Golden Dawn's Christos Pappas: "We Tear Up This Law"

On June 25th, the Syriza-led government passed in principle this traitorous bill. In affect on paper the illegal immigrants will be considered just as ‘Greek’ as any Greek, including those in the Diaspora. The traitorous bill was passed with 172 votes with support from Syriza, PASOK and Potami. The Popular Association - Golden Dawn - will fight this unlawful act with every legal mean available.

More states seeing Confederate statues defaced

BALTIMORE - Confederate statues in South Carolina, Maryland and Texas were discovered defaced this week with the words "Black Lives Matter."

The discoveries come just days someone vandalized a Confederate monument less than 2 miles from the racially-inspired mass shooting in Charleston, S.C.

In that case, a Confederate monument near the Emanuel A.M.E. Church was also spray-painted with the phrase "Black Lives Matter," as well as the message "This is the problem. #RACIST."

CBS affiliate WCSC in Charleston reports that a second Confederate monument was discovered defaced on Tuesday.

 Symbols of the Confederacy, especially the Rebel Battle Flag, have come under renewed criticism following last week's shooting by a white man at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine people.

In Baltimore, the same words were done in yellow paint over an etched message on a statue that was erected by the Maryland Daughters of the Confederacy in February 1903, The Baltimore Sun reports.

Those who live, work and study in the area had mixed reactions to the message being written on the statue, which is across the street from the campus of Maryland Institute College of Art. This statue is one of several such statues devoted to the Confederacy in the city.

In Texas, Austin American-Statesman reporter Ralph Haurwitz tweeted that several statues on the University of Texas at Austin's campus had been defaced in a similar way.

The "Black Lives Matter" movement, which sprung up in the wake of the several killings of black men by white police officers, has not formally taken responsibility for the vandalism.

Pro-White Surges in Croatia as EU Disappointment Spreads

It was one of the biggest nights in Croatia's sporting calendar: a European Championship soccer qualifying match with Italy. Seconds after kick-off in a game beamed around the world, a gigantic swastika materialized on the pitch under the shocked gaze of European soccer officials.

The swastika, sprayed by an unknown vandal with a chemical that became visible only when floodlights went on to start the game, has become the most potent symbol of a rise in ultra-nationalist sentiment that appears to be bleeding into the mainstream population in the European Union's newest member state.

But it's not the only one. In the mixed ethnic towns of eastern Croatia, road signs in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet have been destroyed and Serbian Orthodox churches have been vandalized with a "U'' symbol representing the Nazi-linked World War II Ustasha regime. On weekends, Ustasha chants echo at sports venues and rock concerts.

At an event last month in southern Austria, Croatian ultranationalist Ivica Safaric proudly brandished the "U'' Ustasha symbol on a medallion around his neck. His companions in black shirts raised their right arms high in a Nazi salute, shouting out a dreaded battle call "For the homeland — Ready!" used by wartime Croatian fascist troops.

"I respect the Ustasha movement because it created the independent state of Croatia," said Safaric, who fought for Croatia's independence in the 1990s.

The gathering in Bleiburg was a memorial to tens of thousands of pro-Nazi soldiers, their families, children and civilians killed by communist guerrillas at the end of the war in 1945.

Commemorations for the Bleiburg massacre victims are held every year in May, but last month's gathering was by far the largest ever, with an estimated 40,000 people participating. It happened as much of Europe marked the 70th anniversary of liberation from the Nazis, and the pro-Nazi imagery at Bleiburg was met by muted response from Croatia's politicians.

Grabar-Kitarovic endorsed the Bleiburg commemorations and honored the victims just days ahead of the main event, but did not go there when the crowds gathered. She also paid an informal visit to the site of an Ustasha-run death camp in Jasenovac, but did not attend official commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the camp's liberation.

Minority Serbs, who fought against Croatia's independence during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, have been under increasing pressure by the nationalists. Croatian war veterans campaigning under the slogan "100 percent Croatia" — implying an ethnically pure state — have demanded that Serbs stop using the Cyrillic alphabet in Croatia, although their right to do so is guaranteed by the country's laws.

Alarmed by the surge, thousands of gay activists and their liberal supporters marched in Croatia's capital Zagreb last weekend under the slogan: "Louder and More Courageous: Antifascism Without Compromise."

"We chose the slogan because we don't like where Croatia is heading," said Marko Jurcic, one of the march organizers. "We don't want a 100 percent pure Croatia, we want a diverse Croatia."

Yisrael Beytenu MK Sharon Gal: IDF Should Kill Passengers of Flotilla

“We need to wake up and take care of these phenomena with an iron fist.”

MK Sharon Gal (Yisrael Beytenu) accuses Arab passenger of Freedom Flotilla III of joining the "terrorist flotilla" because he is "extremist and hates Israel."

The Jerusalem Post on Sunday evening that he would join a protest ship headed for Gaza this week and that the activists have no violent intentions.

“If the IDF wants to kill, then shoot!” the Balad Party/Joint List MK said.

Ghattas said that the Marianne av Göteborg trawler would likely depart from Athens in the next day or two and that he does not expect any violence, as “we activists decided not to resist violently.” Three or four other ships have plans to join the Gaza “flotilla,” but only the Marianne av Göteborg is currently approaching Israel.

The trawler set off from Sweden at the end of May and docked at Palermo in Sicily earlier this month. The crew brought with them a solar panel and medical equipment.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said on Sunday that the Foreign Ministry is working around the clock through all possible diplomatic channels to ensure that the ship does not reach Israel’s territorial waters.

The participation of Ghattas in the flotilla is a case of “serving the enemy with parliamentary immunity,” she said.

Contrary to the picture the Palestinians are trying to paint, Israel allows humanitarian aid, food and construction supplies into the Gaza Strip, Hotovely said.

“Flotillas like the one making its way to Israel are the handiwork of provocateurs who only want to make Israel look bad,” she said.

“The IDF will not allow any vessel to reach Gaza and to cross the maritime border of the State of Israel,” an IDF spokesman said. “Up to date intelligence exists on everything that takes place on the marine front.”

The flotilla is expected to arrive and mainly cause provocation. The navy intends to treat the ships just as it would any vessel that tries to enter Israel’s territorial waters without authorization.

Ghattas said the flotilla is legal.

Asked if violence could break out if the IDF intercepted the Marianne av Göteborg, he replied, “If the IDF wants to kill, then shoot, but we will not shoot or have any weapons whatsoever of any kind or any violent intention.”

If the ship is not hampered, it should take four days to arrive to the Gaza Strip.

“I know the IDF might stop us,” however, “our intention is to get as close as possible to Gaza,” he added.

Asked about the flood of criticism he is receiving from other MKs, Ghattas responded that this is expected and that he has no intention to respond to his critics.

“The only question that should be asked,” he said, is why no other MK, especially a non-Arab MK, “is joining me on this flotilla.”

Ghattas went on to argue that repeating wars in Gaza every few years is not a solution.

He wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Sunday saying that he would be joining the Gaza-bound flotilla and that there is “no reason” to prevent it from reaching its destination.

“I will be on deck together with many participants including dozens of members of parliament and public figures from around the world,” Ghattas wrote in the letter.

The “Flotilla of Peace” seeks to break the siege of Gaza and turn the world’s attention to the 1.8 million Palestinians who are living in “prison conditions,” he continued.

Israel is imposing collective punishment on the Palestinians, which is “a flagrant violation of humanitarian law,” he claimed.

“There is no reason to prevent us from reaching Gaza and delivering the aid we will be carrying,” Ghattas said, adding that the prime minister should order the security forces to “stay away” and allow the ships to reach Gaza.

He warned that any action to take over the vessel would “complicate Israel with another international crisis.”

Jerusalem has made clear in the past that there are numerous channels to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza, and these types of flotillas are meant solely as provocations.

The Zionist Union said: “Just as the flotilla to Gaza is not humanitarian, rather it is a political act to legitimize the Hamas regime and bring terrorism to Israel, so too MK Ghattas’s participation is unfortunate and not humanitarian, but political and will bring conflict and quarrels within Israel.”

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman said, “Ghattas’s planned participation in the flotilla is further proof that the Joint List is one big terrorist vessel, which is only meant to harm the State of Israel and use Israeli democracy to try to destroy it.”

MK Sharon Gal (Yisrael Beytenu) said that Ghattas is joining the “terrorist flotilla” because he is an “extremist and hates Israel.”

“The time has come to learn that our policy of containment is understood by our enemies as weakness, whether they have an Israeli ID card and live here or if they are part of terrorist organizations and live in the Palestinian Authority’s territory,” Gal said.

“We need to wake up and take care of these phenomena with an iron fist.”

Gal called the Joint List a fifth column, pointing out that Ghattas has called for boycotts of Israel.

Lasers, magnetism allow glimpses of the human brain at work

connectome

The jagged, multicolored images depicted what was going on in the two researchers' heads — two brains in conversation, carrying out an intricate dance of internal activity. This is no parlor trick. The brain-tracking technology at work is just a small part of the quest to answer abiding questions about the workings of a three-pound chunk of fatty tissue with the consistency of cold porridge.

How does this collection of nearly 100 billion densely packed nerve cells, acting through circuits with maybe 100 trillion connections, let us think, feel, act and perceive our world? How does this complex machine go wrong and make people depressed, or delusional, or demented? What can be done about that?

While the brain at rest is not completely understood, "everyone is jumping into this now," Bandettini said. It holds promise for mapping out which parts of the brain work with which others to perform key tasks, he said.

The emphasis in brain mapping these days is not so much about finding particular places that do particular tasks, but rather delineating the circuitry that lets the brain operate.

"No region works in isolation. It's all being communicated across networks," Mather said.

Communication flows along an estimated 150,000 miles of nerve fibers in the average brain. Individual fibers are too fine to see in brain-scanning machines, but they form bundles that can be detected as they cross the deep central portion of the brain.

Those bundles are one focus of researchers who are mapping out the brain's "connectome," the complex web of these connections between areas of gray matter, where thinking takes place.

"Any one patch of gray matter in the brain is literally communicating with hundreds of other distant locations, in ways that actually are very different from how modern computer circuits are wired," says David Van Essen of Washington University.

While computers use their lightning speed to crunch numbers, the brain's "squishy hardware," works with far slower internal communication, he said.

"We're able to do analyses and make inferences in ways that still way outperform computers, because the wiring is different and in some ways just incredibly clever. But we don't understand the rules, the strategies in sufficient detail."

The connectome effort is still in its early phases, he said. But it has already gained one unusual distinction: A colorful scientific depiction of brain connections made the cover of an album by the band Muse.

Vladimir Putin versus a vast conspiracy

Putin and his people seem far outside the realm of the conventional and see themselves as warriors of light in a world suffocated by a Western conspiracy

In a recent Washington Post column, Sergei Guriev, one of Russia’s top economic thinkers, warned that President Vladimir Putin’s regime was now exclusively focused on survival, and not on a vision for the country’s long-term development. “The Russian regime no longer talks about the future,” he wrote.

I suspect he’s wrong about that. More likely, it’s Guriev, in exile and now teaching economics at SciencesPo in Paris, who can’t take seriously Russia’s vision of the world because it seems so irrational to a Western intellectual. To understand this mindset, consider what happened when the Economist published its forecast for 2015, which featured a densely populated illustration on its cover.

Conspiracy theorists had a field day. The Vigilant Citizen website, which is devoted to ferreting out Illuminati and other occult symbols it says are hidden in plain sight, published a detailed analysis that was reposted on like-minded sites in a variety of languages. That was in January. This week, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russia’s most popular tabloid published its own analysis of the Economist cover. It used an “expert,” Igor Belous, from an obscure group called Institute of Scientific Research for the Third Millennium, to dissect the illustration. Among other things, he wrote that the presence of the US magician David Blaine behind Putin’s right shoulder was “a transparent hint that Russia should expect more ‘magic tricks’ like the story of the shot-down Boeing ... It’s not for nothing that a helicopter bearing the inscription ‘crop-o-dust’ is circling in front of Putin.” The Rothschilds also figure prominently in Belous’s text.

Komsomolskaya Pravda isn’t an official Kremlin publication, nor is it a habitual publisher of alien abduction stories. Putin takes it, and its huge readership, seriously: Before the 2012 presidential election, he used it to publish an article outlining his social policy.

The publication’s dip into paranoia [i.e., reality] reflects widespread views in Russia. Last autumn, a poll showed that 45 percent of Russians believe in the existence of a supranational government. That group supposedly includes wealthy individuals and Western politicians. When news came out that Guriev would be the only Russian invited to this year’s Bilderberg conference, the popular pro-Putin news site Lenta.ru featured the headline “Sergei Guriev joins the ‘global government.’”

Ivan Ilyin, a Russian philosopher Putin likes to quote, was also a firm believer in mirovaya zakulisa, or a “global behind-the-scenes establishment.” In his 1950 work “What the Dismemberment of Russia Promises the World,” Ilyin wrote:

“Let us immediately establish that the dismemberment of Russia being prepared by the mirovaya zakulisa has not the slightest foundation, no spiritual or Realpolitik-related considerations behind it apart from revolutionary demagoguery, a mindless fear of a united Russia and an age-old hatred of the Russian monarchy and Eastern Orthodox religion.”

Protecting Russia’s unity is, of course, one of Putin’s recurrent themes. It’s an issue that resonates: According to a Levada Center poll, 28 percent or Russians, more than ever before, now believe that a foreign conspiracy destroyed the Soviet Union.

In line with this worldview, Russia’s role in the world is to resist the “global government’s” conspiracy. Its future, as Putin and his ideologists see it, consists in achieving a kind of reverse isolation of the West. While Western governments see themselves on the inside and Russia on the outside, a rogue dictatorship, Putin and his entourage are working on turning this image inside out. Putin recentlycalled the G-7 a “hobby club” and said he preferred working “in broader formats” such as the G-20. Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, put it even more succinctly in a tweet last month: “The West keeps saying: ‘The whole world condemns Russia.’ But the 30 to 35 countries of the Western alliance shouldn’t equate themselves with the whole world.”

The other part of Putin’s vision for the future is rearmament, both military—hence his recent promise to add 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles this year and to aim them “at those territories from which we are threatened”—and spiritual. In an article in the daily Izvestia on Wednesday, culture minister Vladimir Medinsky wrote: “If the government doesn’t feed and create its own culture, someone else will feed and create it. And then we’ll end up feeding someone else’s army.”

It’s understandable that none of this makes sense to a rational economist such as Guriev. Putin and his people are now far outside the realm of the conventional. They see themselves as warriors of light in a world suffocated by a Western conspiracy. To them, there is far more at stake than just the regime’s survival. That’s what makes them dangerous.

Putin: Russian Pipeline Project to Help Greece Pay Its Debt

"We are starting a new era in Greek-Russian relations and we consider you who live here to be playing a very important part in this effort," Tsipras said.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Russian President Vladimir Putin said after Friday's talks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that a prospective Russian natural gas pipeline should help Greece service its debt, but the Kremlin said the question of direct Russian financial aid to Greece was not discussed.

Speaking of the pipeline deal at a meeting with top executives of global news agencies, including The Associated Press, which began nearly three hours behind schedule at around midnight, Putin said he saw no support for the Greeks from the EU.

"If EU wants Greece to pay its debts it should be interested in growing the Greek economy ... helping it pay its debts," he said. "The EU should be applauding us. What's wrong with creating jobs in Greece?"

Greece is struggling to reach a deal with its creditors for new loans that it needs to avoid defaulting on debt payments at the end of the month. Without the bailout, Greece could be headed for bankruptcy or an exit from the 19-nation eurozone.

Tsipras' visit gave rise to speculation that the Greeks may be seeking Russian loans — and ahead of the talks, Putin's spokesman said Russia would consider a loan if the Greeks asked for one.

"We would do this because they are our partners and this is a normal practice between countries who are partners," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told The Associated Press.

But when Tsipras met with Putin at the sidelines of a major economic forum in St.Petersburg, the possibility of a loan wasn't discussed, Peskov told journalists. Instead, they spoke about "the necessity of developing investment cooperation."

Russia and Greece signed a deal Friday to build an extension of a prospective gas pipeline that would carry Russian gas to Europe through Turkey. Russia promised Greece hundreds of millions of dollars in transit payments yearly if it agreed to build the pipeline. Construction of the pipeline is expected to start next year and be completed in 2019.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Russia and Greece would be equal partners in the project, with Russia's half owned by the state bank VEB.

The talks were held after both leaders addressed investors and Russian government officials at Russia's biggest annual economic forum.

Putin said little about Greece, although he slipped in a joke about its predicament.

"When Mr. Tsipras spoke, he said the problem of Greece was not a Greek problem but a European one. Well, that's right. If you owe someone a lot, then it is already not your problem but the problem of the one you owe — and that's an absolutely correct approach," Putin said.

Tsipras said his country strove to be a "bridge of cooperation" with "traditional friends like Russia" and others.

"As you all know, we are now in the middle of a great storm," the Greek leader said. "But we are a seafaring nation that knows how to navigate through storms and is not afraid of heading to new seas and reaching new harbors."

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich also had said Russia would consider a loan to Greece.

"The most important things for us are investment projects and trade with Greece. If financial support is needed, we will consider this question," he said in an interview on RT television.

Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said during a forum session that Russia has no plans to buy Greek bonds, but is ready support the Greek economy by stimulating investment by Russian companies. He pointed to the gas pipeline as an example.

Tsipras started his day by speaking to Russians of Greek ancestry at a memorial to Ioannis Kapodistrias, the founder of the modern Greek state who lived and worked in Russia as a Greek envoy from 1809 to 1822.

"We are starting a new era in Greek-Russian relations and we consider you who live here to be playing a very important part in this effort," Tsipras said.

"Greece has been waging a brave fight in these past few weeks and months. You are well aware of these types of difficulties and you are now standing on your feet," he added. "This is the key characteristic of the Greek people, to be able to overcome difficulties when right is on their side."

75 Percent of Animal Species to be Wiped Out in ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’

From rhinos to tigers to elephants, three out of four "familiar" animal species – those commonly thought of and well understood by human beings – will be extinguished within three human lifetimes, a new study finds, confirming that Earth is in the midst of what’s become known as the “sixth mass extinction” driven by runaway development, shrinking animal habitats and climate change.

“Scientists never like to say anything for sure, but this is close as we’re ever going to get to saying, ‘We’re certain that this is a huge problem,’” says study coauthor Anthony Barnosky, a paleontologist at the University of California-Berkeley, calling the problem “quite dire.”

The hundreds of species eliminated in the past century alone would otherwise have lasted at least another 800 to 10,000 years, the study found. Coral reefs “are in danger of annihilation” as soon as 2070, Barnosky says, potentially erasing a quarter of the ocean’s species. 

The last mass extinction occurred 66 million years ago with the end of the dinosaurs. This is the only one, however, where a single species is responsible for the destruction of all the others. And by eliminating biodiversity, it threatens to disrupt the pollination, water purification, food chain and other "ecosystem services" that humanity's "beautiful, fascinating and culturally important living companions" provide, the study says – threatening human life itself.

“You can kind of think of it as guns and bullets,” Barnosky says. “The guns are different in each case, but the bullets that come out – changing climate, increased CO2 and other gases in the atmosphere, ocean acidification – those things that contribute to mass extinction are the things that we’re doing today.”

Previous studies had established the world is in the midst of a mass extinction, with animals disappearing at far faster rates than expected. The term even made the title of New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert’s 2014 bestseller, “The Sixth Extinction.”  There is no way to know just how many species there are on earth – roughly 1.3 million animals have been described since 1758. A study last September, however, found the number of wild animals had likely been halved in just the past 40 years.

But this latest effort is by far the most conservative: a study aimed at debunking any possible rebuttal that its findings are “alarmist.”

Barnosky and his team, hailing from Florida and Mexico as well as California, doubled the pace that species were expected to go extinct without any human interference, then used the lowest possible estimate for the number of species that actually were disappearing.

The results, even as an underestimate, proved just as dire.

Since 1900, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish died 72 times faster than “normal,” this most conservative estimate found. Whereas researchers might have expected nine veterbrates to go extinct, instead 468 were wiped from the Earth.

Industrialization was especially lethal, with extermination rapidly accelerating from 1800 on.

“The most iconic bird species historically are gone – the ivory-billed woodpecker, passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet, great auk, imperial woodpecker,” says study coauthor Paul Ehrlich, professor and president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. “But there are many others less-well known – the gorgeous orange-bellied and golden-shouldered parrots of Australia, many large raptors, and likely many penguins – as climate disruption takes hold.”

The study was released one day after Pope Francis issued the Vatican’s first-ever encyclical on the environment and climate change, a 184-page letter urging Catholics and “all humanity” to respect nature, rein-in development and address global warming. It also comes six months ahead of a U.N. climate summit in Paris, where President Barack Obama and other world leaders reportedly hope nearly 200 nations will agree to reduce their carbon emissions.

Francis emphasized the need for swift action, a theme echoed by the research team.

“It really is possible to fix these big problems if people put their minds to it,” Barnosky says. “We’re at a stage now where people are becoming aware of the problem, and as people become aware we can move the needle toward making progress.”

That includes switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, producing food more efficiently and limiting population growth. But no matter what actions are taken, there will inevitably be a cost, experts say.

“We’re not only in the midst of a sixth major extinction, we’re moving further and further into it,” says Bruce Stein, senior director of climate adaptation and resilience at the National Wildlife Foundation. “It’s clear that we are going to lose a lot of things, but it’s also clear that we have the ability to ensure that many of our systems will be different but will continue to have ecological functionality and continue to support many of these species.”

Israel PM compares boycott campaign with Nazi Germany

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that a Palestinian-led campaign to boycott Israeli goods was reminiscent of Nazi Germany's campaign against Jews.

Meeting with visiting Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna, Netanyahu raised the issue of "the defamation of the Jewish people" on Polish soil when the Nazis controlled much of Europe.

"The attacks on the Jews were always preceded by the slander of the Jews. What was done to the Jewish people then is being done to the Jewish state now," Netanyahu said.

The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign aims to put political and economic pressure on Israel over its occupation of the Palestinian territories, in a bid to repeat the success of the efforts that ended apartheid in South Africa.

The campaign has been garnering huge attention in Israel, especially following a row with French telecoms giant Orange that saw its CEO travel to Jerusalem to insist the company did not support a boycott.

Netanyahu's government has launched a major diplomatic and media counter-offensive, repeatedly accusing the campaign's backers of seeking the destruction of Israel.

The incredible map that reveals our place in the universe - and it's about to get a lot bigger

• Earlier this year, scientists revealed the Milky Way's position in an enormous supercluster of galaxies
• Huge supercluster stretches 500 million light years across and has the mass of a hundred quadrillion suns 
• Milky Way is on fringes of cosmic web, which has been named Laniakea - meaning 'immeasurable heaven' 
• The team is now mapping out an even greater concentration of galaxies, known as the Shapley Supercluster

Dr Brent Tully made headlines earlier this year when he unveiled a road map of the universe with pathways between the Milky Way and 100,000 other far away galaxies.

Now the University of Hawaii professor is hoping to map out an even greater concentration of galaxies, known as the Shapley Supercluster, to help us better understand our place in the universe. 

It's a massive task. The Shapley Concentration is so huge that it is pulling our home supercluster, including us, toward the constellation Centaurus in the southern sky.

'I don't think the story is going to be close to well understood until our maps are encompassing the whole domain around the Shapley Concentration,' Tully told Discover magazine.

The project would involve maps stretching to over a billion light-years.

'It's a huge job, but doable on a time-scale of decades,' said the University of Hawaii professor.

The Shapley Supercluster was discovered in the 1930s by American astronomer Harlow Shapley, as a remarkable concentration of galaxies in the Centaurus constellation.

Boasting more than 8,000 galaxies and with a total mass more than ten million billion times the mass of the sun, it is the most massive structure within a distance of about a billion light-years from our Milky Way Galaxy. 

The hot gas pervading galaxy clusters shines brightly in X-rays, but it is also visible at microwave wavelengths, which Planck sees as a distinctive signature in the Cosmic Microwave Background – the afterglow of the Big Seed. 

The new work follows the identification by Dr Tully of the full extent of Earth’s home supercluster of 100 thousand galaxies. The team named this Laniakea - Hawaiian for 'immeasurable heaven'.

The astonishing discovery revealed that the Milky Way - home to Earth and our solar system - is on the fringes of the enormous cosmic web.

Dr Tully led the team of scientists that mapped Laniakea's boundaries from measurements of the velocities of local galaxies.

The researchers compared the galactic movement with that of water in a landscape of hills and valleys, tracing the outer surface of a region where the net-motion of galaxies was inward.

They wrote in the journal Nature: 'We define a supercluster to be the volume within such a surface, and so we are defining the extent of our home supercluster, which we call Laniakea.' 

The vast road map may look as though it is densely packed, however there are vast expanses of darkness where nothing can be found for hundreds of light years. 

Our supercluster is the first to be mapped and shows galaxies strung out along glowing pathways that are held together by gravity as the groups make their way through space. 

Scientists have long-known that galaxies are not distributed randomly but congregate together in clusters. When these clusters meet in the cosmos, they create giant superclusters, like Laniakea. 

To put the sheer size of the supercluster into context, the Earth is the third planet from our sun, which is one of just billions of stars within the Milky Way. Other than being our home, our galaxy is nothing special and is one of around 100,000 within our supercluster.

And even though the collection of bright galaxies is incomprehensibly large, it makes up just a corner of the observable universe. 

Within Laniakea, galaxies flow inwards towards a region called the Great Attractor, the equivalent of a large gravitational valley.

Around our supercluster are four others - they include Shapley, along with Hercules, Coma and Perseus-Pisces - however it is difficult to show exactly where our neighbourhood of galaxies ends and the others begin.

Astronomers Report Finding Earliest Stars That Enriched Cosmos

Astronomers said on Wednesday that they had discovered a lost generation of monster stars that ushered light into the universe after the Big Seed and that jump-started the creation of the elements needed for planets and life before disappearing forever.

Modern-day stars like our sun have a healthy mix of heavy elements, known as metals, but in the afterbirth of the Big Seed only hydrogen, helium and small traces of lithium were available to make the first stars.

Such stars could have been hundreds or thousands of times as massive as the sun, according to calculations, burning brightly and dying quickly, only 200 million years after the universe began. Their burstings would have seeded into space the elements that started the chain of thermonuclear reactions by which subsequent generations of stars have gradually enriched the cosmos with elements like oxygen, carbon and iron.

Spotting the older stars in action is one of the prime missions of the James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched by NASA in 2018. The discovery of such stars “would be wonderful,” James Peebles, a Princeton professor and one of the fathers of modern cosmology, said recently.

Now, in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, an international crew of astronomers led by David Sobral of the University of Lisbon, in Portugal, and the Leiden Observatory, in the Netherlands, said they had spotted the signature of these first-generation stars in a recently discovered galaxy that existed when the universe was only about 800 million years old. Its light has been traveling to us for 12.9 billion years, while succeeding generations of stars have worked their magic to make the universe interesting.

The galaxy, known as CR7, is three times as luminous as any previously found from that time, the authors said. Within it is a bright blue cloud that seems to contain only hydrogen and helium.

In an email, Dr. Sobral called this the first direct evidence of the stars “that ultimately allowed us all to be here by fabricating heavy elements and changing the composition of the universe.”

In a statement from the European Southern Observatory, he said, “It doesn’t really get any more exciting than this.”

"Europe of Nations and Freedoms": Le Pen's FN to form pro-White group in EU parliament

France's anti-EU National Front (FN) said the new grouping of European pro-White parties, named "Europe of Nations and Freedoms," would be officially introduced Tuesday at a press conference in Brussels.

European deputies from the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), Italy's Northern League and Flemish nationalist group Vlaams Belang are expected to join FN in the parliamentary alliance.

PVV leader Geert Wilders confirmed the initiative on Twitter. "The formation of a group in the European Parliament has succeeded! Great news and an historic moment," he wrote, posting a photograph of himself clinking champagne glasses with FN party leader Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen's FN said in a statement forming such a political grouping would give them extra funding, staffing and weight within the EU assembly. To be officially recognized in the parliament, the group must include at least 25 MEPs from at least seven EU nations.

Euroskeptic and right-wing parties came out out top in the European Parliament elections in May 2014. In France, FN garnered more votes than any other party, and since then Le Pen has been attempting - without success - to form a parliamentary grouping.

FN sources told AFP late Monday that last-minute negotiations were still underway to ensure the requirements for forming a group could be met.

"We were five and it's been possible to add two other nationalities to form a group," FN vice-president Florian Philippot told Reuters, without giving more details.

Britain's UK Independence Party (UKIP) and its leader Nigel Farage have already formed a rival right-wing, anti-immigration alliance in the European Parliament called the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group.

Martin Helme of the Estonian Conservative People's Party tells it like it is

WHITE INDEPENDENCE!

Sarkozy commits blood libel against Gentiles

Sarkozy said that humanity owes a debt to the Jewish people for their persecution over the centuries, which culminated in the Holocaust. “The silence of the nations while the crimes were committed is a blemish on the conscience of humanity,” he said. “We all failed and have a debt toward the Jewish people, and it continues to exist.” He said that the “only way to do something about it” is to always ensure the security of the Jewish people.

A Crisis at the Edge of Physics

Do physicists need empirical evidence to confirm their theories?

You may think that the answer is an obvious yes, experimental confirmation being the very heart of science. But a growing controversy at the frontiers of physics and cosmology suggests that the situation is not so simple.

A few months ago in the journal Nature, two leading researchers, George Ellis and Joseph Silk, published a controversial piece called “Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics.” They criticized a newfound willingness among some scientists to explicitly set aside the need for experimental confirmation of today’s most ambitious cosmic theories — so long as those theories are “sufficiently elegant and explanatory.” Despite working at the cutting edge of knowledge, such scientists are, for Professors Ellis and Silk, “breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical.”

Whether or not you agree with them, the professors have identified a mounting concern in fundamental physics: Today, our most ambitious science can seem at odds with the empirical methodology that has historically given the field its credibility.

Implicit in such a maneuver is a philosophical question: How are we to determine whether a theory is true if it cannot be validated experimentally? Should we abandon it just because, at a given level of technological capacity, empirical support might be impossible? If not, how long should we wait for such experimental machinery before moving on: ten years? Fifty years? Centuries?

Consider, likewise, the cutting-edge theory in physics that suggests that our universe is just one universe in a profusion of separate universes that make up the so-called multiverse. This theory could help solve some deep scientific conundrums about our own universe (such as the so-called fine-tuning problem), but at considerable cost: Namely, the additional universes of the multiverse would lie beyond our powers of observation and could never be directly investigated. Multiverse advocates argue nonetheless that we should keep exploring the idea — and search for indirect evidence of other universes.

The opposing camp, in response, has its own questions. If a theory successfully explains what we can detect but does so by positing entities that we can’t detect (like other universes or the hyperdimensional superstrings of string theory) then what is the status of these posited entities? Should we consider them as real as the verified particles of the standard model? How are scientific claims about them any different from any other untestable — but useful — explanations of reality?

Recall the epicycles, the imaginary circles that Ptolemy used and formalized around A.D. 150 to describe the motions of planets. Although Ptolemy had no evidence for their existence, epicycles successfully explained what the ancients could see in the night sky, so they were accepted as real. But they were eventually shown to be a fiction, more than 1,500 years later. Are superstrings and the multiverse, painstakingly theorized by hundreds of brilliant scientists, anything more than modern-day epicycles?

Just a few days ago, scientists restarted investigations with the Large Hadron Collider, after a two-year hiatus. Upgrades have made it even more powerful, and physicists are eager to explore the properties of the Higgs particle in greater detail. If the upgraded collider does discover supersymmetric particles, it will be an astonishing triumph of modern physics. But if nothing is found, our next steps may prove to be difficult and controversial, challenging not just how we do science but what it means to do science at all.

Pope backs sainthood candidacy of Leon Dehon

Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis raised eyebrows on Friday by supporting the candidacy for sainthood of a French priest whose dossier was put on hold in 2005 because of his alleged anti-Semitic views.

Leon Dehon (1843-1925), founder of the Priests of the Sacred Heart order, had been declared venerable in 1997 by pope John Paul II but his beatification -- the next step on the path to sainthood -- ran into difficulties.

It had been initially scheduled for April 2005 but was delayed by John Paul II's death. Attempts to revive his case stalled under Francis's predecessor Benedict XVI, who set up a commission to investigate the allegations of anti-Semitism.

But Francis told a Priests of the Sacred Heart delegation on Friday that he wanted the beatification process to "end well" and insisted Dehon's attitude be placed in a historic context, according to religious news agency I.Media.

"It's a hermeneutic problem... We must study a historic situation with the hermeneutic of the time rather than of today," he said.

In his 1898 "Social Catechism", Dehon wrote that Jews "have maintained their hatred of Christ and... willingly favor all the enemies of the Church."

According to French newspaper reports from 2005, he described the Talmud as the "manual of the bandit, corruptor, social destroyer" and anti-Semitism as a "sign of hope".

Top ZOG-U.S. General Affirms Support for Israel

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accepted a goy-treat from his Zionist overlord and reiturated the American military’s absolute subordination to Israel.

TEL AVIV — The Obama administration on Tuesday ramped up efforts to ease Israel’s opposition to a possible nuclear deal with Iran, as the top American military leader assured Israeli officials that the United States would further strengthen Israel’s arsenal of arms, warplanes and cybertechnology.

Israeli military officials pressed Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to expand the long-term maintenance of Israel’s “qualitative military edge” over regional adversaries to include not just better weaponry but also more weaponry and training for what could be a larger Israeli defense force.

The request reflected increased anxiety in Israel not only over an international nuclear pact with Iran, but also over increased American supplies of arms to Arab countries. While these countries mistrust Iran, historically they also have been adversaries of Israel.

Even before meeting with General Dempsey on Tuesday, Defense Minister Moshi Yaalon of Israel expressed concern that Washington’s efforts to supply advanced arms to reassure Arab allies worried about Iran could eventually give Israel cause for concern.

“Even if there are not now any hostile designs against us, as we know in the Middle East, intentions are liable to change,” Mr. Yaalon said at a security conference. “The capability will without a doubt be there, and this must be prepared for.”

For Israel, that preparation is taking the form of asking the Obama administration for more of everything, from arms to training to cybertechnology.

“Israel wants to make sure that we’re not just helping them on the qualitative side,” General Dempsey told reporters traveling with him after his meetings. “It’s the notion that size matters.”

Military officials said that no specific new commitments were made but that the Pentagon would continue to work with Israel to expand its military.

General Dempsey said that Israel did not want just to “overmatch” Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates qualitatively. “They want to overmatch them in size as well,” he said.

At the moment, assurance of additional military aid is about the only thing that Israel is getting from the United States. Relations between the two countries have been increasingly tense, as President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remain at odds over an Iran nuclear agreement and over what the White House views as Israeli intransigence on the issue of Palestinian statehood.

Mr. Obama last week reiterated a warning to Israel that Mr. Netanyahu’s election campaigning against a Palestinian state earlier this year may mean that the United States may agree to passage of resolutions in the United Nations that are anathema to Israel. One likely possibility raised by White House officials would be a resolution embodying the principles of a two-state solution that would include Israel’s 1967 borders, with mutually agreed swaps of territory with the future Palestine.

“If, in fact, there’s no prospect of an actual peace process,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2, “then it becomes more difficult to argue with those who are concerned about settlement construction, those who are concerned about the current situation. It’s more difficult for me to say to them, ‘Be patient and wait.’”

The president said that nonetheless, his commitment to Israeli security would remain, and General Dempsey’s visit was in many ways meant to reinforce that.

Israel is already helped by a law enacted by Congress in 2008 requiring that arms sales allow Israel to maintain a “qualitative military edge” in the region. All sales to the Middle East are evaluated based on how they will affect Israeli military superiority. But the Obama administration has also viewed improving the militaries of the Gulf Arab states — those that see Iran as a threat in the region — as critical to Israeli security.

General Dempsey’s trip is the second trip by a high-ranking American official to reassure Israel in the past week. Last week, John O. Brennan, the Central Intelligence Agency director, visited for meetings with Mr. Netanyahu and other officials.

General Dempsey said he had pointed out to Israeli Defense officials that Israel was way ahead of the Gulf Arabs in the race to receive the F-35 fighter jet, considered the jewel of America’s future arsenal.

The plane, one of the world’s most expensive weapons projects, has not been marketed to Arab allies of the United States. “I reminded my counterparts that they are on the path to have the joint strike fighter where others in the region are not,” General Dempsey said, using another term for the F-35.

Sarkozy in Israel: 'boycott makes no sense'

Sarkozy said that humanity owes a debt to the Jewish people for their persecution over the centuries, which culminated in the Holocaust. “The silence of the nations while the crimes were committed is a blemish on the conscience of humanity,” he said. “We all failed and have a debt toward the Jewish people, and it continues to exist.” He said that the “only way to do something about it” is to always ensure the security of the Jewish people.

*********************

But why exactly is it that a 'boycott makes no sense'?

Sarkozy doesn't say.

SARKOZY'S JEWISH ROOTS

France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, lost 57 members of his family to the Nazis and comes from a long line of Jewish and Zionist leaders and heroes, writes RAANAN ELIAZ (AUSTRALIAN JEWISH NEWS)

In an interview Nicolas Sarkozy gave in 2004, he expressed an extraordinary understanding of the plight of the Jewish people for a home: “Should I remind you the visceral attachment of every Jew to Israel, as a second mother homeland? There is nothing outrageous about it. Every Jew carries within him a fear passed down through generations, and he knows that if one day he will not feel safe in his country, there will always be a place that would welcome him. And this is Israel.” 

Sarkozy’s sympathy and understanding is most probably a product of his upbringing it is well known that Sarkozy’s mother was born to the Mallah family, one of the oldest Jewish families of Salonika, Greece. 

Additionally, many may be surprised to learn that his yet-to-be-revealed family history involves a true and fascinating story of leadership, heroism and survival. 

It remains to be seen whether his personal history will affect his foreign policy and France’s role in the Middle East conflict.

In the 15th century, the Mallah family (in Hebrew: messenger or angel) escaped the Spanish Inquisition to Provence, France and moved about one hundred years later to Salonika. 

In Greece, several family members became prominent Zionist leaders, active in the local and national political, economic, social and cultural life. 

To this day many Mallahs are still active Zionists around the world.

Sarkozy’s grandfather, Aron Mallah, nicknamed Benkio, was born in 1890. 

Beniko’s uncle Moshe was a well-known Rabbi and a devoted Zionist who, in 1898 published and edited “El Avenir”, the leading paper of the Zionist national movement in Greece at the time. 

His cousin, Asher, was a Senator in the Greek Senate and in 1912 he helped guarantee the establishment of the Technion – the elite technological university in Haifa, Israel. 

In 1919 he was elected as the first President of the Zionist Federation of Greece and he headed the Zionist Council for several years. In the 1930’s he helped Jews flee to Israel, to which he himself immigrated in 1934. 

Another of Beniko’s cousins, Peppo Mallah, was a philanthropist for Jewish causes who served in the Greek Parliament, and in 1920 he was offered, but declined, the position of Greece’s Minister of Finance. After the establishment of the State of Israel he became the country’s first diplomatic envoy to Greece.

In 1917 a great fire destroyed parts of Salonika and damaged the family estate. 

Many Jewish-owned properties, including the Mallah’s, were expropriated by the Greek government. Jewish population emigrated from Greece and much of the Mallah family left Salonika to France, America and Israel. 

Sarkozy’s grandfather, Beniko, immigrated to France with his mother. When in France Beniko converted to Catholicism and changed his name to Benedict in order to marry a French Christian girl named Adèle Bouvier.

Adèle and Benedict had two daughters, Susanne and Andrée. Although Benedict integrated fully into French society, he remained close to his Jewish family, origin and culture. 

Knowing he was still considered Jewish by blood, during World War II he and his family hid in Marcillac la Croisille in the Corrèze region, western France.

Scientists See Ripples of a Particle-Separating Wave In Primordial Plasma

Key sign of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and evidence for a long-debated quantum phenomenon

Scientists in the STAR collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a particle accelerator exploring nuclear physics and the building blocks of matter at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, have new evidence for what’s called a “chiral magnetic wave” rippling through the soup of quark-gluon plasma created in RHIC’s energetic particle smashups. 

The presence of this wave is one of the consequences scientists were expecting to observe in the quark-gluon plasma—a state of matter that existed in the early universe when quarks and gluons, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, were free before becoming inextricably bound within those larger particles. The tentative discovery, if confirmed, would provide additional evidence that RHIC’s collisions of energetic gold ions recreate nucleus-size blobs of the fiery plasma thousands of times each second. It would also provide circumstantial evidence in support of a separate, long-debated quantum phenomenon required for the wave’s existence. The findings are described in a paper that will be highlighted as an Editors' Suggestion in Physical Review Letters.

To try to understand these results, let’s take a look deep within the plasma to a seemingly surreal world where magnetic fields separate left- and right-“handed” particles, setting up waves that have differing effects on how negatively and positively charged particles flow.

“What we measure in our detector is the tendency of negatively charged particles to come out of the collisions around the ‘equator’ of the fireball, while positively charged particles are pushed to the poles,” said STAR collaborator Hongwei Ke, a postdoctoral fellow at Brookhaven. But the reasons for this differential flow, he explained, begin when the gold ions collide. 

The ions are gold atoms stripped of their electrons, leaving 79 positively charged protons in a naked nucleus. When these ions smash into one another even slightly off center, the whole mix of charged matter starts to swirl. That swirling positive charge sets up a powerful magnetic field perpendicular to the circulating mass of matter, Ke explained. Picture a spinning sphere with north and south poles. 

Within that swirling mass, there are huge numbers of subatomic particles, including quarks and gluons at the early stage, and other particles at a later stage, created by the energy deposited in the collision zone. Many of those particles also spin as they move through the magnetic field. The direction of their spin relative to their direction of motion is a property called chirality, or handedness; a particle moving away from you spinning clockwise would be right-handed, while one spinning counterclockwise would be left-handed. 

According to Gang Wang, a STAR collaborator from the University of California at Los Angeles, if the numbers of particles and antiparticles are different, the magnetic field will affect these left- and right-handed particles differently, causing them to separate along the axis of the magnetic field according to their “chiral charge.” 

“This ‘chiral separation’ acts like a seed that, in turn, causes particles with different charges to separate,” Gang said. “That triggers even more chiral separation, and more charge separation, and so on—with the two effects building on one another like a wave, hence the name ‘chiral magnetic wave.’ In the end, what you see is that these two effects together will push more negative particles into the equator and the positive particles to the poles.”

To look for this effect, the STAR scientists measured the collective motion of certain positively and negatively charged particles produced in RHIC collisions. They found that the collective elliptic flow of the negatively charged particles—their tendency to flow out along the equator—was enhanced, while the elliptic flow of the positive particles was suppressed, resulting in a higher abundance of positive particles at the poles. Importantly, the difference in elliptic flow between positive and negative particles increased with the net charge density produced in RHIC collisions.

According to the STAR publication, this is exactly what is expected from calculations using the theory predicting the existence of the chiral magnetic wave. The authors note that the results hold out for all energies at which a quark-gluon plasma is believed to be created at RHIC, and that, so far, no other model can explain them.

The finding, says Aihong Tang, a STAR physicist from Brookhaven Lab, has a few important implications.

“First, seeing evidence for the chiral magnetic wave means the elements required to create the wave must also exist in the quark-gluon plasma. One of these is the chiral magnetic effect—the quantum physics phenomenon that causes the electric charge separation along the axis of the magnetic field—which has been a hotly debated topic in physics. Evidence of the wave is evidence that the chiral magnetic effect also exists.” Tang said.

The chiral magnetic effect is also related to another intriguing observation at RHIC of more-localized charge separation within the quark-gluon plasma. So this new evidence of the wave provides circumstantial support for those earlier findings.

Finally, Tang pointed out that the process resulting in propagation of the chiral magnetic wave requires that “chiral symmetry”—the independent identities of left- and right-handed particles—be “restored.” 

“In the ‘ground state’ of quantum chromodynamics (QCD)—the theory that describes the fundamental interactions of quarks and gluons—chiral symmetry is broken, and left- and right-handed particles can transform into one another. So the chiral charge would be eliminated and you wouldn’t see the propagation of the chiral magnetic wave,” said nuclear theorist Dmitri Kharzeev, a physicist at Brookhaven and Stony Brook University. But QCD predicts that when quarks and gluons are deconfined, or set free from protons and neutrons as in a quark-gluon plasma, chiral symmetry is restored. So the observation of the chiral wave provides evidence for chiral symmetry restoration—a key signature that quark-gluon plasma has been created.

“How does deconfinement restore the symmetry? This is one of the main things we want to solve,” Kharzeev said. “We know from the numerical studies of QCD that deconfinement and restoration happen together, which suggests there is some deep relationship. We really want to understand that connection.” 

Brookhaven physicist Zhangbu Xu, spokesperson for the STAR collaboration, added, “To improve our ability to search for and understand the chiral effects, we’d like to compare collisions of nuclei that have the same mass number but different numbers of protons—and therefore, different amounts of positive charge (for example, Ruthenium, mass number 96 with 44 protons, and Zirconium, mass number 96 with 40 protons). That would allow us to vary the strength of the initial magnetic field while keeping all other conditions essentially the same.”

Pro-White Italian Leaders Vow to Stop African Invasion

ROME — Heartened by recent election successes by an anti-immigrant party, Italian politicians based in the north vowed Sunday not to shelter any more migrants saved at sea, even as hundreds more were being rescued in the Mediterranean from smugglers' boats in distress.

Elsewhere in the country, however, corruptions investigations have revealed that some local officials gleefully see a cash cow in the shelters.

After nearly 3,500 migrants were rescued in a single day Saturday by an array of European military vessels, well over 1,000 more were being plucked to safety from at least 14 boats that ran into difficulty Sunday shortly after smugglers set off with them from Libyan shores, said a U.N. refugee agency official, Federico Fossi. Two German military ships brought a total of some 1,400 people to Sicilian ports Sunday, a day after they were rescued.

Mayors of Sicilian and other southern towns have warned for months they've run out of room for migrants, and thousands of the rescued are being resettled in shelters in central and northern Italy while their asylum requests are processed. The migrants flee poverty, persecution and war in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Among the north-based Italian politicians refusing to accept more migrants Sunday was newly-elected Liguria Gov. Giovanni Toti. Toti's candidacy was backed by his mentor, former center-right Premier Silvio Berlusconi, and by the anti-immigrant Northern League party, which was bolstered by results in balloting for governorships a week ago.

In Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, Italy's financial center, longtime League leader, Gov. Roberto Maroni, asked followers on Twitter if they agreed with him that "Lombardy mayors must refuse to welcome clandestine migrants" sent by the national government or else face regional funding cuts as punishment.

Fueling pledges to welcome no more migrants in their regions was a warning Saturday from Britain's defense secretary, Michael Fallon, that hundreds of thousands of migrants might be in Libya, poised to attempt the perilous sea crossing over the summer months.

Another U.N. refugee agency official, Carlotta Sami, called such figures speculation. But Northern League leader Matteo Salvini cited the huge figure when he spoke about "an alarm" of a flood of migrants.

Also pledging his region won't accept more rescued migrants was Veneto Gov. Luca Zaia, a Northern League proponent who scored a resounding victory for a second term in the May 31 vote. "First of all, we must do away with the illusion that we can support and manage a biblical exodus," he said in an interview in Corriere della Sera daily Sunday.

Zaia contended his northeastern Veneto region, home to many family-run or medium-sized businesses, had no more room for migrants.

According to Interior Ministry figures, as of early May, Veneto was sheltering some 3,000 rescued migrants, or 4 percent of the national total. By comparison, Sicily, where unemployment is chronic, was sheltering 16,000 migrants for 22 percent of the total, while the more affluent region of Lazio, including Rome, had about half that number, for 12 percent, and Maroni's Lombardy had some 6,600, or 9 percent of the total.

While these politicians in the north were saying no to more migrants, corruptions investigations have showed that other Italian politicians and local officials see the shelters as a way to make money.

Last week, 44 people, including local politicians from the center-left to the center-right in the Rome area, were arrested for investigation of alleged corruption or tampering with public contract bidding. The Rome-based probe, which netted dozens of arrests a few months ago in an earlier chapter, examined public contracts for social services, including for asylum-seekers at a migrant center in Sicily.

In intercepted phone calls, one suspect was heard referring to migrant shelters as a "cow to milk" for money.

Rome daily La Repubblica on Sunday reported that prosecutors in Florence, the Tuscan capital, and in Bari and Catania in the south were also scrutinizing contracts for feeding and sheltering migrants. It put costs this year at more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion), about 40 percent more than was spent last year, when Italy rescued 170,000 migrants from smugglers' boats in the waters off Libya.

Most of the migrants want to reach family or other support networks in northern Europe. They are supposed to stay in Italy until asylum applications are evaluated, although thousands slip away from the shelters and make their way to Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and elsewhere.