of the speech are now outdated, such as Prince Andrew being in action for the Royal Navy, but it remains a prescient and sobering text.

Written as if The Queen was broadcasting the message at midday on Friday 4 March 1983, she starts by reflecting on the recent joys of Christmas before personally sharing the sadness she felt when World War II was announced.

The BBC quote the speech as saying:

I have never forgotten the sorrow and the pride I felt as my sister and I huddled around the nursery wireless set listening to my father’s [George VI’s] inspiring words on that fateful day in 1939 [at the start of the World War II].

Not for a single moment did I imagine that this solemn and awful duty would one day fall to me.

But whatever terrors lie in wait for us all, the qualities that have helped to keep our freedom intact twice already during this sad century will once more be our strength.

She adds that the terror now comes from technology rather than soldiers or airmen.

We all know that the dangers facing us today are greater by far than at any time in our long history.

The enemy is not the soldier with his rifle nor even the airman prowling the skies above our cities and towns but the deadly power of abused technology.

Her Royal Highness goes on to emphasise the importance of family in such troubling times before concluding:

My message to you therefore is simple. Help those who cannot help themselves, give comfort to the lonely and the homeless and let your family become the focus of hope and life to those who need it.

As we strive together to fight off the new evil, let us pray for our country and men of goodwill wherever they may be.

God Bless you all.

The speech was devised as part of the war gaming exercise which envisioned how the UK would respond to a potential nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.

We certainly hope that we never have to hear a version of this speech, but if you want to read it you can find it below:

When I spoke to you less than three months ago we were all enjoying the warmth and fellowship of a family Christmas. Our thoughts were concentrated on the strong links that bind each generation to the ones that came before and those that will follow. The horrors of war could not have seemed more remote as my family and I shared our Christmas joy with the growing family of the Commonwealth.

Now this madness of war is once more spreading through the world and our brave country must again prepare itself to survive against great odds.

I have never forgotten the sorrow and the pride I felt as my sister and I huddled around the nursery wireless set listening to my father’s inspiring words on that fateful day in 1939. Not for a single moment did I imagine that this solemn and awful duty would one day fall to me.

We all know that the dangers facing us today are greater by far than at any time in our long history. The enemy is not the soldier with his rifle nor even the airman prowling the skies above our cities and towns but the deadly power of abused technology.

But whatever terrors lie in wait for us all the qualities that have helped to keep our freedom intact twice already during this sad century will once more be our strength. My husband and I share with families up and down the land the fear we feel for sons and daughters, husbands and brothers who have left our side to serve their country. My beloved son Andrew is at this moment in action with his unit and we pray continually for his safety and for the safety of all servicemen and women at home and overseas.

It is this close bond of family life that must be our greatest defence against the unknown. If families remain united and resolute, giving shelter to those living alone and unprotected, our country’s will to survive cannot be broken.

My message to you therefore is simple. Help those who cannot help themselves, give comfort to the lonely and the homeless and let your family become the focus of hope and life to those who need it.

As we strive together to fight off the new evil let us pray for our country and men of goodwill wherever they may be.

God bless you all.

Source: https://www.indy100.com/article/queen-world-war-3-speech-north-korea-japan-nuclear-1983-national-archives-event-7947811

Will the British Blame Russia for the Eight inches of snow and -5C cold winds tomorrow?

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UK, Snow and the Russians

UK, Snow and the Russians

Temperatures will plummet this weekend as an easterly wind brings Siberian weather to the UK once more.

The UK is set to get hit by a second ‘Beast from the East’ with snow to start falling on some parts by as soon as tomorrow.

Two weeks after a Siberian weather system plunged the country into chaos, the Met Office are warning a second ‘mini-Beast’ could cause disruption once again.

Yellow weather warnings for snow and ice are in place for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Temperatures will struggle to get above 0C on Sunday and a bitter wind chill will make it feel even colder.

While on Friday temperatures will be mild for most, the northernmost tips of Scotland will feel a lot chillier and that will slowly spread south through the day.

Is the UK Overthrowing the Christian Basis of the West?

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  • by Giulio Meotti
  • As the progressive publication Prospect asked, “if we are no longer a Christian country, what are we?”
  • Christians in the UK are on course to be in the minority by the middle of the century.
  • What defines Europe are its boundaries – not physical but cultural. Without its culture, Europe could not be distinguished from the rest of the world. And the pillar of this culture is based on the Judeo-Christian heritage and values.

British Christian publications have been wondering if we are witnessing the “extinction of Christianity in Egypt“, where the Christian faithful have suffered persecution and terror attacks at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Christian leaders also seem to be wondering if Christianity will be “extinct within a generation” in the UK, where religious people enjoy total freedom of worship and faith.

Last year, the Church of England began to formulate a religious revolution. Its canonical laws require that British churches hold their functions every Sunday. The dramatic crisis of Christianity in the UK, however, is pushing the Anglican church to rewrite those rules, in order not to officiate in empty and abandoned churches.

A quarter of the British rural parishes now have fewer than 10 regular members of the faithful on Sunday. There are no more children in 25% of the Church of England’s congregations, as new figures have just shown. On average, nine children attended each church service across all Anglican churches in 2016. Generally speaking, churchgoers have dwindled in the UK by 34,000 in just one year.

“Should we care that Britain’s lost its religion?“, Daniel Finkelstein asked in The Times. Yes. He suggests that nationalism might take its place, but what if, instead, its place is taken by another religion? There is no need to be observant to understand the importance of a country’s cultural affiliation. If there were no mass immigration from countries with values antithetical to Western ones, the demise of Christianity would not be as potentially calamitous; society might simply become one of atheists and secularists. Europe now, however, is experiencing a terminal decline for two reasons that are linked: mass unvetted immigration coupled with a shrinking confidence in its own legitimacy and beliefs. There seems to be shame over Western colonialism, yet no thought at all seems to be given to who are the real colonists: The Crusades were a reaction to a Muslim colonization of the Christian Byzantine Empire, North Africa, the Middle East, much of Eastern Europe, Northern Cyprus and Spain.

In Europe, the UK is now leading the same process. Britain is living through “the biggest religious transition since the Reformation of the 16th Century“, according to Linda Woodhead, professor of the sociology of religion at Lancaster University. In 2000, Anglicans were 30% of the population. Half of them have disappeared in just seventeen years. The number of those who belong to the Church of England fell below 15%, including just 3% of English young people ages 18-24. Writing in the Spectator, Damian Thompson wondered if “the Church of England is dying“. Churchgoing dropped by 50% also in Scotland. Another report revealed that more than half the British population has no religion at all.

According to internal documents from the Church of England, Christianity is dying in Britain at such a pace that in the next three decades, Anglican congregations will halve again. Christians in the UK are on course to be in the minority by the middle of the century.

UK Theresa May have lost her gamble in calling a “Snap” Election

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Teresa may electionLONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, smarting from a humbling snap-election defeat that cost her Conservative Party its governing majority, said on Friday that her party would stay in power by forming a minority government with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.

“What the country needs more than ever is certainty, and having secured the largest number of votes and the greatest number of seats in the general election, it is clear that only the Conservative and Unionist Party has the legitimacy and the ability to provide that certainty, by commanding a majority in the House of Commons,” Mrs. May said outside No. 10 Downing Street, using the full name of her party. “As we do, we will continue to work with our friends and allies, in the Democratic Unionist Party in particular.”

Mrs. May had called an election three years early in the hope of winning a stronger mandate as Britain prepares for two years of negotiations over its withdrawal from the European Union, but voters did not reward that gamble. Instead, they produced a hung Parliament — one in which no party has an outright majority in the 650-seat House of Commons.

The fractured voting — which saw strong gains by the largest opposition party, Labour, and modest gains by a smaller party, the centrist Liberal Democrats — was a further indication of stark political divisions in Britain, days before formal negotiations over withdrawal from the European Union are scheduled to begin in Brussels.

Flight chaos as British Airways computers go down around the world

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British Airways computer

British Airways is experiencing a “global system outage” (Photo: PA)

Huge queues at check ins, passengers stuck on planes and website offline are among the issues reported by frustrated holidaymakers.

British Airways computers have gone down around the world causing flight chaos for millions of holidaymakers.

Frustrated passengers have told how the IT systems outage has resulted in huge queues at check ins and left them unable to use the airline’s website or app.

Pictures posted on social media also show holidaymakers onboard a plane waiting to be allowed to disembark a flight, while others have been left stranded on runways.

British Airways has apologised for inconvenience caused via Twitter, promising: ‘We are working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible”.

minal 5, BA’s main London terminal, is among those affected by the IT issue.

Heathrow Airport said it was “working closely” with BA to solve the issue and advised passengers to check the status of their flight before travelling to the airport.

The issues come as thousands of families – many with young children – flock abroad for the Bank Holiday weekend and the start of half term.

The Guardian BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince

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Spectre of ‘another 7/7’ led Tony Blair to block bribes inquiry, high court told.

Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced “another 7/7” and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

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He was accused in yesterday’s high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.

The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.

Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government appeared to have “rolled over” after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was “just as if a gun had been held to the head” of the government.

The SFO investigation began in 2004, when Robert Wardle, its director, studied evidence unearthed by the Guardian. This revealed that massive secret payments were going from BAE to Saudi Arabian princes, to promote arms deals.

Yesterday, anti-corruption campaigners began a legal action to overturn the decision to halt the case. They want the original investigation restarted, arguing the government had caved into blackmail.

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The judge said he was surprised the government had not tried to persuade the Saudis to withdraw their threats. He said: “If that happened in our jurisdiction [the UK], they would have been guilty of a criminal offence”. Counsel for the claimants said it would amount to perverting the course of justice.

Wardle told the court in a witness statement: “The idea of discontinuing the investigation went against my every instinct as a prosecutor. I wanted to see where the evidence led.”

But a paper trail set out in court showed that days after Bandar flew to London to lobby the government, Blair had written to the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, and the SFO was pressed to halt its investigation.

The case officer on the inquiry, Matthew Cowie, was described by the judge as “a complete hero” for standing up to pressure from BAE’s lawyers, who went behind his back and tried to secretly lobby the attorney general to step in at an early stage and halt the investigations.

The campaigners argued yesterday that when BAE failed at its first attempt to stop the case, it changed tactics. Having argued it should not be investigated in order to promote arms sales, it then recruited ministers and their Saudi associates to make the case that “national security” demanded the case be covered up.

Moses said that after BAE’s commercial arguments failed, “Lo and behold, the next thing there is a threat to national security!” Dinah Rose, counsel for the Corner House and the Campaign against the Arms Trade, said: “Yes, they start to think of a different way of putting it.” Moses responded: “That’s very unkind!”

Documents seen yesterday also show the SFO warned the attorney general that if he dropped the case, it was likely it would be taken up by the Swiss and the US. These predictions proved accurate.

Bandar’s payments were published in the Guardian and Switzerland subsequently launched a money-laundering inquiry into the Saudi arms deal. The US department of justice has launched its own investigation under the foreign corrupt practices act into the British money received in the US by Bandar while he was ambassador to Washington.

Prince Bandar yesterday did not contest a US court order preventing him from taking the proceeds of property sales out of the country. The order will stay in place until a lawsuit brought by a group of BAE shareholders is decided. The group alleges that BAE made £1bn of “illegal bribe payments” to Bandar while claiming to be a “highly ethical, law-abiding corporation”.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/15/bae.armstrade?CMP=share_btn_tw

UK have to pay over $62 billion to leave EU

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The UK will have to pay a bill of about $62 billion to trigger the start of Brexit process, Bloomberg reported quoting Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

The exact sum should remained to be “scientifically calculated”.

“I am everything but in a hostile mood with Britain. Britain is part of Europe, and I hope to have a friendly relationship with the UK over the next decades,” Juncker said.

Four Killed, Including Policeman And Suspect, In Westminster Terror Attack

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In Pictures: Terror Attack Outside British Parliament In London (click to enter gallery)

London police say at least four people were killed in a March 22 terrorist attack at the British Parliament — including a suspected attacker, a police officer stabbed by an assailant, and two people struck by the assailant’s vehicle when he rammed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge.

Police said they believe a lone assailant carried out attack, which left at least 20 others injured, but that they were continuing a counterterrorism investigation and had not ruled out the possibility that others may have been involved.

The attack began at 2:40 p.m. local time, when a man drove a car at a high speed across Westminster Bridge and rammed into a group of pedestrians — killing at least two people — before crashing the vehicle into a railing beside the Parliament and London’s iconic Big Ben clock-tower.

Police said the attacker then got out of the vehicle and ran inside the Parliament’s security perimeter through a vehicle entrance gate and fatally stabbed a police officer.

He was then shot by plainclothes police officers and died after being taken away for treatment.

The police officer who was stabbed died later in a hospital.

Hospital officials said several people who were struck by the assailant’s vehicle suffered “catastrophic” injuries.

One woman who fell from the bridge into the River Thames was pulled out alive by rescue workers, but was said to have suffered serious injuries.

French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve confirmed that three French school children, aged 15 to 16, were among those injured on Westminster Bridge.

Three London police officers were also among those struck by the vehicle on the bridge.

Westminster Bridge spans the River Thames and is used for vehicle and pedestrian traffic. It meets the Palace of Westminster compound near its northern end.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said she was safe after the attack.

She had been in the House of Commons at the time of the attack and was quickly shuttled away by security to her office at 10 Downing Street, where she called for an emergency security meeting at her Cabinet Office Briefing Room.

A full counterterrorism investigation was launched by London Metropolitan Police.