The French rightwing presidential candidate François Fillon has apologised for hiring his wife as a parliamentary assistant, admitting he made an "error" but refusing to quit the race.

Marvellous. He apologises, while claiming it was all regular and above-board, and hammers the press for... doing their job.

Claims that Penny worked very hard for him... but secretly, it seems. She herself seems to have been unaware of her job.

What more could the left ask for?

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

• Marine Le Pen in the auditorium of the Cité International (capacity : 900)
  
• Macron at the Palais des Sports (8000 people)... we're still waiting for his programme
  
• Mélenchon way the hell out in the suburbs, at Eurexpo (12000 people) ... and another 6000 in Paris, who watched his hologram deliver the same speech. Gee wiz. The Gorafi's version : Mélenchon's hologram goes out of control and spreads terror in Paris

On foreign policy, Trump still speaking campaign language - AP

According to one U.S. official, national security aides have sought information about Polish incursions in Belarus, an eyebrow-raising request because little evidence of such activities appears to exist. Poland is among the Eastern European nations worried about Trump's friendlier tone on Russia.

By Justyna Pawlak and Andreas Rinke

WARSAW/BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Warsaw on Tuesday amid signs its conservative rulers are keen to repair the co-operation essential for European Union (EU) attempts to handle economic and political problems ahead.

Merkel needs the backing of Poland's government, wary of any increased powers for Brussels, to agree reforms in March, on the 60th anniversary of the founding Rome Treaty. The anniversary falls in the same month Britain plans to give notice of leaving.

Merkel will hold a rare meeting with Law and Justice party (PiS) leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who holds no government posts but is widely seen as the country's main decision-maker.

Thousands of supporters filled the streets outside a court in Barcelona on Monday as the former Catalan president Artur Mas went on trial.

Accused of serious civil disobedience over Catalonia's unofficial 2014 independence vote, Mr Mas said he took full responsibility for the "political initiative".

The vote went ahead despite an order from Spain's constitutional court.

Prosecutors are calling for him to be disqualified from office for 10 years.

Mr Mas, his deputy Joana Ortega, and Catalan former education minister Irene Rigau face accusations ranging from disobedience and perverting the course of justice to misuse of public funds.

DW: Mr. Bozkurt, your party colleague and Social Democrats (SPD) boss Thomas Oppermann wants refugees who are pulled out of the Mediterranean returned to North Africa as a way of stopping trafficking. What is wrong with this plan?

Aziz Bozkurt: This is, at the very least, legally questionable. It is a fundamental principal of international law not to send back those whose lives and freedom are in danger. Under international law, you can't pull people out of the Mediterranean and then return them to unstable countries. What Oppermann is suggesting is neither realistic nor doable, same as other Social Democrats have said. It has been suggested before and, like spoiled milk, the idea does not get better with time.

Oppermann said that refugees should receive "initial care in North Africa." That sounds like asylum requests can be reviewed there.

It is fine to find legal paths. However, we have to see which countries we're dealing with. Libya, for example, is more than unstable, as Foreign Minister [Sigmar] Gabriel said again today. Then there are countries like Morocco or Tunisia. Conditions there are basic, yet even there we cannot guarantee legal procedures will be carried out to our standards.

Bavarian state Premier Horst Seehofer played down differences between his Christian Social Union (CSU) and Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) as the two met in Munich on Sunday.

"Victory always comes where unity prevails," Seehofer said ahead of what German media billed as "peace talks" between the two conservative, center-right parties' leaders.

Merkel also stressed that there is much more that unites the two so-called "Union" parties than divides them. Both party leaders appeared to downplay disagreement over migrant policy - but the issue has not entirely fallen off the radar.

Leaving aside the practical conclusion for a moment, the analysis should be rejected. We should stop putting up with outdated social grading systems, developed purely for the non-social scientific purpose of flogging stuff to people, as proxies for class. Most C1 voters are not middle class professionals. When I worked in market research, the list of occupations ranked as C1 were mostly menial, low-skill, low-level, low-wage, but considered 'white collar' because you didn't have to get your hands dirty. Call centre workers, the epitome of the exploited, precarious worker in this day and age, are C1. Most of the so-called middle class professionals in the Labour base who backed Remain will just be workers. And that means that the working class was split -- a split that was partly right-left and partly regional.

This isn't just a wonkish detail: polling results and their representation play a critical part in the cultural battles of our age, which attempts to reduce the working class to one of its sectors (those workers stuck in the most declining, provincial, isolated parts of the country, and those who tend to skew to the political right), while overstating the size and relative progressiveness of the middle class. This leads to the kinds of toxic politics wherein some middle class progressives, with a tragedian sniff, accept the need to go along with racist, anti-immigrant politics to keep the poor white workers on board.

The government has seen off an attempt to add conditions to its Brexit bill as a Conservative rebellion was avoided.

MPs rejected a bid by Labour's Chris Leslie to force the government to consult Parliament on the deal struck with the EU before it is finalised.

It came after ministers pledged that a "meaningful" vote would be offered.

Labour and some Tories had pushed for MPs to have a decisive say on the final terms, but the 326 to 293 vote meant the bill remained unchanged.

Seven Conservatives rebelled, while six Labour MPs voted with the government.

When Dutch populist Geert Wilders promises to stop Islam and make the Netherlands great again, his message finds a ready audience in the country's newest city of Almere.

"It's too easy for people to come here," says Joost, a 60-year-old market trader. "Too many guys from Turkey and Morocco, economic migrants. I have three small children, what kind of world will they grow up in?"

Dutch voters go to the polls on 15 March and Mr Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) may win most seats.

Almere means "all lake", which it was until the 1960s. Then it became a concrete conurbation with affordable homes for people leaving Amsterdam. For several years it has been Geert Wilders territory.

Immigrants now make up about 30% of the population and that ethnic diversity is reflected at the market, where you can find steaming bowls of spicy Surinamese brown beans and headscarves displayed in rainbow fashion.

The Scottish Parliament has voted by 90 to 34 to oppose the UK government starting the Brexit process.

The Supreme Court ruled last month that there was no legal need for Holyrood to give its consent to the triggering of Article 50.

But First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would let MSPs have a say, despite it being largely symbolic.

Ms Sturgeon predicted the vote would be one of the most significant in the Scottish Parliament since devolution.

Dominique de Villepin became famous as French foreign minister for refusing to support the US-led war in Iraq in 2003. He gives us his point of view on how Europe should deal with Donald Trump, Russia and the migrant crisis.

Faced with the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump, the former French foreign minister believes "it's important to be united as Europeans and to take the lead". Villepin adds that the election of Trump is "both a challenge and an opportunity" to "show that Europe is useful".

Villepin argues that sanctions on Russia have not worked and says Europe should now aim for dialogue with Moscow. "We should try to find common ground with Russia", he told FRANCE 24.

Villepin also takes aim at the EU, criticising the decision to encourage Libya to limit the number of migrants leaving its shores for Europe. He says the EU should step up security at its own borders instead of "trying to rely on other countries to take responsibility for us", which he calls "crazy".

The internet continues to get worse. More and more of the best-looking stuff is video only, no transcript. UGH! I refuse to watch internet video. I hate this trend so much.

A Hamburg court has delivered its verdict on German comedian and television presenter Jan Böhmermann on Friday, nearly a year after his satirical poem criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan upset the leader in Ankara and led to a diplomatic row. A ban on the re-publication of the most offensive passages will remain in place.

An initial French police investigation has found insufficient evidence to support allegations that a 22-year-old man was anally raped with a police truncheon, a police source said Thursday, suggesting they believe the officer's baton slipped up the man's anus by accident. ...

A video of the scene shows a policeman "applying a truncheon blow horizontally across the buttocks with a truncheon" and Theo's trousers "slipped down on their own", a police source said.

Investigators said they had taken into account "the questioning of the victim and the (police officers), eyewitness accounts and CCTV recordings" and had concluded that "there are insufficient elements to show that this was a rape".

However, an investigating magistrate has charged one of the police officers with rape and is still examining the case.

Police said Wednesday night was quieter after several nights of car burnings in Aulnay-sous-Bois where the February 2 incident involving Theo took place, but 28 people were detained in neighbouring Parisian suburbs for "throwing objects, lighting fires and violence". ...

Since its historic success in December 2015's general election the party has had to deal with growing internal tensions, with leader Pablo Iglesias and his deputy Íñigo Errejón clashing over the party's future direction.

For months these differences have played out in the national media but this weekend they will take party-political form at Podemos's second national congress. The stakes are high: members will not only vote for a new national executive but also between competing strategy documents and on a new organizational model. Adding to this is Iglesias's promise to resign as leader if his electoral list loses.

At the core of this dispute between the Pablistas and Errejonistas is the question of how Podemos, a party that traces its origins back to the indignados movement, should approach its new role as a force in the country's political institutions. The divisions are particularly pointed on the subject of relations with the center-left Socialist Party (PSOE).

Errejón prioritizes "constructive" engagement in the hope of reaching out to a wider range of voters than their young, urban base. He views the party's failure to achieve a sorpasso of PSOE in the second elections last June as proof that the idea of Podemos as an "iconoclastic party," railing against the establishment, has reached its limit.

The German winners sing the third verse, while some unidentified (American?) singer sings the first verse. The Americans subsequently apologized for this "mistake"

European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi said on Monday that financial regulations implemented since the 2007-08 global financial crisis have underpinned stability, and any effort to relax the rules was "very worrisome."

Speaking before the European Parliament's Committee on Economic Affairs in Brussels, Draghi called President Trump's plan to review and likely unwind US banking regulation as "the last thing we need."

"The fact that we are not seeing the development of significant financial stability risk is the reward of the action that legislators and regulators and supervisors have been undertaking since the crisis erupted," Draghi noted.

A new research paper from economists including Thomas Piketty finds that the bottom 50%'s share of income in the United States is "collapsing."

The paper, written by Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, studies global inequality dynamics. And while there are rising top income and wealth shares in nearly all countries, the magnitude varies substantially.

In the U.S., between 1978 and 2015, the income share of the bottom 50% fell to 12% from 20%. Total real income for that group fell 1% during that time period.

By Steve Holland

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Monday accused the news media of ignoring attacks by Islamist militants in Europe.

Trump, who has made defeating Islamic State a core goal of his presidency, did not specify which attacks were going unreported, which news media organizations were ignoring them, or offer any details to support his claims.

"All over Europe, it's happening. It's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported," he told a group of about 300 U.S. troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.

"And, in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that," he added, without saying what those reasons were.

Shares in upmarket US jeweller Tiffany lost some of their lustre on Monday, after the abrupt departure of its chief executive sparked uncertainty following a disappointing holiday season.

[...]

The tepid performance during the key shopping season was driven by a 4 per cent fall in like-for-like revenues in the Americas, its biggest market. Tiffany attributed the weakness to lower consumer spending and a 14 per cent drop in sales at its flagship store on New York's Fifth Avenue.

The store sits directly next to Trump Tower and was subject to intense security measures when Donald Trump used the building as his main office during his transition to the White House.

After a tumultuous and chaotic two weeks of the Trump presidency, we are now seeing a new raft of counter-intuitive articles ranging from 'Does Trump Even Want to Succeed as President?' to 'How Trump Has Everyone Just Where He Wants Them and Is Kicking Ass.' We should all bear in mind that while generally unpopular, Trump has extremely high levels of approval among Republican voters and continues to maintain near lockstep allegiance from congressional Republicans. But on Trump, in trying to figure out what and how he's doing, we should keep it simple. Because at this point we know Trump quite well.

Melania Trump has refiled a $150m (£120m) lawsuit against the corporation that publishes the Daily Mail's website for reporting rumours that she worked as a high-end escort in the 1990s.

She certainly doesn't seem worried about getting a good press in the UK...  the Fail seemed such a good fit for the Trumps.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

US President Donald Trump is standing by his claim the media has failed to adequately cover some terror attacks in America and across the globe, including the Sydney Lindt Cafe siege and four other Australian incidents.

Mr Trump, speaking to reporters on Tuesday while meeting with the National Sheriffs' Association at the White House, said he understood "the total dishonesty of the media better than anybody and I let people know".

"I have to know because I am reported on possibly more than anybody in the world," Mr Trump said.

The president raised eyebrows on Monday when he told US military members at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida terror attacks were happening all over Europe and "it's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported and, in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it".

"They have their reasons and you understand that," Mr Trump said.

After Mr Trump's claim, the White House released a list of 78 terror attacks to support it, but most of the incidents - including the San Bernardino, Orlando nightclub, Paris, Brussels airport - were extensively covered by the media.

This sort of fits my thinking on the strategy by the snakepeople behind Trump to keep media occupied with the kind of nonsense Trump regularly spews. This clearly wasn't planned, they ran with it anyway. Of course, another option to entertain is that it's all bluster all the way down - and in that case media is playing along nicely.

Donald Trump should be referred to the federal ethics office for his tweet attacking department store Nordstrom for dropping his daughter's clothing line, a Democratic senator has suggested.

Bob Casey pointed the US Office of Government Ethics towards Trump's message in a tweet, which read: "My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person -- always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!" Trump's message was later retweeted from the official presidential account, @potus.

Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, also criticized the president. "I think it's inappropriate, but he's a totally inappropriate president, so it's totally in keeping with who he is," she said.

Trump's comments came after Nordstrom announced last week that it would stop carrying Ivanka's label due to poor sales.

Betsy DeVos Orders Immediate Flattening Of All School Globes

The Huffington Post  02/08/2017

James Schlarmann

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Upon hearing of her extremely narrow Senate confirmation, newly confirmed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued an order that all globes being used in any American school are to be "flattened like God made it just 6,000 years ago."

DeVos was confirmed in the Senate 51-50, with the deciding vote being cast by Vice President, and 2015 winner of the "Lantern-Jawed Bigot of the Year Award" from Christofascists Weekly, Mike Pence. When Pence broke the tie, it was the first time since 2008 that a Senate vote had to be broken in such a way. Perhaps most notably, this was the first time in our nation's 240-year history that a cabinet member had to be confirmed in such a way.

"Sure, I was literally dragged across the finish line by Vice President Pence," DeVos said in an email to the DOE staffers directing the globe flattening edict, "but elections have consequences. Apparently so does giving hundreds of millions of dollars to campaigns." Ms. DeVos' order says she plans on putting the "pro back in quid pro quo."

"I'm going to make sure I leverage this opportunity the right way, like a professional grifter should," DeVos' email says, "and that means I'll be putting the pro back in quid pro quo, that's for darn sure."

Flattening globes in classrooms all across the country will help in "a myriad of ways," DeVos said. "Jobs will be created, firstly," DeVos said, "when we hire the flattening teams. Also, our children will be finally seeing the world how our one, true, American Christian God -- all rights reserved, trademark Trump Presidency, Inc. -- meant it to be when he created it all, literally every single, living and non-living thing, in six days."

Previewing some other plans she has for the Department of Education, Ms. DeVos told reporters she was "extremely pleased" that the millions of dollars given to Republican candidates over the years was "money well spent."

"It's like when you go to the store and you pick out the perfect Bible," DeVos said, "and you know it'll make the best science textbook ever. That's how it feels, knowing it was money well spent giving shit loads of cash to Republicans for decades. We're extremely pleased in this family right now. We got the best government position our money could by. Just like the Constitution says it should work!"

Reached for comment, Delores Umbridge told the media that she was "quite proud" of her friend Betsy. Umbridge said that DeVos taught her everything she knows about "being a boot-licking tool of a vile, dark force" and she had every confidence DeVos would "absolutely nail it."

P.S.  It's satire.  Could you guess?

They tried to assimilate me. They failed.

Federal appeals court refuses to reinstate Trump travel ban

SUDHIN THANAWALA,   Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal appeals court refused Thursday to reinstate President Donald Trump's ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations, unanimously rejecting the administration's claim of presidential authority and questioning its motives.

The three judges of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the argument that the ban targets Muslims raised "serious allegations" and presented "significant constitutional questions," and they agreed that courts could consider statements by Trump and his advisers about wishing to enact such a ban.

Moments after the ruling, Trump tweeted, "SEE YOU IN COURT," adding that "THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!"

There you go, kids.  If The Tyrant's SCOTUS nominee gets stalled, they will try to pull off a 9/11 ... count on it!

They tried to assimilate me. They failed.

 President Donald Trump quickly responded to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that slapped down his controversial travel ban.

After the unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel on Thursday, Trump reemphasized accusations that the ruling was biased. "It's a political decision and we're going to see them in court ... the security of our country is at stake," he said to NBC News.

Hillary Clinton, Trump's former Democratic rival, offered a short note, tweeting "3-0," referring to the 9th Circuit judges' unanimous ruling:

For the first time, US investigators say they have corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent, multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials tell CNN. As CNN first reported, then-President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the existence of the dossier prior to Trump's inauguration.

None of the newly learned information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier. Rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The dossier details about a dozen conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals. Sources would not confirm which specific conversations were intercepted or the content of those discussions due to the classified nature of US intelligence collection programs.

But the intercepts do confirm that some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier, according to the officials. CNN has not confirmed whether any content relates to then-candidate Trump.

WASHINGTON -- President Trump told President Xi Jinping of China on Thursday evening that the United States would honor the "One China" policy, reversing his earlier expressions of doubt about the longtime diplomatic understanding and removing a major source of tension between the United States and China since shortly after he was elected.

Going by the chatter around Mr Trump (see Briefing), the script for Russia looks something like this: America would team up with Mr Putin to destroy "radical Islamic terror"--and in particular, Islamic State (IS). At the same time Russia might agree to abandon its collaboration with Iran, an old enemy for America in the Middle East and a threat to its allies, including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. In Europe Russia would stop fomenting conflict in Ukraine, agree not to harass NATO members on its doorstep and, possibly, enter nuclear-arms-control talks. In the longer term, closer ties with Russia could also help curb Chinese expansion. Stephen Bannon, Mr Trump's most alarming adviser, said last year that he had "no doubt" that "we're going to war in the South China Sea in five to ten years." If so, America will need allies, and Russia is a nuclear power with a 4,200km (2,600-mile) border with China. What's not to like?

Pretty much everything. Russian hacking may have helped Mr Trump at the polls, but that does not mean he can trust Mr Putin. The Kremlin's interests and America's are worlds apart.

Business
Vattenfall's vehicle fleet to go green

Swedish utility Vattenfall has announced it will replace all its vehicles by electric cars over the next five years. The company noted the measure was required to become "climate-neutral" by 2050.
Vattenfall Brunsbüttel logo (picture-alliance/dpa)   

Vattenfall said Monday it aimed to make its entire vehicle fleet electric by replacing 3,500 passenger and light commercial cars over the next five years.

The company said it would be an important step toward its ambition to be climate-neutral by 2050.

"We already help our customers drive electric by supplying charging points," the firm said in a statement on its website. "With the decision to switch our own fleet, we do not only contribute to reducing CO2 emissions in Europe, but we also want to set an example for other companies."

Bottlenecks

Starting in January 2017, Vattenfall will gradually switch its fleet, with 1,700 cars in Sweden, 1,100 cars in Germany and 750 vehicles in the Netherlands to be replaced. The types of vehicle vary from passenger cars to technical support vehicles and maintenance vans.

Iceland knows how to stop teen substance abuse but the rest of the world isn't listening | Mosaic

State funding was increased for organised sport, music, art, dance and other clubs, to give kids alternative ways to feel part of a group, and to feel good, rather than through using alcohol and drugs, and kids from low-income families received help to take part. In Reykjavik, for instance, where more than a third of the country's population lives, a Leisure Card gives families 35,000 krona (£250) per year per child to pay for recreational activities.

Crucially, the surveys have continued. Each year, almost every child in Iceland completes one. This means up-to-date, reliable data is always available.

Between 1997 and 2012, the percentage of kids aged 15 and 16 who reported often or almost always spending time with their parents on weekdays doubled - from 23 per cent to 46 per cent - and the percentage who participated in organised sports at least four times a week increased from 24 per cent to 42 per cent. Meanwhile, cigarette smoking, drinking and cannabis use in this age group plummeted.

If you read the whole article, I think the most interesting thing is the continous measuring and adaptation to increase resuts. It is also interesting how they have exported the model on a local authority to local authority level, largely bypassing the states.

Boris Johnson has renounced his US citizenship, ending years of ambiguous loyalties and probably ridding himself of a hefty tax bill.

A list released by the US Treasury department showed the UK foreign secretary was one of 5,411 individuals to renounce his American citizenship in 2016.

Johnson was born in New York when his parents worked there, but has not lived there since he was five years old. His decision does not appear to be an attempt to distance himself from the politics of Donald Trump, but may instead be a move to ensure he is out of reach of America's Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

In 2014 he publicly said that the US was trying to hit him for tax on the sale of his home in Islington, north London, something he said he regarded as "absolutely outrageous", although he later reportedly paid the demand. The US tax authorities have been mounting a campaign to crack down on the earnings of dual nationals.