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Trump homeland secretary joins ICE in New York as immigration crackdown intensifies

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Trump homeland secretary joins ICE in New York as immigration crackdown intensifies
President Donald Trump’s top homeland security official joined officers as they carried out an immigration arrest in New York City on Tuesday, the latest effort to promote Trump’s nationwide crackdown as enforcement has intensified in recent days.
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Video: German Chancellor Accuses JD Vance of Election Interference

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Video: German Chancellor Accuses JD Vance of Election Interference

new video loaded: German Chancellor Accuses JD Vance of Election Interference

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German Chancellor Accuses JD Vance of Election Interference

At the Munich Security Conference, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rebuked U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s call for German leaders to allow the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, to enter their government.

Well, thank you and thanks to all the gathered delegates. We really reject any idea of cooperation between parties, other parties and these extreme right parties. It is not others to give us the advice to cooperate with these parties, which we are not working with for good reasons, especially when looking to the history of our country.

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International video coverage from The New York Times.

International video coverage from The New York Times.

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Sicilian mafia bosses complain on wiretaps about lack of quality recruits, reminisce about 'The Godfather'

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Sicilian mafia bosses complain on wiretaps about lack of quality recruits, reminisce about 'The Godfather'

What happened to never going against the family? 

Leaders within the Cosa Nostra, Sicily’s mafia, have reportedly complained that mob recruits aren’t what they used to be, as nearly 150 people associated with the group were arrested this week. 

“The level is low, today they arrest someone and if he becomes a turncoat they arrest another… wretched low-level,” former Cosa Nostra boss Giancarlo Romano said in a wiretapped conversation last year before he was killed in a shootout, according to BBC News. 

Romano also revealed that he was nostalgic for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic “The Godfather,” about a fictional mob family in New York. 

JAPANESE MOB BOSS PLEADS GUILTY IN NEW YORK TO CONSPIRING TO TRAFFIC NUCLEAR MATERIALS TO IRAN

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Carabinieri officers in Sicily.  (Valeria Ferraro/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“If you watch ‘The Godfather,’ the connections he had… he was very influential because of the power that he built at a political level,” Romano told his associate. 

He continued, “But us – what can we do? We’re on our knees, guys. We think we do business, but these days it’s others who do it. We used to be number one, now it’s others… we’re just gypsies.”

The mobsters also seem to like actor Robert De Niro, who played Vito Corleone in “The Godfather Part II,” and Spider-Man as other wiretaps revealed them as nicknames for each other, according to The Guardian. 

This week Sicilian officers conducted early morning raids, serving 183 arrest warrants on those believed to be associated with the Cosa Nostra for crimes ranging from mafia association to extortion and attempted murder. Of those, 36 were already in custody. 

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While raids like this week’s have weakened the Cosa Nostra, Italian officials warn they are still a threat. 

FORMER MAFIA HITMAN SENTENCED TO 25 YEARS FOR KILLING OF BOSTON CRIME BOSS JAMES ‘WHITEY’ BULGER

“The investigations that led to Tuesday’s arrests demonstrate that Cosa Nostra is alive and present and communicates with completely new communication channels,” Maurizio de Lucia, chief prosecutor of Sicily’s capital of Palermo, said at a press conference, referencing the mafia’s use of encrypted apps to communicate with each other. “It is doing business and trying to rebuild its army.”

Domenico La Padula, with the  Italian Carabinieri police, told The New York Times this week that the Cosa Nostra “is far from dead.”

He said they have been able to survive by finding “new energy and new strength,” with new recruits and 21st-century criminal ventures like online gambling. 

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Palermo, Sicily

Palermo, Sicily’s capital.  (Frank Bienewald/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The Cosa Nostra has remained “strongly tied to the rules of its founding fathers and its ancient rituals,” the Carabinieri told The Times, adding that their use of encrypted devices has “limited the need for traditional meetings and gatherings to the bare minimum.”

John Dickie, who wrote “Mafia Republic: Italy’s Criminal Curse and Cosa Nostra, A History of the Sicilian Mafia,” told The Telegraph that Italian authorities have become “fantastic” at surveilling the mafia. 

“Mafia dons have been caught boasting how good their anti-bugging devices were, at the same time that they were being bugged,” he revealed.

Dickie also agreed that the Cosa Nostra appears to be “in decline.” 

“You only have to read the phone taps where the bosses are saying ‘it’s not like it used to be,’” he said. “This is about the fifth time that the bosses have tried to reorganise the cupola since the early 1990s. Every time they have been thwarted. The authorities were on to them.”

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He continued, “These arrests mean that Cosa Nostra has another big task to rebuild, and they show that the state is still stronger than the mafia.”

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23-year-old man stabs six people killing, one in Austria, police say

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23-year-old man stabs six people killing, one in Austria, police say

A 23-year-old man stabbed five passersby in southern Austria on Saturday, killing one 14-year-old child and injuring five others.

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A 14-year-old child was killed and four others were injured after in a random stabbing attack in the city of Villach in southern Austria on Saturday.

Police say the attacker – a 23-year-old man – is a Syrian national with legal residence in Austria. The attacker randomly started stabbing passerby on the street, according to the police.

Authorities are currently investigating the attacker’s personal background and are looking for clues to identify a motive behind the tragic incident.

The victims were all men, a 14-year-old boy who was killed and four other men who were injured, two of them sustained minor injuries while the other two suffered critical wounds.

The attack happened in the Austrian province of Carinthia. Governor Peter Kaiser expressed his condolences to the family of the 14-year-old victim.

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“This outrageous atrocity must be met with harsh consequences. I have always said with clarity and unambiguously: Those who live in Carinthia, in Austria, have to respect the law and adjust to our rules and values,” said Governor Kaiser.

Austria’s far-right leader Herbert Kickl took to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to express his condolences to the family and underline what he believes is a pressing issue challenging Austrian society, immigration.

“I am angry, angry at those politicians who have allowed stabbings, rape, gang wars and other capital crimes to become the order of the day in Austria. This is a first-class failure of the system, for which a young man in Villach has now had to pay with his life”, said Kickl in a post on his party’s official page.

“We have described the complete change of system in our program for a “Fortress Austria”. We need rigorous action in the area of ​​asylum and must not continue to import conditions like those in Villach,” added Kickl.

Conservative party leader Christian Stocker said on X that the attacker “must be brought to justice and be punished with the full force of the law”.

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Stocker says that more political measures must be taken to avoid such horrific acts in the future and ensure a safe Austria.

Austria’s foreign ministry says almost 25,000 foreigners applied for asylum in 2024, with the largest group coming from Syria, followed by Afghanistan.

Asylum applications have dramatically decreased over the past two years. In 2022, Austria received just over 100,000 applications.

Several European countries, Austria among them, said in December that they’re suspending decisions on asylum claims by Syrian nationals because of the unclear political situation in their homeland following the toppling of longtime president Bashar al-Assad in December.

The issue of migration has taken centre stage across many European countries, leading to a rise in popularity of far-right parties, who’ve made significant inroads in elections.

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In Austria, migration was a prominent topic leading up to last year’s election, which resulted in the far-right Freedom Party security it first national election victory since World War II.

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