Lord Stirling's News Blog EUROPE

Russian generals said attacks by rebels, some US-backed, had increased sharply over the past 24 hours.

“After five days of the ceasefire, it has to be noted that only the Russian and Syrian sides have been fully implementing their commitments. On its own initiative, Russia prolonged the cessation of hostilities for 48 hours, and yesterday it was extended for another 72 hours,” senior Russian General Staff official, Viktor Poznikhir, said at a briefing in Moscow.

But, according to Poznikhir, it is very different on the American side as “the US and the so-called moderate groups under their control didn’t fulfill a single commitment undertaken in the framework of the Geneva arrangements.”

Germany is blowing up again over migration. The Saxon town of Bautzen has, like dozens of similar places across Germany, a barracks for some of the million or two Middle Eastern migrants who have been streaming across the Mediterranean for the past year-and-a-half. People in Bautzen aren’t used to foreigners, and now groups of young men have taken to congregating in city’s central square, the Kornmarkt. The migrants say they come there for the free internet. This upsets the locals, 80 of whom waged a pitched battle against 20 teenage migrants on Wednesday evening. Alcohol was involved on both sides. To judge from the video at FAZ.com, accounts differ on who is to blame. The Germans say that the young migrants (whom they refer to as UMAs, the German acronym for unaccompanied minors seeking asylum) are harassing women and smashing things. The UMAs, in turn, say the locals (whom they refer to as “Nazis”) accost them every day with shouts of “Foreigners out!”

The confrontations take place against the background of a more general society-wide anger in Germany. Last Saturday, Bautzen’s right-wingers and left-wingers confronted each other on the streets, rather as they did a century ago in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and Germany’s defeat in World War I. On Thursday night, following the fights, 350 people, most of them natives, were on the streets again. A cordon of police was required to separate the pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant sides—again, much as they once tried to separate the Communists and anti-Communists. More protests are planned for this weekend.

German anti-immigration party posed for new gains in Berlin election on Sunday ~ link ~ 
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling party could face new losses in local elections here Sunday from an upstart anti-immigration party that has grown in popularity as an opponent to the German leaders’ open-door policy for migrants.
In recent state elections, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has made enough gains to sow doubt over Merkel’s ability to win a fourth term in next year’s national elections.

German anti-immigrant AfD party leader set ablaze ~ link ~ 

Unidentified attackers set fire to the car of Frauke Petry, the leader of Germany’s anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, police said on Saturday.

An election analysis conducted in the Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project shows that the race has tightened considerably over the past few weeks, with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump projected to win Florida, an essential battleground state, if the election were held today.

News broke this week that Monsanto accepted a $66 billion takeover bid from Bayer. The new company would control more than 25 per cent of the global supply of commercial seeds and pesticides. Bayer’s crop chemicals business is the world’s second largest after Syngenta, and Monsanto is the leading commercial seeds business.

Monsanto held a 26 per cent market share of all seeds sold in 2011. Bayer (mainly a pharmaceuticals company) sells 17 per cent of the world’s total agrochemicals and also has a comparatively small seeds sector. If competition authorities pass the deal, the combined company would be the globe’s largest seller of both seeds and agrochemicals.