Austria police investigate Afghans over New Year's sexual assaults[Ynet] Austrian police are investigating six Afghan
The women reported that assailants had groped and tried to kiss them that evening as they stood in or near a crowded central square in the city of Innsbruck for a concert and fireworks display. Some women said they had been clasped by a man from behind while others groped their breasts and genitals.
Court backs Swiss that Muslim girls must attend swim class
[Ynet] Europe's court of human rights has rejected an appeal by a Turkish-born couple who were fined in Switzerland for keeping their daughters out of mixed-gender, mandatory public-school swimming lessons for reasons linked to their Muslim faith. The European Court of Human Rights decision upholds a Swiss federal court ruling that education officials had not violated the family's rights of freedom of conscience and religion in the case in Basel dating to 2008.
| That's eight years ago. No doubt the girls never took a single class, but at least other little boys and girls won't have that option. |
Aid agencies sound alarm over freezing Balkans weather as migrant deaths reported
[AlAhram] Dozens of migrants are at risk of freezing to death in Europe after heavy snowfall and bitterly cold temperatures hit Greece and the Balkans, aid agencies said on Wednesday. Central and southeastern Europe have been gripped by freezing weather and snowstorms for days, with night-time temperatures dropping below minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit) in some areas.
The Missing Migrants Project, set up by the U.N. migration agency (IOM), has recorded 11 migrants deaths in the Mediterranean since the start of the year, including four who died of hypothermia at Europe's land borders with Turkey. In the past 10 days a Somali woman was found dead from suspected hypothermia in Bulgaria and an Afghan man died in northern Greece, while last Friday two Iraqi men were found frozen to death near the Turkish-Bulgarian border, according to local media reports compiled by the project.
Some 800 boat migrants rescued during break in weather: Italian coast guard
[AlAhram] Some 800 migrants were plucked from flimsy rubber boats on Thursday, Italy's coast guard said, as Libya-based people smugglers took advantage of a window of good mid-winter weather to send them to sea. Italian coast guard vessel Diciotti and two ships run by humanitarian groups, the Aquarius and the Golfo Azzurro, went to the rescue of a total of six rubber boats in international waters off the coast of Libya, the coast guard said.
Mathilde Auvillain, a spokeswoman for SOS Mediterranee which co-runs the Aquarius, said they aided a small wooden boat carrying 26 people, mostly Nigerians, on Wednesday, while 123 were taken off a rubber dinghy on Thursday. After several days of rough seas, weather conditions improved on Wednesday evening and were expected to remain calm until Friday evening, she told Reuters by telephone. Among the 149 rescued by the Aquarius were people from Nigeria, Sudan, Guinea, and Bangladesh, Auvillain said.
"We are expecting another long year. There's no sign that things are going to improve. So far this winter we have had no rest. We have not gone a full week without a rescue."
Last year a record 181,000 boat migrants, mostly from Africa, reached Italy. The majority paid Libyan people traffickers to make the journey.
France restricts travel for minors over jihadi trip fears
[Ynet] France's government has quietly backtracked on a policy that allowed children to leave the country without their parents' permission, after years of complaints from families of radicalized teens who left to join extremist groups.
The new rules requiring parental permission go into effect Sunday, five years after the government lifted the restriction with little fanfare, citing a need to streamline bureaucracy.
At the time, the war in Syria was picking up and France became Europe's largest source of recruits in the war zone, notably for the Islamic State group. Families said they were blindsided when their teenage sons and daughters were allowed to pass through border control no questions asked and even leave Europe's passport-free zone for Turkey.