Austria: Kurz tackles immigration at school level

Austria: Kurz tackles immigration at school level

Via the Austrian Times:

Integration Secretary Sebastian Kurz, 26, was at the ministry of interior affairs this week discussing with educationalists whether schools were failing in their mission of integration.

(...)

Going further, he stated how: ‘In the capital, the percentage of people of migrant stock rises to 39%. Vienna like many other European capitals has 150 languages spoken in its schools. At primary school level, one in two pupils is of a migration background, mostly from the Balkans and Turkey.

Under the motto, ‘Integration through achievement’, the question of language was a major theme as schools are frequently the last bastions of community in urban settings. Some Viennese schools in districts like Brigitenau and Ottakring have a migrant intake that is over 80%. 

(source)

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Germany: Al-Qaeda plans buried in porn

Germany: Al-Qaeda plans buried in porn

Via CNN:

On May 16 last year, a 22-year-old Austrian named Maqsood Lodin was being questioned by police in Berlin. He had recently returned from Pakistan via Budapest, Hungary, and then traveled overland to Germany. His interrogators were surprised to find that hidden in his underpants were a digital storage device and memory cards.

Buried inside them was a pornographic video called "Kick Ass" -- and a file marked "Sexy Tanja."

Several weeks later, after laborious efforts to crack a password and software to make the file almost invisible, German investigators discovered encoded inside the actual video a treasure trove of intelligence -- more than 100 al Qaeda documents that included an inside track on some of the terror group's most audacious plots and a road map for future operations.

Future plots include the idea of seizing cruise ships and carrying out attacks in Europe similar to the gun attacks by Pakistani militants that paralyzed the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008. Ten gunmen killed 164 people in that three-day rampage.

Terrorist training manuals in PDF format in German, English and Arabic were among the documents, too, according to intelligence sources.

(source)

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Austria: Integration secretary plans home visit initiative

Austria: Integration secretary plans home visit initiative

Via the Austrian Times:

Social workers will visit badly integrated foreigners at home to help them learning German, People’s Party (ÖVP) Integration Secretary Sebastian Kurz announced yesterday (Tues).

Kurz said his office planned to expand a successful Viennese pilot project concept based on programmes in Switzerland and Australia to several other Austrian towns and cities in the coming months. The project has a budget of 300,000 Euros, according to Austria’s first state secretary for integration who was sworn in around one year ago.

(source)

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Austria: Far-right party probed over ‘racist’ poster slammed by Morocco as ‘humiliating’ (update: FPÖ apologizes)

Austria: Far-right party probed over ‘racist’ poster slammed by Morocco as ‘humiliating’

(APA/ROBERT PARIGGER)

Update: FPÖ apologized and removed the posters

Via AFP:

Austrian prosecutors said Friday they are investigating the far-right Freedom Party for alleged incitement of racial hatred after complaints about campaign posters for local elections next month.

The FPOe party’s posters for the election in the western city of Innsbruck carry the slogan “Heimat-Liebe statt Marokkaner-Diebe,” meaning “Patriotism not thieving Moroccans.”

The Moroccan embassy in Vienna issued an angry statement attacking what it called the FPOe’s “defamatory and discriminatory behavior” and accusing it of “humiliating, stigmatizing and discriminating against” the Moroccan community.

(source)

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Austria: Catholic convert speaks out after fleeing her Muslim family following 'honour killing' threat

Austria: Catholic convert speaks out after fleeing her Muslim family following 'honour killing' threat

Via the Daily Mail (h/t DW):

Miss James, who grew up in a rural village near the Kashmir mountains, said her problems began when she was 15 and the family lived in the Austrian city of Linz.

While she enjoyed the freedoms of Western culture, such as wearing lipstick and eyeliner, her conservative parents, who were brought together in an arranged marriage, disapproved.

(...)

So began three years of violence between them, Miss James claimed, based on her refusal to be in a forced marriage and the embarrassment it caused the family's Pakistani peers in Austria.

(source)

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Vienna: "Diversity and Tolerance" contest

Vienna: "Diversity and Tolerance" contest

First Prize winner of the U. S. Embassy Vienna Video Contest "Diversity and Tolerance"

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Vienna: Boys Choir Backs Integration Through Music

Vienna: Boys Choir Backs Integration Through Music

Via the Austrian Times:

Immigrant children in Austria are being given singing lessons organised by the Vienna Boys choir as part of a project to encourage integration through music.

The idea that started as a pilot scheme three years ago has now grown so popular that more than 600 children across the capital Vienna are now getting free singing lessons.

(source)

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Austria: FPÖ meet with Chechen President, discuss encouraging return of Chechen refugees

Austria: FPÖ meet with Chechen President, discuss encouraging return of Chechen refugees

Via the Austrian Times:

The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been harshly criticised for meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

(...)

Hübner and FPÖ Vienna whip Johann Gudenus – who was also part of the FPÖ delegation – said they agreed with Kadyrov and his team about the creation of a cultural association for Chechen refugees in Austria. The Austrian right-wing politicians said the planned club should encourage them to return to their home country. Gudenus said: "We were able to convince ourselves that Kadyrov would not persecute them."

(source)

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