Titles:

• UK Prime Minister: Labour has common bond with Muslims
• Italy fines Muslim woman for wearing the Niqab
• Crisis in Greece leaves EU future in balance, warns Angela Merkel
• UN backs 'nuclear-free' Middle East
• America exploits failed bomb attack to pressurize Pakistan to conduct operations in Waziristan

News Details:

UK Prime Minister: Labour has common bond with Muslims

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is seeking to reach out to voters, including Muslims in key marginal constituencies, to support Labour as the party to aid economic recovery while pledging to create job and training opportunities for every young person under twenty-five. "We have a common bond with all those in the Muslim community who are trying to make sure we have fairness and justice throughout the world. "I think people know that we are the party that has done more to tackle poverty in the poorest countries of the world and done more to support organization like Muslim Aid that are trying to help the poorest countries," he said The Prime Minister defended the much criticised counter terrorism Prevent Violent Extremism programme which has impacted negatively on the young Muslims. "No young person who is a law-abiding citizen should have anything to worry about Prevent. We are trying to build links between all the different communities. We are putting a huge amount of resources into building interfaith links and to build links between different schools and communities and between young people in the different faith groups and their communities," he said.

Italy fines Muslim woman for wearing the Niqab

In what is reported to be the first such case amid proposals for sanctions against traditional Islamic dress in a series of European countries, the 26-year-old Tunisian woman was stopped by police in the city of Novara, a stronghold of the anti-immigration Northern League. The woman was wearing a full-length burqa with a niqab-type veil covering all her face apart from her eyes. She and her husband, both legal residents, were en route to Friday prayers when they were stopped by police for an identity check. Some reports said the pair were inside a post office at the time, while others said they were standing near it. The husband was able to produce papers for the couple, but he refused to allow the male officers to see his wife's unveiled face to confirm her identity. This was done when a female officer was called to the scene. Although there was no problem with the couple's status, the woman was fined €500 under a municipal ordinance introduced in January that bans clothing preventing easy identification of the wearer in public buildings. The measure was introduced by Novara's Northern League mayor, Massimo Giordano, Italy's Ansa news agency reported. It is based on a national anti-terrorism law passed in 1975 which was intended to prevent the wearing of masks or motorcycle helmets. Last week, Belgium's parliament voted to ban face-covering Islamic garments for women. France is considering similar legislation.

Crisis in Greece leaves EU future in balance, warns Angela Merkel

Europe was threatened with its gravest modern crisis this week as Germany warned that the EU's future was on the line in the Greek emergency. The spiraling tension over Greece's ballooning debts and Europe's first ever bailout of a country in the single currency has exposed fundamental questions about the EU and Germany's pivotal role as the union's biggest power. In Berlin, where Chancellor Angela Merkel faces a groundswell of hostility to sending the Greeks a €22bn lifeline next week, leaders issued stark warnings about the prospects for the EU and insisted on a punitive new regime for the 16 euro countries if the monetary union is to survive. The leaders of the eurozone's 16 nations are to assemble for an emergency summit on the Greek crisis in Brussels on Friday evening, with the mood bleak and the stakes high. "Europe is at a crossroads," Merkel declared to the German parliament in Berlin today. "This is about no more and no less than the future of Europe and about Germany's future in Europe." Her sombre tone was echoed by the opposition leader and former foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who said the Greek crisis presented the EU with its biggest challenge since the union was created in the 1950s.

UN backs 'nuclear-free' Middle East

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council have said they are committed to making the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone - a move which would ultimately force Israel to scrap any nuclear weapons it has. In a statement in New York on Wednesday, China, France, Russia, the US and UK reaffirmed their backing for a 1995 resolution on the issue. The backing from the so-called P5 members of the Security Council - all of them states with nuclear weapons - came as the UN hosts a conference aimed at strengthening the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). "We are committed to a full implementation of the 1995 NPT resolution on the Middle East and we support all ongoing efforts to this end," they said. "We are ready to consider all relevant proposals in the course of the (NPT) Review Conference in order to come to an agreed decision aimed at taking concrete steps in this direction." Egypt, which chairs a 118-nation bloc of non-aligned developing nations, has been circulating a proposal to the 189 signatories of the NPT calling for a conference by next year on ridding the Middle East of nuclear arms in which all countries in the region would participate.

America exploits failed bomb attack to pressurize Pakistan to conduct operations in Waziristan

In a series of meetings with and telephone calls to President Asif Ali Zardari and other Pakistani leaders, senior US officials have informed Islamabad that the failed attempt to bomb New York's Times Square had ‘clear links' with Pakistan, the US State Department said on Wednesday. "The purpose of the meetings was to inform Pakistan that there are clear links to Pakistan and that we would fully expect them to do what they should do and what they have been doing," Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley told a briefing in Washington. "We came away from these contacts today with full confidence that we are on the same page in terms of how this investigation will proceed," he added. Incidentally, the Pakistan's military warned that it had yet to establish a link between the Pakistani-American charged with trying to bomb New York and the country's main militant stronghold in Waziristan. Army spokesman Athar Abbas told AFP that a link between Faisal Shahzad and Waziristan had "yet to be established". "Until and unless the link is established, it will be premature to say that he had gone there," he said. According to the US criminal complaint, Shahzad admitted "after his arrest that he had received bomb-making training in Waziristan, Pakistan."