Strikes and demonstrations continue in France in protest for the planned reform of extending the retirement age from 60 to 62 years. And this is going on even though the government has already passed many of the changes proposed and it does not show signs of caving in. Read the rest of this entry »

Economic woes are many times followed by political upheaval with extremist parties becoming populist parties and holding the support of the citizens of the countries they represent. Such is unfortunately what seems to be happening in Europe these days. Read the rest of this entry »

This Thursday began in France with people bracing themselves for a day of chaos. Public transport, air traffic and schools across France were all set to be affected by the 24-hour shutdown. For the second time in the month unions were ready to strike against government plans to raise the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62 and to ensure full retirement benefits from 65 to 67 by the year 2018. Read the rest of this entry »

Europe is in the middle of a discord over how to handle unwanted immigrants. The country that began the controversy is France and the immigrants involved are the Roma community whose 12 million form the largest ethnic minority in the EU. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, the European Commission President Jose Manuell Barroso gave his first annual state of the union speech to the European parliament in Strasbourg. He told the members that in the last year the economic and financial crisis has been on of the greatest challenges ever in the Union Read the rest of this entry »

France has just taken a major step to ban the burqa from its territory. In a 335-to-one in favor the country’s National Assembly has voted against the women wearing a full face veil such as a burqa or niqab in public. Read the rest of this entry »

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a tragedy in more ways than one. Unfortunately, in our anger and impotence to solve it we have been too quick to find a culprit: BP, which contrary to what most people think -even President Obama made that mistake- does not stand for British Petroleum but for Beyond Petroleum. Read the rest of this entry »