A quote from The Jerusalem Post, 23 January 2007

As many as 100,000 French and British citizens have converted to Islam over the last decade, according to a new book by an Israeli historian. [...] [Hebrew University Prof. Raphael Israeli] noted that about 30 million Muslims currently live in Europe, out of a total population of 380 million., adding that with a high Muslim birthrate in Europe, the number of Muslims living in the continent is likely to double within 25 years.

A quote from European Commissioner Margot Wallström in Der Spiegel, 19 January 2007

Communication in the EU has long been a one-way street. The Commission made laws first and informed the citizens afterwards. […] When I started my job [as Commissioner for Communications] two years ago, I decided very early against the superficial – let’s call it American – way: Make up a slogan, double the advertising budget and come up with a nice campaign. I prefer the more difficult path of actually changing structures. If you want a more democratic EU, communication has to be among its core tasks. There should be a legal foundation for it: Fifty years after the founding of the European project, communication belongs in the constitution.

A quote from European Commissioner Margot Wallström at EUobserver.com, 22 January 2007

[The EU] is a huge compromise machine that works on a weekly basis where ministers meet. Sometimes you have to take responsibility and more often you have to take the responsibility to explain why this compromise was a good thing for Europe and how this happened.

In London a Muslim policewoman refused to shake hands with Sir Ian Blair, head of the Metropolitan Police Service. She claimed it was against her religious beliefs. Three months ago another Muslim police officer, Alexander Basha, asked to be transferred to another section of the police so he would not have to guard the Israeli embassy in London.

On 16 January the Lithuanian Parliament, the Seimas, voted on a resolution demanding compensations from Moscow for the Soviet-Russian attack of 1991. On 13 January that year troops stormed the television tower in the capital Vilnius, while thousands of unarmed Lithuanians tried to defend the building, hand-in-hand. Thirteen people lost their lives, and hundreds were wounded.

A quote from James Harding in The Times, 19 January 2007

The Conservative Party’s Working Group on Responsible Business is likely to revive the debate about David Cameron’s [40] youthful use of illicit drugs. For it raises one question: what has he been smoking?

The paper proposes, for example, that the problem of obesity might be dealt with like the problem of climate change. Carbon emissions are a kind of environmental pollution; obesity, it says, is a type of “social pollution”. Given that emissions trading and quotas work for the environment (an unproven thesis, incidentally), why not introduce a scheme of alcohol quotas for the beverage industry and a set of “emissions limits” in fats, sugars and salts for food manufacturers in order to rein in the expanding national girth.

[...] [I]t is an idea that is both meddlesome and crunchy, as if dreamed up by a Norland Nanny in a tie-dyed T-shirt. The Conservative Party may well believe that it can score points in the polls by posing as a party that has shed its cosy relationship with business, but surely it can distinguish between areas of personal responsibility and the realms of corporate obligation.

While their country is bracing itself for ethnic violence the Dutch worry about mice. The Dutch Party for Animals (PvdD) has forbidden the laying of poison to eradicate mice in its parliamentary offices. The party, which campaigns for animal rights and compassionate farming, will only allow “humane traps” in the parliament wing where its offices are housed. The office space at the Dutch Parliament in The Hague is notorious for attracting mice. “As yet, I have not seen a single mouse here,” said the newly elected PvdD leader Marianne Thieme. “But should we ever have mice we would wish to combat them using traps that keep them alive.”

A quote from The Daily Telegraph, 18 January 2007

Segolene Royal, the doyenne of the French left, suffered an embarrassing blow to her image as a presidential candidate yesterday when she was accused of tax dodging. Faced with taunts about being a gauche caviar, the Gallic equivalent of a champagne socialist, she denied being rich, instead claiming that she was just “well-off.” Not only does she have part ownership in three impressive homes with her boyfriend, the Socialist Party chairman Francois Hollande, but the two have set up a real estate company to manage the properties. This has enabled them to reduce the amount that they pay in l’impot de solidarité sur la fortune, or ISF, a high tax imposed on anyone with assets of more than $985,000.

Yesterday and on Tuesday many of you may have attempted in vain to access this website -- the conservative voice of Europe. We are under constant attack by hackers but our webmaster is doing all he can to keep us online.

A quote from the EUobserver, 16 January 2007

The new president of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Poettering [a German Christian-Democrat] has promised to act as a “fair and objective” president of the whole assembly, indicating that despite his personal convictions, he would no longer press for a reference to God in any revised EU constitution.

[...] Following the vote, the German deputy said one of his key priorities would be to boost a “dialogue between cultures”, particularly between Christian and Muslim religions.