the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

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The news are indicative of the growing gap among the EU members.
Leaders of the Visegrad Four countries of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic will skip a mini summit on migration this weekend, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday. Orban said such meetings should be organized by the European Council, the bloc’s top decision-making body, not the EU Commission. The Commission will organize the smaller summit ahead of a full EU summit due next week, Reuters said. Speaking in Budapest after a meeting of the Visegrad Four leaders, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the EU border agency Frontex should be strengthened and its forces beefed up substantially. Babis said he agreed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on this, and believed Frontex should be increased to 10,000 staff.
The latest years, Visegrad group countries have strengthened ties, as a result of the total failure and inability of the EU mechanisms to deal with the huge refu…

Despite a recent thaw in relations with Kim Jong-un, President Donald Trump is renewing US sanctions on North Korea for another year, justified by “an unusual and extraordinary” nuclear weapons threat.
“The actions and policies of the government of North Korea, including its pursuit of nuclear and missile programs; and other provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies… continue to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States,” read a White House statement on Friday.
After meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore earlier this month, Trump had promised to remove the sanctions “when we are sure that the nukes are no longer a factor.” The president added: “I look forward to taking them off.”
On his way home from the Singapore summit, Trump declared that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat to the US.
“There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” he tweeted. “Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very posit…

It almost sounds too insane to be believed, but Saudi Arabia’s move to further isolate neighboring Arab rival Qatar by literally turning it into an island is but the latest in an intense year long feud between the two countries that has already produced its fair share of bizarre headlines.

Tiny but ultra-wealthy Qatar is a peninsula which shares a 37.5 mile border (60km) with Saudi Arabia on the kingdom’s northeast side and juts out from the Arabian peninsula about 100 miles into the Persian Gulf.
Saudi media revealed this week the kingdom is quickly moving forward with ambitious plans to dig a 200 meter wide and 15-10 meter deep canal the entire length of the land border, effectively creating ‘Qatar island’ — as some Mideast news sources are already calling it.
Of course, the Qataris don’t appear to have a say in their own country’s geographic fate, and the Saudis and Emirates further plan to locate nuclear waste sites and a military base along the proposed canal to boot.
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Η προσεχής μίνι σύνοδος κορυφής για το προσφυγικό στην Ιταλία, όπου παραλίγο να απόσχει η ίδια η Ιταλία, δείχνει την οριακή κατάσταση των χειρισμών και τα αδιέξοδα της ευρωπαϊκής ηγεσίας. Οι παλλινωδίες της Ε.Ε. στη διαχείριση του προσφυγικού έχουν αλλάξει τον πολιτκό χάρτη με πλήθος ακροδεξιών κυβερνήσεων και όχημα την ξενοφοβική ρητορική.
Η Άνγκελα Μέρκελ, κλονισμένη εδώ και καιρό, επιχειρεί τώρα να επανακαθορίσει την πολιτική της Ε.Ε. με βάση τους εσωτερικούς της πολιτικούς συσχετισμούς, ενδίδοντας στο CSU, στο αδελφό κόμμα του Δεξιού συνασπισμού της, που την απειλεί με αποχώρηση από την κυβέρνηση και την κοινή κοινοβουλευτική τους ομάδα, αν δεν σκληρύνει την πολιτική της στο μεταναστευτικό και δεν επαναφέρει τον Κανονισμό του Δουβλίνου. Φυσικά δεν λείπουν από το τραπέζι τα οικονομικά ανταλλάγματα και τα παζάρια για ευνοϊκές λύσεις ώστε να πειστούν οι χώρες της πρώτης γραμμής, δηλαδή η Ελλάδα, η Ιταλία, η Μάλτα και η Ισπανία.

Φαινομενικά, αναζητείται αλληλεγγύη στη Μέρκελ απέναντι σ…

US sanctions have forced Russia to look at ways of securing its foreign reserves. In recent years, Moscow has increased purchases of physical gold and dramatically reduced its share of US debt bonds.
The political standoff started in 2014, shortly after the conflict in Ukraine and the referendum in Crimea in favor of joining Russia. Several rounds of US sanctions followed, with the latest affecting major Russian companies and individuals who run them.
In April, Russia sold half of its US sovereign debt bonds, getting rid of nearly $47 billion worth of securities, according to US Treasury data released last week. The sell-off is a signal that Russia’s financial regulators are diversifying the country’s foreign exchange reserves, say analysts at the Copenhagen-based Danske Bank.
Russia sold more than any other major foreign holder of US debt – even as its reserves grew on the back of rising oil prices. The country’s current stake shrank by nearly four times against the hefty holding of mor…

Omar Gomez Lucatero, an independent candidate who aspired to be the mayor of Aguililla in the state of Michoacan, was murdered next to the local cemetery, which is close to a military barracks. His death brings the number of politicians murdered to 120 since September 2017, since the official beginning of this latest electoral season, the most violent in the country's history.
The governor of Michoacan vowed to carry out detailed investigations to find the responsible people of Lucatero's murder.
According to local newspapers, Gomez was shot dead when exiting his home in Las Palomas community, located in a region called “Tierra Caliente.” The region is located between the states of Mexico, Guerrero and Michoacan, and has a high presence of criminal organizations of different sorts, including the Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Nueva Familia Michoacana cartels.
In a video uploaded to social media, the cousin of Gomez Lucatero says an armed group had arrived at the candidate's…

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As Julie Hyland, the assistant national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (UK), mentioned in her recent speech outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London:
It is shameful that Jeremy Corbyn has not made a public statement in Julian’s defence since he was elected party leader, almost three years ago. There is no question that if he used his considerable support to pledge Labour’s defence of Assange and WikiLeaks, there would be thousands here today and those plotting against him would have to think twice.
The next weeks are critical. We call on workers and youth in Britain and across the world to break this wall of silence by renewing the fight for Assange’s freedom as vital to the defence of free speech and a critical and independent media.
And she is right.
The new Ecuadorian administration under Lenín Moreno tightens noose around Julian Assange and now Ecuador methodically pushes him into the hands of the US empire.

In a parallel action for the support of Julian …