Europe

The German police are learning from their past mistakes: one year after last year's notorious New Year's Eve mass attacks by migrants on German women in the city of Cologne, security forces in the city said they screened hundreds of North Africans at the main railway station on the last day of 2016 to prevent a repeat of last year's events.

“Hundreds of Nafris [North Africans] screened at main railway station,” Cologne police tweeted.

A manhunt was underway for a gunman who opened fire on people at a packed nightclub on the shores of Istanbul's Bosphorus waterway on New Year's morning, killing at least 39 people, including 15 foreigners, then fled the scene.

The suspect escaped the scene by changing clothes at the club after the attack, according to reports on Turkish media. There have also been rumors that there was a second attacker, but officials are now just talking about one terrorist.

Submitted by Economic Prism's MN Gordon via Acting-Man.com,

Conjuring Up Visions

Today’s a day for considering new hopes, new dreams, and new hallucinations.  The New Year is here, after all.  Now is the time to turn over a new leaf and start afresh. Naturally, 2017 will be the year you get exactly what’s coming to you. Both good and bad.  But what else will happen?

Image of a recently discarded vision…

This article by David Haggith was first published on The Great Recession Blog: 

Europeans must have been delighted to discover that one thing is working as well as it has since the start of the Great Recession. Behemoth banks that are failing are still able to pay their Christmas bonuses to their top executives and give nice dividends to their shareholders thanks to Super Mario Draghi. 

One year ago, when looking at the 20 most popular stories of 2015, we admitted that it was difficult to find a coherent theme of the key events that shook the world, and which you, our readers, found most interesting and notable: