Signatures by 100,000 petitioners are needed in Switzerland for a referendum – including a possible one on banning the construction of minarets on mosques.

Deputies from the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and Federal Democratic Union (EDU), who are pushing for a vote, are confident they can collect the signatures by November 2008.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey voiced opposition this month, saying efforts to impose a ban were harmful to the country’s security interests and potentially dangerous to the Swiss themselves. Her spokesman confirmed she considered a referendum a bad idea.

Read More

The British Government will consider opting out of human rights legislation to crack down on terrorist suspects, the Home Secretary has said.

In the wake of three men going on the run after breaching control orders, John Reid said ministers may choose to suspend parts of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) so it can impose tougher control orders.

Read More

Girls of 12 were questioned about their sexual preferences by lottery-funded researchers, it has emerged.

Participants were encouraged to discuss their favourite sex acts and positions as part of a £242,000 study.

The initiative, financed by the Big Lottery Fund, was aimed at exploring young women’s attitudes to safe sex.

But the project has come under fire for involving girls up to four years below the legal age of consent.

Campaigners hit out at “crude” exercises which involved asking participants to create posters describing “What I do and don’t like about sex”.

They also questioned the use of National Lottery cash to fund the project, reigniting the row over the payment of grants to obscure or unpopular causes.

Read More

France has said it plans to offer incentives to more immigrants – especially those from Africa – to return home voluntarily.

New Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux said a family with two children would be paid 6,000 euros (£4,068) to return to their country.

In 2005-2006, a similar scheme was taken up by some 3,000 families.

France is home to about two million immigrants from north and sub-Saharan Africa, according to a 2004 census.

Read More

[I am sure Saddam would have been able to stamp out this drug situation-ed]

Farmers in southern Iraq have started to grow opium poppies in their fields for the first time, sparking fears that Iraq might become a serious drugs producer along the lines of Afghanistan.

Rice farmers along the Euphrates, to the west of the city of Diwaniya, south of Baghdad, have stopped cultivating rice, for which the area is famous, and are instead planting poppies, Iraqi sources familiar with the area have told The Independent.

The shift to opium cultivation is still in its early stages but there is little the Iraqi government can do about it because rival Shia militias and their surrogates in the security forces control Diwaniya and its neighbourhood. There have been bloody clashes between militiamen, police, Iraqi army and US forces in the city over the past two months.

The shift to opium production is taking place in the well-irrigated land west and south of Diwaniya around the towns of Ash Shamiyah, al Ghammas and Ash Shinafiyah. The farmers are said to be having problems in growing the poppies because of the intense heat and high humidity. It is too dangerous for foreign journalists to visit Diwaniya but the start of opium poppy cultivation is attested by two students from there and a source in Basra familiar with the Iraqi drugs trade.

Read More

A schoolgirl was murdered by a fast food shop owner who joked that she had been “chopped up” and had gone into the kebabs, a court heard today.

Charlene Downes, 14, was killed by Iyad Albattikhi, 29, owner of Funny Boyz fast food shop in Blackpool, who it is alleged had sex with the youngster he described as “kinky”, Preston Crown Court was told.

Charlene was one a number of young white girls who went to “Paki Alley” in the town to have sex with older men who worked in the fast food shops, Tim Holroyde QC, prosecuting, told the jury.

Charlene, from Buchanan Street in Blackpool, was “well and happy”, the court heard, but her home life was “chaotic”.

Expelled from school, she spent her time hanging around shops on the Blackpool Promenade, and was last seen on the early evening of Saturday November 1 2003.

Mr Holroyde told the jury a witness heard Albattikhi and others talking about Charlene.

“These people were talking about sex with white girls, and there was mention of having sex with Charlene.

“Albattikhi laughed and said she was kinky and she was very small – the plainest possible indication that he was lying to the police when he said he did not know her.

“He and others present were then laughingly saying that Charlene had gone into the kebabs.”

Albattikhi, a Jordanian immigrant, is charged with murder and his co-accused, his business partner and landlord Mohammed Reveshi, 50, originally from Iran, is accused of helping to dispose of the body.

Read More

David Duke comments: The latest U.S. Cenus studies show clearly the ethnic cleansing of European Americans taking place in the United States. Through massive immigration and differential birthrates, the younger generation of White people are now outnumbered by nonwhites their own age. In the 1960’s European Americans constituted over 90 percent of the Ameircan population, now we are at 66 percent and at this rate in a decade or two we will be a minority in the nation the our own people founded. All signers of the declaration of Independence were European Ameircans. The first immigration law created by the United States Government by the same creators of our Constitution limited immigration into the United States to European Christians. Now we are on the verge of being outnumbered and outvoted in our nation. The radical leftist politics of Jesse Jackson and La Raza Unita will be mainstream poltical power of America. To those European Americans reading this: If this is not the time to invest your lives, your fortune and your honor to our people’s heritage and freedom, when is the time? It is time to set aside every other consideration in your life and make the struggle for our freedom and even our very existence the top priority of your life. The time is now!

[I suspect this is more widespread than we ever realise-ed]

The alleged victim in a gang rape last year testified Friday that she didn’t report the incident at first because she didn’t want to be seen as a racist.

Three African-American 17- year-olds — Nicholas M. Smith and Dontre R. Woods, both of Lockport, and Dartaine M. Ubiles of Niagara Falls — are on trial in Niagara County Court, charged with raping the girl in Woods’ home. The girl is white.

Read More

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez are expected to join immigrant-rights protesters Thursday at a rally denouncing police behavior during a May 1 immigration rights rally.

The event begins at 5:30 p.m. with a town hall-style meeting at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, located at Wilshire Boulevard and Berendo Street, followed at 6 p.m. by a 10-block procession to MacArthur Park, where organizers will hold a candlelight vigil and a series of performances.

“The LAPD denied our community both a political and physical space to nonviolently claim our rights to legalization for all undocumented immigrants and a fair immigration reform for the country,” said the event’s organizer, Mexican American Political Association President Nativo Lopez. “Political leaders and organizations throughout the country stand solidly with us.”

Read More

European businesses caught employing illegal immigrants face jail sentences under new proposals from the European Commission to control immigration.

Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini also wants a five-fold increase in the number of spot checks on companies.

As much as 16% of Europe’s business is done off the books, Mr Frattini says.

It is estimated that there are 3-8m illegal immigrants in the EU, a figure increasing by up to 500,000 every year because of easy access to illegal work.

Read More