Paris
Leftist murdered: Thousands turned out to protest the killing of an anti-fascism activist by skinheads in Paris last week. Clément Méric, 19, was out shopping with friends when he exchanged words with the skinheads, who beat him to death with brass knuckles. Five suspects under investigation were linked to a far-right movement called the Third Way; the government said it would shut down its militant wing, the Revolutionary Nationalist Youths. But “there are still many other groups, probably around 15 to 20 of them, which are as violent, radical, racist, or anti-Semitic, if not more,” said political scientist Jean-Yves Camus. Far-right violence has been growing all year, as extremist groups joined a broader movement against the legalization of gay marriage.
Rome
Vatican’s gay cabal: The pope has conceded that there is, as long rumored, a strong gay faction in Vatican politics. “The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there,” Pope Francis told an organization of Latin American priests and nuns, according to the group’s summary of its audience last week. “We need to see what we can do.” Ahead of Pope Benedict XVI’s February resignation, Italian papers were full of stories about a gay cabal in the Vatican that used blackmail and corruption to influence policy. Some implied that the group engineered Benedict’s resignation. The Vatican declined to comment this week, and the Latin American group apologized for inadvertently making its minutes public.
Sarajevo, Bosnia
Stroller revolution: Thousands of women, many pushing infants in strollers, blockaded the Bosnian parliament building this week to protest the government’s failure to provide infants with national ID numbers. Political squabbling has held up legislation to update the ID system: Serbs want numbers that show which region a person comes from, while Croats and Bosnian Muslims want them assigned at random. The protest was sparked by the news that a sick baby couldn’t travel to Germany for a stem-cell transplant because her parents couldn’t get her a passport as she had no ID number.
