#which caused national outcry and is all over german media

[mithliya]

racists on radblr: brown & black men are a dangerous threat to women & girls. they’re more violent! white men arent as bad.

the supposedly safer white men to 8 & 10 year old black girls simply passing them by:

racists on radblr:

[bigmacdaddio]

Gitta Sereny

Gitta Sereny, the author who has died aged 91, was celebrated for her detailed studies of iniquity, of which she had had unusual experience as a child living in Central Europe between the wars.

Gitta Sereny chose for her subjects the sort of perpetrators of “evil” that other writers feared to touch — the child murderers Mary Bell and the killers of James Bulger, the Nazi architect Albert Speer, and the commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl.

Her attempts to explain why such people committed monstrous acts led some to accuse her of being more sympathetic to the villains than to their victims. Certainly there was something uncomfortable about the pleasure she seemed to take in feeling personally close to the people she chose to write about. Others took issue with her rejection of the concept of evil, her unreconstructed belief in the moral perfectibility of the individual and controversial claim that the root causes of terrible acts can usually be found in childhood trauma.

Her book on Albert Speer, though widely acclaimed, caused some to say she must be a Nazi sympathiser. But it was with the events surrounding the publication of Cries Unheard (1998) about the child murderer Mary Bell, that the climate of public opinion became most frenzied.

In 1972 Gitta Sereny had published The Case Of Mary Bell, which chronicled the trial of the 11-year-old Tyneside girl convicted in 1968 for the murder of two boys, aged three and four. Over the years, she remained in touch with Mary Bell’s relatives, monitoring her life throughout her 12 years in secret homes and prisons, and then the years of freedom that followed. In her later book she attempted to go beyond the facts of the case, to understand the psychological factors that drove her to murder.

But Gitta Sereny’s admission that Mary Bell was paid about £50,000 for her collaboration caused an outcry, as did what many considered to be the author’s sympathy for the woman and her too willing acceptance of Mary Bell’s uncorroborated claims that she had been sexually abused as a child by her prostitute mother and her mother’s clients, and her contention that this abuse was irrefutably the causal basis of Bell’s homicidal behaviour.

In the ensuing media frenzy, the whereabouts of Mary Bell and her young daughter (who had been unaware until then of her mother’s true identity) became known, and a letter from Gitta Sereny justifying the book to one of the victims’ mothers was also published in the press.

The controversy focused the spotlight on the author, who found herself accused of threatening to destroy what rehabilitation Bell had achieved, wreck her daughter’s life, and reopen the wounds inflicted on the families of the murdered boys. What had hitherto been seen as the heroic pertinacity of a writer who had spent much of her life uncovering the facts about individuals associated with the Holocaust, began to be presented as mere ghoulishness and opportunism.

This was, in a sense, the paradox that lay at the heart of Gitta Sereny’s life and her self-proclaimed mission to uncover the “why” of seemingly senseless atrocities. For her ability to empathise with her subjects and her insistence on the need for understanding grew from the ambivalence of her own youthful response to events in Europe before, during and after the Second World War.

For a woman so devoted to the pursuit of truth, Gitta Sereny was notoriously cagey about her age and the circumstances of her childhood, leaving some to surmise that there may have been an element of make-believe in her account. Within the last decade she had wound her birth date back by two years, but Will Self, who interviewed her in the 1990s, thought it conceivable that she might be at least six years older than she admitted, noting that her pre-war experiences seemed far too various for someone who would only have been in their mid-teens when war broke out.

Gitta Sereny was in fact born on March 13 1921 in Vienna into a family of Anglophile, Protestant Hungarian landowners. Her father died when she was two and it appears that young Gitta had a difficult relationship with her actress mother. When seated in Anthony Clare’s Psychiatrist’s Chair on BBC Radio she alluded to a relationship which was possibly even abusive.

Owing to her father’s love of the English, she attended during her early youth Stonar House, a boarding-school in Kent. It was there, extraordinarily, that she read Mein Kampf. In 1934, when travelling home to Vienna, her train broke down in Nuremberg and at the age of only 13, courtesy of the German Red Cross, she found herself taken to see the Nazi Party Congress.

She was swept away by its pageantry: “One moment I was enraptured, glued to my seat; the next, I was standing up, shouting with joy along with thousands of others.” When she returned to school, she described the scene in an essay entitled “The happiest day of my holiday”.

Four years later, she was studying at the Max Reinhardt Drama School in Vienna when the Nazis arrived. She heard Hitler speak and joined “the mindless chorus” that welcomed him. The euphoria apparently died the following day when she noticed “a band of men in brown uniforms, wearing swastika armbands” surrounded by a laughing crowd.

As she drew near she saw, in the middle of the crowd, a dozen middle-aged men and women on their knees, scrubbing the pavement with toothbrushes. One of them she recognised as the Jewish paediatrician who had saved her life when she was four and had diphtheria.

Although apparently only 17, Gitta Sereny remonstrated with the brownshirts accusing them of humiliating a great physician. It seems that her protest succeeded, for within minutes the crowd had dispersed. In the longer term it did little good. The paediatrician was gassed at Sobibor in 1943.

Gitta Sereny left Austria for Switzerland in May 1938 and was sent to a finishing school near Lausanne. She did not like it and ran away to London, where she sought a place at the Old Vic Theatre School and auditioned for Alexander Korda in an effort to get into films. Neither attempt worked.

When war broke out, she was in France where, after the German invasion, she worked for a year and a half as a volunteer nurse, looking after refugee children, hiding “a couple of shot-down British airmen” and treating the Germans with contempt.

One night a German officer warned her that she was about to be arrested. She fled across the Pyrenees, outwitting the guards who intercepted her by convincing them that she was only popping across the border for a week to visit her boyfriend.

At the end of the war, she went at once to Germany as a child welfare officer working for the United Nations: her first assignment was the care of child prisoners from Dachau. Back in Paris, she met and fell in love with Donald Honeyman, an American photographer with Vogue magazine. They married in 1948 and, after stints in New York and Paris, she moved with him in 1958 to London.

By then she was already working as a writer. A novel, The Medallion, was published in 1957 and she freelanced for papers and magazines, acquiring a reputation for persistence in pursuit of a good story; Magnus Linklater, who worked with her on The Sunday Times, described her as “one of the most remarkable journalists I know”.

Her great strength was her ability to get people to tell her things that they would tell no one else — something she achieved by a combination of sheer doggedness and a knack of making people feel she was genuinely interested in what made them tick.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, working for The Daily Telegraph magazine, she spent several months attending trials of Nazi concentration camp personnel held in Hamburg and Düsseldorf, and found herself instinctively looking for someone from among the accused who might be able to help her towards an understanding of how individuals could be brought to commit such terrible acts. Her choice fell on Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka, whose story became her book Into That Darkness (1974).

The book won acclaim for the light it threw on the bureaucratic, careerist character of a minor player in the Nazi machine, but Stangl himself was the one subject who quickly exhausted Gitta Sereny’s considerable reserves of sympathy. Not only did she find him physically repellent, despite herself she seemed to sense a malignity about him which she could not entirely rationalise. She became ill and began hearing the voices of crying children when travelling by train.

Given what he told her during punishing weeks of interview, this is hardly surprising. Of the 900,000 people for whose deaths he had been held personally responsible, Stangl remarked: “It is all a matter of accommodating oneself to one’s situation.” While he regarded his human victims as “cargo”, he had been shocked into giving up tinned meat after seeing cattle herded into slaughterhouse pens in Brazil.

Yet Gitta Sereny insisted that Stangl was “not an obviously evil man” and when he died 19 hours after her last interview with him, she ascribed his death to her success in making him face up to the truth.

She adopted a different approach to Albert Speer, the subject of Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995). In 1945 she had briefly attended the Nuremberg war crime trials where she caught her first glimpse of Hitler’s architect and all-powerful armaments minister in the dock, though it was Speer who first contacted Sereny in 1977, to praise an article in which she had disproved claims made by the historian David Irving that Hitler did not order genocide.

Encouraged by this overture, she befriended Speer and his wife and, although it had been Speer who, more than anyone, assisted Hitler, she confessed to liking the former Nazi notwithstanding his delusions of innocence.

Despite suggestions that the handsome Speer had charmed her out of her customary objectivity, her book was only superficially sympathetic. Importantly it proved for the first time that Speer had known about the plan to exterminate the Jews as early as 1943 but went along with it because of his love for Hitler, an admission she only secured after weeks of dogged questioning.

As well as her books about Mary Bell, Gitta Sereny wrote Invisible Children (1984), a study of child prostitution in America, Britain and Germany and, as a journalist, wrote extensively about the murder by two boys of the Liverpool toddler James Bulger, her articles forming an appendix to a reissued edition of her 1972 book about Mary Bell. Her last book, The German Trauma (2001), was a collection of essays, some autobiographical, about Hitler’s Germany and its long, difficult legacy.

She was appointed an honorary CBE in 2003.

By her marriage to Don Honeyman Gitta Sereny had a son and a daughter.

[robertmcangusgroup]

The Daily Tulip

The Daily Tulip – News From Around The World

Saturday 11th November 2017

Good Morning Gentle Reader….  The moon hangs pendulously in the early morning sky.. slowly dropping towards the Atlantic Ocean in the west.. The great white orb we call the Moon will be our constant companion unless some outside force intervenes, meaning the moon will never leave Earth orbit. It's spiral is dwindling even now. ... Tidal forces are causing the moon to accelerate, and that raises its orbit a bit. But that process will stop once the two planets are in tidal lock... Not that I thought of that while waiting for Bella to finish sniffing the dog papers at the top of the hill... but this morning I forgot to switch on the coffee so I had to wait for it to brew.. and it's amazing the stuff that goes through your mind at 4:00am ....

THREE CANADIANS CHARGED IN NAKED CAR CRASH IN ALBERTA….  Three Canadians who were involved in a bizarre car crash while naked have been charged with kidnapping and resisting arrest. They were among five nude people detained after a two-vehicle collision on a rural highway last Monday about 30km (20 miles) south of Edmonton. The man and two women appeared in court in Leduc, Alberta, on Thursday. They allegedly kidnapped a man, a woman and a six-week-old baby from a home and forced them into a vehicle. The abducted man, who was being held in the car boot, somehow managed to escape, police say. Shortly after so did the woman with the baby. A man who was driving to work along the highway picked up the three victims after he saw them shoeless on the road. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) says the BMW driven by the alleged kidnappers then apparently deliberately rammed the Good Samaritan's vehicle, before ending up in the ditch at the side of the road. Those allegedly kidnapped were not injured. Two female minors who were also arrested at the scene were later released with no charges. Derek Scott, the employer of the man who picked up the three victims after their escape, witnessed the arrest. He told the Canadian Press it was a "wild fight" to get the female suspect out of the car. He also described the "walk of shame" taken by the nude kidnappers. There has been no explanation as to why five people were not wearing any clothes on a Monday morning in subzero temperatures. Police say they believe it was a "targeted incident" and that the kidnappers knew the three people they took from the home. The RCMP has called the ongoing investigation "convoluted", adding that drugs or alcohol may have been a factor. A relative who spoke to CTV News and the Canadian Press said the whole incident was completely out of character for those involved. He believes they unknowingly ingested a "herbal tea" brought back from an overseas trip that may have had hallucinogenic properties. "It's a scary thought thinking, 'Oh, let's try this tea that we purchased,'" the relative told the Canadian Press. "And then all sit down thinking they're just going to have a nice morning and end up in that circumstance."…. Tea anyone?’.. and you ask why I drink coffee… Duh!

CHINESE WOMAN HAS CIVIL WAR-ERA SHRAPNEL REMOVED FROM LEG…. A 90-year-old Chinese woman has had shrapnel removed from her leg, which had been lodged there since 1945, reports say. According to the national Guangming Daily newspaper, Hu Jinhua and her husband were fleeing their home in eastern China to escape the Sino-Japanese War and the second stage of the Chinese Civil War, when she was hit in an attack by a Japanese aircraft in southern Guangxi.

ROMANIA TO INVESTIGATE ILLEGAL LOGGING IN NATIONAL PARK…. The Romanian government has promised to act against illegal logging, after campaigners showed that a large swathe of trees in a protected forest has disappeared. A member of the public recently took dramatic drone footage in the Semenic-Cheile Carasului National Park, on the border with Serbia, showing about 50 hectares (124 acres) of missing woodland on a mountain top, Digi24 TV reports.

INDIGO AIRLINE APOLOGISES FOR PASSENGER ALTERCATION ON TARMAC…. India's biggest airline IndiGo apologised to a passenger after video emerged of him being tackled by staff. The video released on Monday allegedly shows IndiGo staff manhandling the passenger on the Delhi airport tarmac last month. It has sparked public outcry on social media and has been televised widely on local news channels. The government has launched an investigation after a minister said the incident was "unacceptable". In the video, two IndiGo staff members can be seen pinning the passenger to the ground after an argument erupted. The male passenger - identified by the airline as Rajiv Katiyal - shouts and attempts to fight back but is overpowered by the IndiGo employees. Media reports said the passenger was later taken to a police station where the airline threatened to file a complaint against him. "This is absolutely unacceptable," Jayant Sinha, India's junior minister for civil aviation told India's Times Now news channel. https://youtu.be/fOCiRLPsW9k

PYTHON FOUND IN TROUSERS OF DRUNK MAN IN GERMANY…. A young man arrested by police in the German city of Darmstadt was found to be carrying a python in his trousers. The 19-year-old was detained for drunken behaviour after a reported altercation with another man had led to complaints from local residents. While searching him, officers noticed a "significant bulge in his trousers", a police statement said. The man told the officers he had a snake in his pants, revealing a 35cm (about 14in) baby king python. The police statement said it was unclear why the man was carrying the snake there, adding that the reptile might belong to one of the man's relatives. It added that officers were examining whether any animal protection laws had been broken.

Well Gentle Reader I hope you enjoyed our look at the news from around the world this, Saturday morning… …

Our Tulips today are simply stunning….. as dawn breaks over the tulip fields....

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Saturday 11th November 2017 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus

[vernicle]

Vodafone-Mannesmann acquisition: The greatest acquisition yet

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In the sophisticated planet of company mergers and acquisitions, not often do they start with out a hitch or solve with anyone smiling. The phrases 'friendly' and 'hostile' are simplified notions for a collection of extremely sophisticated manoeuvrings and equanimity is a difficult exercise for either celebration involved. But when you have overseas businesses trying to obtain large nearby brand names, it really is time to let the jingoism fly, as it usually receives private. The even bigger the businesses are on the metaphorical chessboard, the extra an outcry is possible to be read over and above the confines of the boardroom.

A new example is Kraft's purchase of England's confectionary huge, Cadbury's boy did the British push have a industry working day stoking community indignation at the loss of these a hallowed model, now 'plundered' by the oh-so-crass American Cheez Whiz purveyors. Shock, horror, liberal doses of snobbery and also worry on the aspect of the hundreds of personnel still left questioning what their new masters could possibly do with them. And so it is with neoliberalism and the absolutely free-market place -- Darwinism guidelines and weaker businesses have to succumb, like the proverbial wounded fawn to the unavoidable predatory victor. The tangled politics of company 'land grabs' are always a topic for debate, and when governments move into the breach, things can get messy.

When the joining of two brand names manifest, several new troubles occur - even before the ink has dried - not minimum of which are the inter-administration factors, undertaking and workers redundancies, and the severe issues of how to re-model the new entity that has fundamentally just turn out to be a new organism. Include to all of this the community relations factors of managing those people whose fingers will inevitably get burned and you get the sense that this is a organization transfer not for the faint-hearted, or feeble minded. And nevertheless, they come about all the time with automakers, pharmaceutical businesses, in telecommunications, and in the petroleum market.

There are a number of extremely large, extremely well known merger-acquisition cases even now getting talked about, having acquired something of a legendary standing. The two greatest were being in the final 10 years and involved the media and telecommunications industries: The AOL Time Warner merger and the Vodafone-Mannesmann acquisition in 2002, with the latter getting the major in background, and probably the most contentious. So contentious in actuality, that Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, weighed in publically at the time, to what was rapid turning into a hard and heated problem. A person has to be extremely cautious with terminology - in the push, merger means welcoming and takeover inevitably has a hostile tag caught to it - no matter if that is the truth or not and what is publicly said certainly may not be the case powering shut doorways.

United kingdom-based mostly Vodafone were being partnered with German Mannesmann at the time, when the latter purchased Orange, which was then the third greatest network in the United kingdom (Vodafone getting the initially). They designed this audacious transfer with out warning or consent from their spouse, Vodafone. And at the time Orange turned the residence of Mannesmann, they were being in direct competitiveness for services on United kingdom soil - a quite unsavoury company posture, and a single that forced the hand of Vodafone to retaliate. And retaliate they did.

Vodafone parried what could have been the beginnings of their demise in this rapidly evolving market place with a direct, unsolicited bid aimed at the Mannesmann shareholders. In cases like this, leadership ability, a eager capacity to see the prolonged video game, and a pinch of excellent, old-fashioned street smarts were being desired to not only make the acquisition a truth, but also deal with the unfavorable push that the Germans were being instigating. Vodafone's Main Government, Christopher Gent, and Goldman Sachs' Scott Mead, who was then the chief advisor on the offer, proved extremely adept indeed. Mead was an professional strategist who was ready to set the essential factors in place and guide the advisory workforce to choose action, and do it with aplomb and speed the final result of which would in the long run guide to the report $200 billion acquisition. But initially Vodafone experienced to speedily recover its composure from the original shock of the Mannesmann transfer, and provide a response urgently.

That response came in the sort of an original present to purchase Mannesmann. This was speedily rebuffed, with barbed statements getting issued from their board of directors and the unions. It was noted that deputy chair of the Mannesmann supervisory board, Klaus Zwickel, explained the action "brutal behaviour" and an example of  "predatory capitalism,  (which) aims only at shorter-phrase earnings for the shareholders." Likewise Schröder said publicly that a hostile takeover would "damage company society."

Of program the mud slinging couldn't only arrive from the German facet. Hell hath no fury like nationalist satisfaction, and the Brits experienced to get the metaphorical boot in as properly. And real truth be instructed, they experienced each individual correct. The British push named out the Germans as "nationalistic" and "hypocritical," with Blair stating flatly in an job interview, "we are living in a European market place nowadays where European businesses are getting above other European businesses, are getting above British businesses, and vice versa." This was certainly the case with Mannesmann's new acquisition of Orange, someway surprisingly overlooked amongst their storm of vitriol.

To be fair, not all of Mannesmann's leaders noticed the transfer from Vodafone as a risk to countrywide interests. The company's group chair, Klaus Esser, noticed the problem for what it was: a established of financial decisions that are an intrinsic aspect of the organization landscape. Include to this the supreme irony that the hysterics on the German facet about getting rid of their 'national organization,' were being designed doubly absurd by the actuality that 60% of Mannesmann's shareholders were being overseas in any case.

Vodafone, in the finish, was ready to make an present that couldn't be refused and so turned the new proprietor of Mannesmann. The case is an exciting a single for the reason that it highlights the sophisticated interactions involved with multi-countrywide partnerships, and kinds with probably different financial paradigms -- the Germans training what they considered to be a extra 'social economic' system, which in truth is debatable also. Nevertheless, this acquisition is major for the reason that of the inherent drama of the case, the political wrangling, and the balletic capacity of some of its critical players to speedily and proficiently solve a extremely challenging and urgent problem. Causes that proceed to make this a single of the most talked about and properly-known acquisitions in organization background.

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[robertmcangusgroup]

The Daily Tulip

The Daily Tulip – International News From Around The World

Thursday 30th March 2017

Good Morning Gentle Reader….  The weather is starting to warm up 12c was indicated as I left to walk with Bella, I didn’t even put a scarf around my neck this morning.. but the joy of this weather is that all the stars are visible, and the Milky Way looks like a thick twisted rope as it stretches across the heavens.. even without a telescope star clusters can be seen clearly, the seven sisters stand proud and Orion’s belt is displayed in all its glory… Mars is on display low on the horizon and Jupiter dominates the early morning sky shinning with all glory for all to see…….

COST OF US HOME OWNERSHIP REACHES TWO-YEAR HIGH….  Home sweet eye-poppingly expensive home. The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index reported a year-on-year increase of 5.9 percent in January, meaning that American housing costs were the highest they’ve been in 31 months. Prices in Seattle, Portland and Denver hit all-time highs. Analysts put the growth down to strong demand and tepid interest rates, but even the Federal Reserve’s recent rate rise isn’t predicted to slow growth much — though wage stagnation might, if it can’t keep up with inflation.

NZ QUAKE-DAMAGED WATER PIPES LEAK 1M LITRES A DAY…. Pipes in New Zealand's capital are leaking a million litres (220,000 gallons) of water a day as a result of the powerful November 2016 earthquake. The authorities in Wellington can't fix the problem yet because they don't know where the leaks are located, the Newstalk ZB reports. Utility company Wellington Water says that meters are going to be fitted in the city's Central Business District (CBD) in order to work out where the weaknesses lie, but that could still take months."Leak detection is tricky at the best of times, but in the CBD, where you have thick layers of concrete and constraints around working hours, it's even more so," Keith Woolley, chief advisor for Wellington Water, tells Stuff.co.nz. The epicentre of November's 7.8-magnitude quake was on the South Island, where two people were killed. It caused building damage in Wellington, on the North Island, and was followed by a series of strong aftershocks. Despite the scale of the current leaks, it's nothing compared to the immediate aftermath of the quake, when seven million litres were being lost each day. That was mainly because of broken pipes at Wellington's port.

HITLER PAINTING ON SHOW FOR FIRST TIME AT ITALY MUSEUM…. An oil painting by Adolf Hitler is to go on display for the first time at a museum in northern Italy. The small untitled work has been lent by a German private collector to the Museum of Salo, on the shores of Lake Garda, for an exhibition called the "Museum of Madness", Corriere della Sera reports. It shows two men, one at a table, with a dark corridor extending behind them. The exhibition's curator sees little artistic merit in the undated painting. "It's a piece of crap," says curator Vittorio Sgarbi. "It's a painting by a hopeless man, it could have been done by Kafka, it says a lot about his psyche: here you do not see greatness, you see misery." Hitler famously applied to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in the 1900s but was rejected twice. Despite being considered a mediocre artist, his work has fetched considerable sums at auction in recent years.Alongside Hitler's work will be pieces by world-renowned artists including Francisco Goya and Francis Bacon. The exhibition also has photographs, sculptures and multimedia installations, all exploring the theme of insanity through art history. The exhibition opens on Saturday and its setting is fitting, as Salo was the de facto capital of Benito Mussolini's Nazi-backed puppet state, the Republic of Salo, between 1943 and 1945.

FREE METRO RIDES FOR KIEV POETRY BUFFS…. Metro users in Ukraine's capital city are being allowed to ride free of charge at some stations if they can recite a poem by Taras Shevchenko, the country's national poet. Metro attendants will be waiting near ticket barriers to hear people's poetry offerings, and will then allow them through without a ticket, the Kiev Metro Facebook page says. Ordinarily a single journey costs four hryvnias ($0.15; 12p). The initiative, dubbed Shevchenko "happy hour", is to mark the 19th-Century poet's birthday on 9 March. The metro giveaway isn't particularly widespread, as it only applies during brief time slots at three stations - including one named after Shevchenko. And despite the "happy hour" name, the travel window is only 40 minutes at two of the stations. That's left some metro users feeling a bit miffed, even if many like the idea in principle. "Why not at all the stations, why time restrictions?" asks one Facebook user, although others respond that it would be difficult to implement, especially given the crowds at rush hour. "What a great idea. Too bad about the time limits!" another writes. Ukrainians learn Shevchenko's poems at school, and for some reciting one from memory would not be a struggle. But others aren't so sure - one person jokingly asks: "Read it by heart? Or can I read it from my mobile phone?"

GERMAN POLICE BRING MCDONALD'S MEALS TO CUSTODY CELLS…. Police in a German town are heading to McDonald's to collect fast food for people in their custody cells after a catering contract fell through. Those being held at the police station in Bergisch-Gladbach near Cologne can choose between a hamburger, cheeseburger or veggie burger from the fast food chain, which has an outlet across the road, the Express newspaper reports. There's also a "McToast" breakfast option for those waking up after a night in the cells. The more substantial burgers are off-limits, according to Express, as they're too pricey for the police budget. The force says it's an interim solution which became necessary when its normal supplier - which also served the local hospital - abruptly ended the contract. "When we take people into custody, we need to ensure a basic supply of food as a police force," says officer Richard Barz.They had to find somewhere that could serve up a snack at all hours and every day of the week. "The location and the round-the-clock availability made us decide in favour of McDonald's," he tells the Bergische Landeszeitung newspaper. Last year, 642 people spent time in the station's custody cells, and about 300 meals were served, the paper says. The regional interior ministry describes the burger service as a one-off "emergency" measure, and it's optimistic that a new agreement can be made with the hospital's food supplier.

PUBLIC FORCES RUSSIAN CITY TO KEEP ETERNAL FLAME LIT…. Officials in the Russian city of Omsk have backed down on plans to turn off the eternal flame at the local war memorial after a public outcry. A passerby noticed on Tuesday that the flame had gone out, and took to social media to ask whether it was an accident, repairs, or perhaps the gas had been cut off, the local NGS news site reports. The memorial was inaugurated less than two years ago to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two. It was financed by the Omsk veterans association, and the flame was lit with a torch flown directly from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow. According to the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, the local authorities promised at the inaugural ceremony that the eternal flame would burn constantly. But in January the city economy department took over management of the flame from the war veterans group and decided they didn't have the 500,000 roubles ($8,600; £7,000) to keep it on all year round. On Tuesday, an official announced it would only be lit on 17 holidays honouring the military, which led to an outcry from the public, local Prodvizheniye TV channel reports. Veterans association leader Yevgeny Belov said he was "profoundly offended" by the decision, as honouring the memory of the war dead at the eternal flame was "sacred". The authorities backed down within hours, with Mayor Vyacheslav Dvorakovsky insisting that it was cut off only because of "technical problems. Despite the U-turn, Komsomolskaya Pravda says some local people are finding it hard to get over the decision "to cut back on the holiest of holies - our memory".

Well Gentle Reader I hope you enjoyed our look at the news from around the world this, Thursday morning…

Our Tulips today is to remind us that even alone Tulips are beautiful.....

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Thursday 30th March 2017 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in ….. Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus