Headlines:

 

• Euro 'is doomed' warn experts as eurozone 'sleepwalks towards disaster'
• Tony Blair warns Obama, West ignorant of Islamic extremist threat
• Bulgarian Muslims Victimized after Burgas Terrorist Attack - Chief Mufti
• Burma's monks call for Muslim community to be shunned
• Nato supplies going smoothly through Pakistan: US

 

 

Details:

Euro 'is doomed' warn experts as eurozone 'sleepwalks towards disaster':

The euro has broken down and faces collapse with 'incalculable economic losses and human suffering', according to an extraordinary warning from a group of leading economists. The 17 experts said Europe was 'sleepwalking towards disaster', adding that the situation in 'debtor countries has deteriorated dramatically'. 'The sense of a never-ending crisis, with one domino falling after another, must be reversed,' they said. 'The last domino, Spain, is days away from a liquidity crisis. The experts include two members of Germany's Council of Economic Experts and leading euro specialists at the London School of Economics, all of whom support the single currency. 'This dramatic situation is the result of a eurozone system which, as currently constructed, is thoroughly broken,' they added. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy attends a plenary session in Madrid to debate the country's borrowing costs in the hope of drawing up a budget for 2013.'The cause is a systemic failure. It is the responsibility of all European nations that were parties to its flawed design, construction and implementation to contribute to a solution. Absent this collective response, the euro will disintegrate,' they said in a joint report for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Tony Blair warns Obama, West ignorant of Islamic extremist threat:

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has warned that the West is not fully aware of how dangerous Islamic extremism is getting in the Middle East, and has questioned President Barack Obama's handling of Islamic relations. ''We must engage, but also challenge,'' Blair said in a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph. "The Middle East won't achieve democracy unless it understands that democracy is a way of thinking as well as voting. The key question is how the majority treats the minority.'' Addressing the religious conflicts currently gripping a host of African countries, stretching from Nigeria, Sudan, Mali, Tanzania and Kenya, where radical Islamists are waging war on Christians, Blair said that he thinks "the West is asleep on this issue," especially in regards to the mentality of the extremists. The former prime minister believes that extremists are deeply rooted in a belief that the West seeks to oppress Islam, making peace a very far off notion. Blair, who also famously converted to Catholicism, also said that Obama's outreach to Islam "tends to deal with the wrong people." As evidence he pointed to Obama's speech in Cairo in 2009, and the subsequent revolution that took place in the country. The uprising has led to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose influence is being felt not only in Egypt but also in countries around the Arab world. The politician shared that he thinks globalization has also played a part in creating a global security risk, as it brings different people closer together and creates a "dominant security threat" related to culture and religion.

Bulgarian Muslims Victimized after Burgas Terrorist Attack - Chief Mufti:

Bulgaria's Chief Mufti's Office has complained of the public attitudes against the Bulgarian Muslims in the wake of last week's terrorist attack in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Burgas. The July 18 terrorist attack in Bulgaria's Burgas, also known as the Burgas Bus Bombing, killed 5 Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver at the Sarafovo Airport near Burgas. The attack was later discovered to have been committed by a suicide bomber, whose origin is still unknown. The Bulgarian victim of the Burgas Bus Bombing was in fact from the ethnic Bulgarian Muslim community known as Pomaks. The institution has complained of the Bulgarian media and their attitudes towards Bulgarian Muslims as a result of the terrorist attack in Burgas. "Days of the terrorist attack in Burgas, the Bulgarian media irresponsibly keep publishing opinions about a potential link of the Bulgarian Muslims and their cooperation in the conducting of the terrorist attack and a threat of new similar actions. We are deeply worried by the fact that these unfounded media insinuations are occurring during the Holy Month of Ramadan," the Chief Mufti's Office said. According to the Bulgarian Chief Mufti's Office, the Bulgarian Muslims have become a "moral victim of the society and the media through incompetent and biased manipulative insinuations." "It is perplexing why the government, politicians, public figures, and academia have not expressed a position regarding this deep injustice," the Chief Mufti's Office concludes.

Burma's monks call for Muslim community to be shunned:

Monks who played a vital role in Burma's recent struggle for democracy have been accused of fuelling ethnic tensions in the country by calling on people to shun a Muslim community that has suffered decades of abuse. In a move that has shocked many observers, some monks' organisations have issued pamphlets telling people not to associate with the Rohingya community, and have blocked humanitarian assistance from reaching them. One leaflet described the Rohingya as "cruel by nature" and claimed it had "plans to exterminate" other ethnic groups. The outburst against the Rohingya, often described as one of the world's most oppressed groups, comes after weeks of ethnic violence in the Rakhine state in the west of Burma that has left more than 80 dead and up to 100,000 people living in a situation described as "desperate" by humanitarian organisations. "In recent days, monks have emerged in a leading role to enforce denial of humanitarian assistance to Muslims, in support of policy statements by politicians," said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan project, a regional NGO. "A member of a humanitarian agency in Sittwe told me that some monks were posted near Muslim displacement camps, checking on and turning away people they suspected would visit for assistance."

Nato supplies going smoothly through Pakistan: US:

The transportation of NATO supplies through Pakistani border-crossings into Afghanistan is ‘working well' following the reopening of the ground routes, a State Department spokesperson has said. Questioned at the daily press briefing on Monday whether Washington would end its drone attacks against militant targets inside the Pakistani territory now that Islamabad has unblocked the supply routes, spokesperson Victoria Nuland said, "What I will say on Pakistan is that we've got good news with regard to the ground lines of communication (GLOC). "As you know, they've been open for some week and a half, two weeks now, and we have some 400 trucks either having passed or getting ready to pass through. And so that is working very well," the spokesperson added. But the spokesperson declined to answer the question about CIA's drone strikes, saying, "I'm not going to talk about intelligence issues." The Pakistani GLOCs were closed in November 2011 in protest against the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in cross-border American aerial strikes on the country's border posts.