A quote from AsiaNews, 6 December 2007

Sharia will be enforced in the facility: patients and staff will be segregated on the basis of sex with female patients treated by veiled female doctors for men as well as halal medicines and food. The initiative is part of a renewed co-operation between Russia’s Muslim community and the Russian government. […]

A quote from Der Spiegel, 6 December 2007

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come out strongly against French President Nicolas Sarkozy's vision of a Mediterranean Union. […] The German chancellor used unusually harsh language to warn the French president against splitting the very core of the European Union with his vision of a Paris-led alternative union – one from which Germany would be excluded.

The verdict of Belgium’s last general elections – 179 days ago, on 10 June – was clear: the majority of the Belgians (i.e. the Dutch-speaking Flemings) wanted Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt’s coalition of Liberals and Socialists out. In Flanders, where 60% of the population lives, Verhofstadt’s leftist Liberal Party dropped from 24.7% of the vote to 20.1%. The Socialists did even worse and fell from 24.8% to 16.2%. In Wallonia, the French-speaking southern part of Belgium, however, the Liberals won and the Socialists lost, but the latter’s losses were made up by the gains of the Greens, another leftist party. While Flanders voted for the right – the Christian-Democrats and various Flemish-Nationalists – Wallonia voted for the leftist status-quo.

A quote from the European Parliament’s Socialist Group

In response to concerns about the rise in extreme right ideology and racist, anti-semitic and homophobic incidents in Europe, Socialist MEPs [Members of the European Parliament] have set up a taskforce to monitor activities and make sure that these issues are taken seriously on the European political agenda. The taskforce […] is planning a key debate on tackling the extreme right in the parliament's December sitting in Strasbourg. […]

A quote from The [London] Times, 5 December 2007

Britain breached the human rights of a murderer and his wife by refusing them access to IVF treatment, the European Court ruled yesterday. Kirk Dickson, 35, and his wife Lorraine [49] now have the right to start a family even though he is serving a life sentence. […]

A quote from Fjordman at Jihadwatch, 4 December 2007

President Bush declared a "war on terror" after the Jihadist attacks on the United States in 2001. Six years later, all he has achieved is bleeding American tax payers financially and American soldiers literally while overseeing the eradication of non-Muslim communities in Iraq. Now his administration supports independence for terrorist-sponsoring Muslims in the Balkans and in the Palestinian territories. Unless he does something very substantial in 2008, George W. Bush risks being remembered as one of the worst presidents in American history.

A quote from Gideon Rachman in The Financial Times, 3 December 2007

Europe seems intent on slicing itself up into ever smaller pieces. […] People tend to treat countries that split up a bit like married couples. It is a sad event. And it is true that a unilateral declaration of Kosovan independence could cause a new crisis in the Balkans. But if the formation of new countries can be achieved peacefully, it is usually a cause for celebration. This is the age of the small state.

A quote from the French judge, Jean de Maillard (Vice-president of the Superior Court of Orléans, and a professor at the Institute of Political Science in Paris), 28 November 2007 [here is an English translation]

When two schools, a library, a police station, a garage and several other buildings on a list already forgotten are set on fire, not to mention dozens of vehicles each day, we are used to it. It has become almost a routine.

However, the second night of Villiers-le-Bel marks an escalation that the media and the government would probably prefer to hush up, but which may be the start of a new stage: the use of firearms. In truth, the surprise is not that the rioters began to use them, but first, that they hadn't done it sooner [...] and second, that they are still confining themselves to hunting rifles and lead shot. The suburbs however have been armed for a long time with caches of quality war weapons, lethal weapons, against which the bullet-proof vests will be useless.

On Sunday evening Nov. 25 in Villiers-le-Bel, an immigrant suburb to the north of Paris, two youths steal a motorbike and go joyriding. They collide at high speed with a police vehicle that just happens to be passing by. The two youths die on the spot. Villiers-le-Bel is one of France's 751 "zones urbaines sensibles" (sensitive urban areas). These are no-go zones where radical Muslims hold sway. Almost 5 million people, or 8 percent of the French population, live in such zones. In May, Nicolas Sarkozy won the French presidential elections with the promise that he was going to reclaim them for the republic.

A quote from Christianity Today, 30 November 2007

A Finnish district court prosecutor today convicted a pastor with criminal discrimination for refusing to work with a female pastor. Two other church leaders were also fined for not preventing the violation.