A 39-year-old Moroccan man accused of murdering his 27-year-old former partner in Santander has refused to answer police questions ahead of his first court appearance.
Paula Solanas was found dead inside her home on Friday after suffering severe bleeding injuries believed to have been caused by a bladed weapon.
The suspect reportedly alerted the authorities himself and confessed that he was responsible. However, when formally questioned on Sunday in the presence of his lawyer, he exercised his right to remain silent.
He was expected in court on Monday, when a judge would determine whether he should remain in custody.
Investigators believe the killing followed Paula’s recent decision to end their four-year relationship. The former couple had a child under the age of one.
Paula’s father said the separation had taken place only recently, while police continue to examine whether the breakup directly preceded the attack.
Officers arriving at the apartment found Paula suffering from severe injuries. Emergency medical workers were unable to save her and confirmed her death at the scene.
One neighbor told El Diario Montañés that even experienced officers appeared deeply affected by what they discovered inside the home, with one reportedly describing the scene as “shocking.”
Paula was well known through her work with the Red Cross and had been involved in teaching children about equality and the prevention of violence against women.
Her parents told Spanish media on Monday how their daughter had expressed concerns over the suspect’s behavior during their relationship. “He was very controlling and possessive,” her father said.
“Paula seemed to be coming back to life after breaking up with Nabil,” they added.
Gas prices are rising again in Germany. The main culprit is the state with its towering levies. In the EU, a mechanism has become established that artificially restricts and drives up the cost of energy in order to tax it more effectively afterward.
Holiday season is travel season. Once out on the road, many German tourists experience a nasty surprise at the gas stations of their destination or while passing through: Whether in Austria, Poland, Italy, or Spain — filling up here is sometimes 25 to 40 percent cheaper than at home. The reason is the systematic tax rip-off by the German Treasury. Germany is, after all, a frontrunner in this area — up to 55 percent of the price of gas flows from the pump into state coffers.
Rising fuel prices please the chief treasurer of the debt disaster, Lars Klingbeil. In Berlin, people do not think in large cycles and broad lines — what matters is the quick euro. Consumers are both a milking cow and political disposable asset — there is nothing left to be seen of the ideal of the sovereign citizen who was supposed to be freed from fiscal overload and overregulation in the current political climate.
The gas pumps of German filling stations mark the point of harvest of a policy that has forged a perfidious, but quite sophisticated, extraction scheme out of society’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Put plainly, one could say: the regulator-driven reduction of refinery capacity in the EU, the forced CO2 levy through the certificate scheme, the artificial increase in the cost of energy imports through the CBAM carbon mechanism — every individual measure taken by Brussels fits into a machinery designed to artificially restrict and thereby drive up the price of fossil fuels in the EU. In this way, a kind of cost-push inflation is generated, which initially expands the nominal tax base.
The EU operates quite subtly within its scheme, concealing the numerous levers at its disposal behind an impenetrable propaganda fog of climate apocalypticism and nonsensical rhetoric about progress. Climate technology is good. It will only cost one scoop of ice cream to deindustrialize Germany with towering energy costs, or however the story went.
At the CBAM carbon border mechanism, the Euro strategy can be studied in detail: The goods primarily affected are carbon-intensive products such as steel, cement, aluminum, hydrogen, fertilizers, and imported electricity. These essential intermediate goods for industrial production and power-generation capacity are made more expensive in this way and later feed indirectly into prices through production and logistics infrastructure. Then the state strikes again – with higher consumption taxes.
Let us call a spade a spade: The EU taxpayer has been strapped to a fiscal rack.
The chancellor’s call for an increase in VAT therefore seems almost cheeky. No one can escape it – it is the endpoint of all the levies previously paid, at the income level, at the capital-gains level, right through to the indirect payments via the CO2 mechanism described above.
Another example from everyday tax practice is domestic air travel. There, taxes and charges — consisting of the aviation tax, aviation-security and airport fees, as well as regular VAT — amount on average to around 50 to 70 percent of the ticket price.
This example is also instructive because, on closer inspection, it gives an impression of how frequently the state actually takes its cut along a particular value chain. The cost chain begins at the company level: with the purchase of aviation fuel, through airport fees, take-off and landing charges, and CO2 certificate costs, all the way to the aforementioned taxation of air tickets. The absolute levies become higher the more costs regulatory policy has already generated in logistics at the company level – costs that later have to be passed on to the end consumer.
For European consumers and businesses, things will get tough from 2027 onwards. The emissions trading system will then be extended under ETS2 to the transport sector and heating — with an estimated surcharge of 25 cents per liter at the outset, rising to as much as 50 cents by 2030. A rich haul for Brussels, which is thus opening up new sources of revenue. The Brussels regulatory apparatus is not only large in terms of personnel; it is also extremely inventive when it comes to fleecing citizens.
With the biofuel quota (E10 blending requirement), the EU obliges oil companies to blend bioethanol and biodiesel, which makes fuel more expensive and, in turn, contributes through the corresponding leverage effect to growing tax revenues.
Anyone who complains about the sluggishness of the EU bureaucracy is in for a surprise. With the diligence of bees, the bureaucratic machine is working to open up new wells from which to extract, in fiscal terms, whatever has not yet been tapped.
In addition to the fiscal haul, the EU is pursuing a scorched-earth policy: With the previously mentioned reduction in refinery capacity from 18.3 to just 15.1 million barrels per day, refinery costs within the EU are rising massively. In emergencies such as a closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the European economy is then left out in the cold. It is dependent on emergency imports and has to submit to the pricing power of exporters.
That consumers and businesses are left out in the cold is politically intended. They are prisoners of a perfidious, tightly constructed fiscal matrix that may be effective in the short term, but in the long term destroys the economic foundation that sustains it itself.
CCTV footage released by Greek media appears to show a man fitting Ahmadzai’s description wheeling a suitcase through the city’s streets. IEFIMERIDA.GR
Sharif Ahmadzai, 26, has also been revealed to be a champion boxer – and the co-founder of a refugee charity, according to reports.
Medical evidence from the case file indicates Ms Ross died from asphyxiation.
Ahmadzai is said to have admitted to disposing of her body in a derelict building and sending messages from her phone to make her family believe she was still alive.
CCTV footage released by Greek media appears to show a man fitting Ahmadzai’s description wheeling a suitcase through the city’s streets.
The suspect can be seen dressed in a black T-shirt and shorts with a blue rucksack on his back, calmly wheeling the case through Athens.
When initially questioned by detectives, he claimed he had discovered Ms Ross already dead in her bathroom – before later admitting to using her bank cards and phone.
Ahmadzai became the prime suspect after his American wife, Alaina Hall, alerted police to his suspicious behaviour in the days after Ms Ross’s death, The Times and the Daily Mail reported.
The couple reportedly knew Ms Ross through their NGO, Love Every Nation Athens.
Ms Hall grew suspicious after finding Ahmadzai absent from their home on July 15 and checking his shared location, which showed him at Ms Ross’s flat.
He allegedly tried to give his wife €2,550 (£2,200) in cash and a new Apple iPhone 17 Pro, which she turned over to police, believing they were purchased with Ms Ross’s money.
A police raid on his home on August 1 uncovered a replica pistol and a military-style knife.
Hall came forward with information after Ms Ross was publicly identified on July 30.
Ahmadzai fled Afghanistan at 15 after the Taliban killed his family, arriving on Lesbos by small boat in 2016, according to a blog post he wrote titled “Sharif’s Story”.
His 45-day trek through Pakistan, Iran and Turkey was later made into a short film by a British cartoonist and the International Federation of Red Cross.
In his blog, Ahmadzai wrote: “I lost everything I had. I deserved a better life than this. So many of my dreams were killed.”
He met Hall while she was volunteering at Lesbos’s Moria Camp and converted to Christianity the following year.
They married in April 2023.
Ahmadzai won a national boxing title in March 2026.
Ms Ross, known as Lisa, was regarded as a “good Samaritan” who travelled the world doing faith-driven charitable work, including aiding Syrian refugees in Kurdistan.
He is expected before Athens magistrates’ court on Wednesday.
A traumatized girl in Austria jumped out of a window after she was picked up by a social worker who looked like a Satanist.
The previous group home for children with behavioral issues where the 12-year-old girl lived was closed down by Vienna’s Child and Youth Welfare agency (MA 11) due to complaints. The children from this facility were supposed to be transferred to a new group home operated by the private nonprofit organization Homebase. Homebase director Gawain Walter was one of the social workers who picked the girl up.
‼️🇦🇹 Sexually abused 12y.o. girl jumps out of a window to escape "Pedagogical Managing Director" at a private youth welfare organization in Vienna — Kronen Zeitung
The girl had developed an acute, paralyzing phobia of men before being scheduled for transfer into the care of the… pic.twitter.com/jkzDkrJwAt
The case turned into a political scandal when the girl jumped out of a window and broke several bones shortly after meeting Walter. The 12-year-old girl from Tyrol is considered traumatized due to suspected severe experiences of abuse. According to Pro Child Vienna, the organization that ran her previous group home, she reacts very negatively to men and therefore should not be cared for by male social workers.
However, the guidelines were not followed when the girl was to be picked up from there and taken to a new shared living arrangement, criticized Sabine Keri, the youth spokesperson of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) in Vienna. Keri was given a written account of the incident and said, “It had been made very clear that the girl was not to be picked up by a man. And then a man shows up and exerts pressure.”
Moreover, the Homebase director’s physical appearance is said to have scared the girl, as he has several face tattoos, including a Pentagram on his forehead. The man also frequently wears small black horns on his head that can be screwed on and off, as can be seen in his portrait on Homebase’s official website.
“To me, that’s a satanic look. And I can’t very well let someone who looks like that work with severely traumatized children,” Keri said.
Walter responded to the accusations and said they were defamatory, insisting that he is not a Satanist. He said he was not wearing the small horns on his head when he picked up the children.
Vienna’s MA 11 agency defended giving the children to Homebase despite the physical appearance of its director. The social worker’s appearance could have advantages, MA 11 spokesperson Ingrid Pöschmann said, “namely to show the children: ‘Look, I’m different, you are too, and I’m giving you a place in society here.’ These are children who have learned that they are not accepted just as they are. It’s a very individual approach, a very creative approach.”
The 12-year-old jumped out of the unlocked window when no one was watching. City Councilwoman Bettina Emmerling is having the incident investigated. However, she claims there is no evidence so far that the girl jumped out of fear of the social worker.
According to Emmerling, the man with the Satanic appearance and a female caregiver had already spoken with the girl the day before the incident. The councilwoman argued that being scared by his appearance was not the reason for the jump but rather that the child did not want to change her place of residence or her care arrangement. In addition, the girl had also been with a male caregiver in the shared apartment before the incident, Emmerling said in an interview.
The Pro Child facility — which was shut down by MA 11 — may bear some or primary responsibility for the jump, Emmerling argued.
“The fact that this window was not locked is something that is not permitted in shared living arrangements,” she said. “The window can be tilted open, but in principle, when a child is alone in a room” the windows must be locked.
It remains unclear to the city councilwoman whether — and how clearly — it was actually communicated that the girl was not to be picked up by a man, Emmerling said.
The girl has reportedly recovered from the fall and is now in a new group home in Vienna. Reports did not specify whether it is at a Homebase facility or somewhere else.
Another source of political debate in this case is the fact that the head of Homebase, who picked up the girl, is the son of a top staff representative at MA 11. The ÖVP and the Freedom Party sharply criticized this, as contracts awarded to Homebase by the MA 11 have recently increased significantly.
Emmerling defended the arrangement. “The fact that this family relationship exists was disclosed from the very beginning,” she said in an interview. The father of the Homebase director had no authority and no part in the decision-making of who gets awarded contracts by the agency, she said.
It’s another season, and another terror attack in Germany. This time, at the Christopher Street Day gay pride celebration in Berlin.
A young Muslim man—born in Germany to a naturalized-citizen mother from Lebanon—plowed a van into the revelers. After crashing into a tree, he ran into the crowd on foot with a machete. He managed to murder one woman and injure 29 people.
Germans—whether average citizens or politicians—are “horrified” and “stunned.” As they are every time a Muslim drives his car into a Christmas market or slits the throats of Germans at a summer festival.
They ask, as they always do, whether this attack could have been prevented. (One TV expert believes that an ankle bracelet could have prevented this latest massacre, as the 21-year-old Abdul Ballout, since shot dead by German police, was on a one-year-ten-month probation for planning terror acts (and he had attempted to join ISIS). His homework assignment: deradicalization. He was one of nearly 29,000 known Islamists under surveillance by German authorities.)
Chancellor Friedrich Merz didn’t mince words: Addressing the latest Islamist slaughter, he pointed to certain Germans, with their “intolerance, ostracism, discrimination, stupid expressions, and bad jokes.”
Good Germans always declare the obligatory, “We will not allow ourselves to be divided.” Meaning, they won’t allow those who state the obvious—that large Muslim populations are inherently incompatible with Western democracy and German life (or with making “bad jokes” on the subject)—to speak the obvious without being derided as Nazis. Germans are nothing if not consistent about demonstrating that they would rather be dead than admit that their notion of being weltoffen (open-minded—literally, and ironically, “open to the world”) has destabilized the entire country.
In the same country that chants endlessly “Never again,” there is no sense of irony about importing the mortal enemies of the Jews by the millions. No outcry about the fact that Jews are once again attacked in broad daylight for wearing a kippa or Star of David—this time not by Germans. No admission that the attackers are virtually always Arabs and Turks. No sense of reality about calling the very people who want to prevent a new slaughter of Jews “Nazis.”
About a six-hour drive south of Berlin, in southern Hesse (recall those Hessian mercenaries of the Revolutionary War) near Frankfurt, the streets of quaint small towns are filled with head-scarved women with baby carriages, as the outdoor cafes teem with young Arab men. These are familiar scenes across the country. In larger towns, Arab clans rule the underworld, and devout Muslims attempt to form sharia patrols.
I grew up here, in a quaint small town in southern Hesse—the daughter of a German woman and an American stationed here with the U.S. Army—when the country (West Germany, then) was arguably the best in the world. Certainly one of the safest, cleanest, and most fun. I now visit my mother, who, even years ago, was unable to go out for ice cream at night without being catcalled and verbally harassed by Turkish and Arab men who sit on the benches to watch for infidel women.
While Germany’s Christmas markets are best known in America, summer has always been a wondrous time in Germany. Outdoor wine and music festivals in virtually every town, large or small; cultural events; daylight until 10 p.m.; and weekends at the local lake or public swimming pool.
That is, until the Arab and African migrants, who have been systematically dispersed around the country since 2015, began to use the public pools to grope and rape girls and boys alike. Until attending an outdoor event meant a risk of getting stabbed or sliced by “people who come to us,” to use past chancellor Angela Merkel’s words. Until going out as a German after dark in many towns meant getting harassed or worse.
Summer in Germany remains wondrous in the sense that it is remarkable. Remarkable that no matter what happens, and how often, the vast majority of Germans simply will not admit that open borders and the never-ending special concessions to Muslims make normal life ever closer to impossible for the native population. (German judges are known to let Muslim rapists off the hook with barely a slap on the wrist—even giving a young German woman a harsher sentence for calling a Muslim rapist a “disgraceful rapist pig” and other “defamatory” things.)
In America—where Muslims in Texas want to build a Muslim-only city, where Somalis have devastated Minneapolis, where Jews in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan are attacked on the street, and where 25 years after 9/11 the once greatest city in the world has a jihadist mayor—the situation is quickly starting to resemble the reality in Germany, France, Britain, and nearly every other Western European country.
As a German-American, I need at least one of my home countries to fight back.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has vowed to deploy the Royal Navy to the English Channel to prevent illegal migrants from reaching British shores.
Announcing what the party claims would be the largest military operation in the Channel since the end of the Second World War, Reform said that if given power, it would enact a naval blockade to make the waterway “impenetrable” to boat migrants and their people smuggler backers.
According to The Telegraph, “Operation Fortress” would see unauthorised boats detained by the Royal Navy, who would provide them with food and water before escorting them back to the French coastline.
The party said that the recent scenes at the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, in which some 60,000 illegals flooded across its border with Morocco in just one day last week, demonstrated the urgency for Britain to take control of its borders.
The Royal Navy is there to protect this country from invasion and that is what I intend to use it for. pic.twitter.com/jbvTUTEzZR
In a press conference on Monday morning, Mr Farage said that the plan is necessary given that many of the “young males of fighting age” who cross the English Channel illegally “wish us harm or do us harm”.
“Operation Fortress will be a combined military operation; it will save lives, it will help the French in fulfilling their job of stopping the boats, and it will save a huge amount of money.
“And when you think about it, what is the Royal Navy for? If the Royal Navy is not there to protect this country from invasion, then frankly I can’t see what its purpose is.”
The policy would likely be popular with the public. According to a More in Common survey in 2025, 69 per cent of British voters would support deploying the Royal Navy to the Channel to stop illegals from arriving. In comparison, just 18 per cent said that they would oppose such a move.
Reform UK Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf said: “Britain is being invaded. Tory and Labour governments responded with a free ferry service and free hotels. Reform UK will respond by launching the largest military operation in the English Channel since World War Two.”
The plan is reminiscent of the Operation Sovereign Borders initiative enacted under former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2013, which all but stopped illegal boat migration to the country after tens of thousands of migrants from countries like Indonesia started to arrive on Australian shores.
Although the hard-line approach, which saw migrants either returned home directly or sent to offshore processing centres, drew condemnation from the United Nations, the policy was upheld as lawful by the Australian Supreme Court in 2015, potentially setting a precedent for the plan put forward by Farage’s Reform party.
Abbot himself has long argued that Britain should adopt a similar approach toward France, previously saying that Paris has “no right to wave on their problems to Britain just because they are unwilling or unable to control their own borders.”
While this approach may have ruffled feathers under the current French government, it is likely that “Operation Fortress” would not come into effect until after the next French Presidential election, scheduled for April of next year.
The current occupant of the Élysée Palace, President Emmanuel Macron, has steadfastly refused to agree to any deal with London on migrant boat pushbacks, claiming it would violate international maritime law. However, with Macron being term-limited and therefore ineligible to run next year, it is likely that a new government may be more amenable to Reform’s plans.
Indeed, earlier this year, French National Rally leader Jordan Bardella — Marine Le Pen’s second-in-command — said that he envisions a “patriotic alliance” between Britain and France to combat the migrant crisis. Bardella also explicitly vowed to support the UK in pushing migrant boats back to France.
Greek authorities have arrested two people after investigators concluded that sparks from electricity cables linked to a private wind farm ignited a major wildfire that has been burning for three days west of Athens.
The blaze began on Friday morning near Agios Vasileios in the Boeotia region at a site known as Mavro Spithari.
Fire Service investigators, using video footage and witness statements, determined that oscillations in the conductors of a private transmission line carrying power from a five-turbine wind farm to the national grid produced sparks that fell onto dry vegetation.
The fire then spread rapidly under strong winds into neighbouring Attica, destroying thousands of hectares of forest and scrubland and damaging or destroying around 200 homes in the coastal area of Porto Germeno.
The two suspects, an electrical engineer responsible for the project’s design and supervision and the contractor who installed the cables, were brought before the Thebes Public Prosecutor and face charges of arson with possible malice aforethought.
Police are also seeking the owner of the wind farm.
A similar incident involving the same network occurred only weeks earlier, about 100 metres from the current ignition point, burning around 60 acres before being contained.
The company carried out repair work on the damaged infrastructure, but this was apparently not sufficient and did not prevent the subsequent catastrophic blaze.
Around 500 firefighters, supported by fire engines, aircraft and teams from other European countries, continued battling the flames on Sunday as evacuations were ordered for several villages and an industrial park near Megara. Strong winds have repeatedly hampered aerial operations.
Nigel Farage has vowed to build a “broad coalition” capable of defeating Labour after Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe offered to cooperate with Reform UK ahead of the next general election.
The Reform leader said the party would need to attract voters from across the political spectrum, as well as millions who have previously stayed at home, to secure power.
“Patriotic voters believe in many of the same things, but only one party truly has the possibility of delivering change,” Farage said on Sunday.
“To deliver that change, I understand Reform UK will need the support of people from other parties, as well as millions who have never voted before. That is the broad coalition I am building.”
Farage said the election would be a “binary choice between Reform UK and Labour,” while pointing to his decision not to stand candidates against Brexit-supporting Conservatives in 2019 as evidence that he was prepared to “put country before party.”
His remarks followed a public appeal from Lowe, a former Reform MP who now leads the smaller Restore Britain party, for the two sides to overcome their bitter differences.
“If you are prepared to work together around serious policies, serious reform, and serious government, then so are we,” Lowe said in a video addressed to Farage.
However, Lowe attached five far-reaching conditions to any pact. These included mass deportations, a ban on the burka, a referendum on restoring the death penalty, and deep cuts to welfare spending. He also demanded that former Conservative ministers, including Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, be excluded from a future cabinet.
Farage did not endorse Lowe’s proposed terms and made clear that he would not sacrifice senior Reform figures to secure an agreement.
“I will never turn my back on my team,” he said.
Restore has demonstrated some ability to attract voters, winning 9% of first-preference votes in the recent Greater Manchester mayoral by-election and finishing ahead of the Conservatives. Nevertheless, its emergence risks dividing the right-wing vote and allowing Labour or other left-wing parties to win seats despite lacking majority support.
The debate over cooperation comes as Reform seeks to seize the political initiative on border control following the mass crossing into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta.
The party has announced “Operation Fortress,” under which Farage would order the Royal Navy to make the English Channel “impenetrable” to unauthorised migrant boats. A joint command involving the Navy, Royal Marines, RAF, and Army would intercept vessels, provide medical assessments and escort their occupants back to France or Belgium.
The proposal was unveiled after more than 60,000 migrants entered Ceuta from Morocco, prompting Spain to return tens of thousands across the border.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, said the crisis demonstrated what could happen when governments lost control of their frontiers.
“Britain is being invaded. Tory and Labour governments responded with a free ferry service and free hotels,” he said.
“Reform UK will respond by launching the largest military operation in the English Channel since World War Two.”
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood rejected comparisons with Spain, arguing that Channel crossings were “different and trickier” because boats pass through both French and British waters. Reform insists its plan would comply with international law and prevent migrants from risking their lives at sea.
Our Senior Fellow Rafe Heydel-Mankoo appeared on News 24 Australia (formerly Sky News Australia) to discuss the ongoing fallout from the “small army” of Moroccan young men who flooded the Spanish town of Ceuta recently.
Nearly half of all foreign nationals receiving Spain’s Minimum Living Income (IMV) are Moroccan, according to previously unpublished figures obtained by The Objective through a transparency request.
The National Social Security Institute recorded 139,446 foreign recipients of the benefit, including 69,517 Moroccan nationals. Foreigners therefore account for approximately half of the nearly 280,000 registered recipients, while Moroccans represent almost 50 percent of the foreign total.
The figures provide the first official nationality-by-nationality breakdown of foreign IMV recipients. Public statistics had previously distinguished only between Spanish and foreign claimants without identifying their countries of origin.
Romanians formed the second-largest foreign group, with 15,262 recipients, followed by Ukrainians with 4,612. Colombians accounted for 3,549 recipients, Algerians for 3,362, Italians for 3,043, and Bulgarians for 2,826.
Other recipients included Portuguese, Pakistani, Venezuelan, Brazilian, and Nigerian nationals. More than 100 nationalities were represented overall, alongside 215 people categorized under “other nationalities” and 175 stateless recipients.
The data counts only the registered recipient in each household, rather than every family member supported by the payment. The actual number of people benefiting from the program is therefore higher.
The totals also exclude the Basque Country and Navarre, which administer the Minimum Living Income independently under their special fiscal arrangements.
Social Security data also indicates that around 70 percent of Moroccan women of working age do not formally contribute to Spain’s employment system, reflecting particularly low labor-force participation among that group.
The publication of the figures comes at a politically sensitive time, given the much-reported migrant influx from the Arab country into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
Over 50,000 Moroccans are estimated to have entered the autonomous city illegally within the past week, and the number to have since been returned is heavily disputed.
