Witnesses said he then suddenly opened the driver’s door, and the car detonated into a fireball.A woman in the car directly behind the Fiat, told the daily, Corriere della Sera: “I had just said to my boyfriend, ‘Don’t you smell something strange?’ Then there was the blast That man didn’t even try to get out of the car. An apparent attempt to blow up a McDonald’s drive-in restaurant in northern Italy was foiled on Sunday but the suspected terrorist died when his car exploded with him strapped inside.
Witnesses said a man, later identified as Moustafa Chaouki, a native of Casablanca, drove his Fiat Tempra into the queue of cars waiting at the restaurant in Brescia, 100km east of Milan, at 10 pm. He has been suspended from the socialist group in the parliament.A spokesman for Pat Cox, president of the European Parliament, described the allegations as “unsubstantiated” and challenged the MEP to produce his evidence.. He claims to have kept a secret register of MEPs’ faked attendances dating back to February 2001.

He did not name individual parliamentarians, but said the behaviour of 57 of Germany’s 102 MEPs was “problematic”.His revelations have infuriated MEPs whose movements were tracked by Mr Martin, who says he has documented about 7,200 abuses. “There are countless MEPs who go to Strasbourg and Brussels simply to pick up the €262. They have told me so themselves.”Mr Martin, aged 46, has been a Euro MP since 1999 but worked previously as an investigative reporter for Der Spiegel, publishing books on the pharmaceutical industry and a critique of globalisation. A senior member of the European parliament yesterday exposed what he claimed was widespread corruption at the Strasbourg assembly by revealing that nearly 200 of his fellow Euro MPs had faked attendance at parliamentary sessions in order to pick up generous daily allowances.
Hans-Peter Martin, an Austrian Social Democrat MEP, said he had seen scores of colleagues signing on for parliamentary sessions which they had missed, to claim a daily attendance allowance of €262 (£175).”I have witnessed almost 200 MEPs hurrying to the central register to sign on for a session and then watched them drive to the nearest airport or station,” Mr Martin told Germany’s Bild Zeitung newspaper.

She gave him three babies, kept her model figure, and set up a charity to help entrepreneurs. Oh – and they take it in turns to read bedtime stories to their brood.. The one-time wife of bodyguard Daniel Ducruet was engaged to Franco the elephant trainer before settling down with a circus acrobat last September.JordanKing Abdullah, a former racing champion, played his trump card when he wed Queen Rania. in jeans.MonacoThe Grimaldi family’s reputation hasn’t been helped by the antics of Princess Stephanie. And their actions that day will probably confirm the monarchy’s safety and popularity for at least another generation.Are you watching, Buckingham Palace?HOW THE COMPETITION SHAPES UPNorwayArguably the most “evolved” of the Euro-royals, Crown Prince Haakon attended state school, married a single mother, sired a female heir (a first for Norway), and reads that socialist Henrik Ibsen And he frequents coffee bars… They need to display their commitment to the people as convincingly as their parents.

Many republicans try to square the circle by declaring themselves “juancarlistas”, a sort of provisional adhesion to the monarchy so long as Juan Carlos is king.A question mark therefore hangs over the future of a post-Juan Carlos monarchy. The media’s sympathetic approach may not transfer automatically to King Felipe, despite the prince’s efforts to earn the nation’s affection too. That’s why last Wednesday’s appearance of the three junior royals was so important. In little more than half a century, Spain ejected three kings and installed two Republics…