DAILY IOE ROUND UP

Obama schedule in Oslo

From Norwegian: According to a preliminary announcement from the White House, Barack and Michelle Obama will come to Norway Dec 10th, and leave the next day (missing the Noble concert). Planned for Obama: Noble prize ceremony + reception, lunch by the Norwegian king and queen, visit of the Noble institute and meeting the Noble committee. The Obama's will also inaugurate an exhibition about the peace prize winner (Obama) by British photographer Marcus Bleasdale. According to one report Obama will meet with PM Stoltenberg and talk about climate, energy and Afghanistan.

Noble Prize to Vaclav Klaus

From Danish: Danish People's Party suggests Czech president Vaclav Klaus should receive the next Noble Prize for his fight against the Lisbon Treaty.

Finnish immigrant forces Italian schools to remove crosses

(ANSA) - Strasbourg, November 3 - In a legal landmark that sparked a storm in Italy, the European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday ruled that crucifixes in Italian classrooms were a violation of parents' rights to educate their kids according to their principles.

Upholding a plea from a Finnish immigrant to Italy, the Strasbourg-based court also said the crosses ran counter to a child's own rights to freedom of religious choice.

The Finnish woman, Soile Lautsi, had vainly sued in various Italian courts to have crosses removed from her children's classroom near Padua before she turned to the European court.

The Italian government was ordered to pay Lautsi, an Italian citizen, 5,000 euros in ''moral damages''.

Islamic Business Wins Academic Following

At semiannual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Istanbul last month, talk was largely dominated, inevitably, by the economic crisis and its aftermath. But suitably enough, given the location, another topic also came to the fore: the role of Islamic finance, a fast-developing sector of the global banking industry that has remained remarkably resilient through the slowdown.

With the value of assets in Islamic banks now close to $1 trillion and the industry growing at an estimated annual rate of 15 to 20 percent, business students are increasingly eager to cash in. Universities are increasingly offering new postgraduate programs in Islamic finance to help them do it.

Norwegian army kills innocent fishermen

From Norwegian: Somalis accuse Norwegian soldiers of killing two fishermen off the coast of Somalia. The Norwegians claim they were fired upon first. One fisherman was Somali, the other from Yemen. Three others were wounded in the incident.

Somalis can only use Koran ringtones

From Dutch: A 19 year old was whipped for having an illegal ringtone in Kismayo.

“Half of US intelligence info came from detainees”

Recently declassified documents reveal that half of all human intelligence the US government had on Al-Qaeda was discovered through detainee interrogations, Christopher Farrell from Judicial Watch told RT.

“It hadn’t been previously produced in any other record,” he said.

At the end of October, the US Justice Department released documents that revealed the FBI was investigating CIA prisons. On a 2002 visit to a CIA jail, officials found prisoners “manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock”.

'Consensus' around Belgian PM for top EU job: diplomats

Brussels -- "There is a consensus around his name, which is rare among the 27" EU nations, said one European diplomat. "No-one is opposed to him and many (leaders) are asking him to accept."

A second source echoed that stance, saying "no-one else can get unanimity" following informal discussions between EU heads of government and state at a two-day summit in Brussels last week.

Centre-right van Rompuy's spokesman Dirk De Backer issued a straight "no comment" when contacted by AFP on Monday.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at the summit's end on Friday that France and Germany will join forces to choose Europe's first full-time president, after sweeping Tony Blair towards the Brussels exit.

Sarkozy said he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had agreed to back "the same candidate," adding that the pair shared the same "vision" for two new top jobs to be created under the Lisbon Treaty, and their favoured runners.

Van Rompuy, 62, is "not a candidate, but he is the favourite," wrote Belgian daily De Standaard on Monday, adding that he could be "the most acceptable (name) under a Franco-German 'deal'."

Fatwa against Indian national song

NEW DELHI: Darul Uloom Deoband has asked Muslims in India to stop reciting Vande Mataram.

Concluding a three-day conference on Tuesday held in Deoband, the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind declared the act unislamic. Home Minister P Chidambaram was also present. The conference adopted 25 resolutions demanding the government stop interfering in affairs of minorities.

“The fatwa by the Darul Uloom opposing recitation of Vande Mataram is correct,” said one of the resolutions.

McCain's mother suffers fall in Portugal

A Lisbon hospital says it has discharged the 97-year-old mother of U.S. Senator John McCain after a weeklong stay following a fall.

The Sao Jose hospital said Wednesday that Roberta McCain left the neurology ward where she had been under observation.

Senator McCain's office in Washington said his mother had fainted and injured her head last Thursday while on vacation in the Portuguese capital.

Obama's brother has different dreams from his father

UANGZHOU, Nov 4 — US President Barack Obama’s half-brother made a rare appearance today in southern China, his home for seven years, to launch a novel he says draws on his painful childhood under an abusive father.

Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo — who had the same, late, father as the US President — has kept a low public profile since reports surfaced last year that he was living and working in the southern Chinese capitalist and manufacturing haven of Shenzhen, around an hour’s train ride from Hong Kong.

After repeatedly shunning media attention, Ndesandjo’s first major public appearance to launch his debut novel comes less than two weeks before the US president travels to China for the first time.

While he said his work, “Nairobi to Shenzhen” is a fictional account, it started off nearly 10 years ago as an autobiography and “reflects many experiences in my own life as a child brought up in Kenya” including a troubled relationship with his father.

“My mother used to say of my father, he’s a brilliant man but a social failure,” Ndesandjo told reporters at a press conference in Guangzhou, near his adopted city of Shenzhen.

“I remember times in my house when I would hear screams and I would hear my mother’s pain.” His American mother Ruth was his father’s third wife.

Somali rebels close women's organizations

Somalia's hardline al Shabaab insurgents closed three grassroots women's organizations in the rebel-held town of Balad Hawa to stop women from going to work, a rebel leader said.

The group wants to impose its own version of Islamic law on areas it controls, and Washington says it is al Qaeda's proxy in the Horn of African nation.

“We have taken this step after we recognized that women need to stay in their homes and take care of their children ... Islam does not allow women to go to offices,” Maalim Daaud Mohmed, the chairman of Balad Hawa, told Reuters by telephone.

Chinese giant to buy US oil assets: company

Norwegian energy group Statoil said on Wednesday it was selling some of its oil assets in the United States to China's state-owned CNOOC, marking the first step by a Chinese energy major into the US market.

The sale, announced along with the company's quarterly results, involves a limited stake in four exploitation licences acquired by Statoil in 2007 and 2008 for deep-water blocks.

Russian World

A new term could be introduced which would denote a community of the countries united by the Russian culture, said Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia.

"The term 'a Russian world country' could be introduced into usage. It would mean that a country sees itself as part of the Russian world, if it uses Russian as the language of international communication, promotes the Russian culture, and preserves the general historical memory," Patriarch Kirill said at the opening of the 3rd Russian World Assembly in Moscow on Tuesday.

Today the nations inhabiting the area of the historical Rus should "realize their being part of the same civilization and see the Russian world as their common supranational project," the Patriarch said.

It is important to preserve the unique deep meaning of the term "Russian world" and to preserve original Russian cultural tradition, Patriarch Kirill said.

When Nazis marched through London

This newly-released footage is really quite terrifying.

It was unearthed by a Discovery Channel programme to be aired next week called Wartime London, presented by London cabby Harry Harris.

It shows the funeral, in 1936, of the German Ambassador to Britain, Leopold von Hoesch in 1936.

After a fatal stroke a state funeral was held for him, a salute of nineteen guns was fired in Hyde Park, and Grenadier Guards marched down the Mall. Shoulder to shoulder with Nazi soldiers.

They carried a coffin draped in a swastika, while crowds lined the road and balconies, a terrifyingly large number of them giving the Nazi salute.

by Islam In Europe