Independence is the 'DNA of central banks', Bundesbank president says
"Independence of central banks is the DNA of central banks," Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said. "So I believe it is dangerous to play with the independence of a central bank."
A Bloomberg report on Wednesday saying that Trump was likely to fire Powell soon sparked a drop in stocks and the dollar, and a rise in Treasury yields.
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Scotsman
3 hours ago
- Scotsman
Huge policing operation for Trump's Scotland visit - 'Few if any cops will not be impacted'
Strict airspace regulations will also be in place as part of vast security operation Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The head of the Scottish Police Federation has said all officers in Scotland could be affected by the visit this week of US president Donald Trump. David Threadgold, who chairs the body that represents rank and file officers, said some may be expected to work 12-hour shifts, posing a 'challenge' for how they eat, sleep and rest. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Strict airspace restrictions will also be in place over Mr Trump's inaugural Scottish golf resort as part of a vast security operation. Donald Trump has spoken fondly of his links to Scotland (Picture: Andy Buchanan) | AFP via Getty Images Speculation mounted about a potential visit of the president this month when Police Scotland confirmed it was in the early stages of planning for such an event. In Washington DC on Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Mr Trump will visit both of his golf courses in Scotland - Turnberry in Ayrshire and Menie in Aberdeenshire - between July 25 and 29. Mr Threadgold told Scotland on Sunday: 'This is a huge policing event for Scotland and we will require mutual aid because of the huge demand on my colleagues. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Very few if any cops will not be impacted by next week's visit and beyond. 'I suppose the natural comparison in terms of scale is previous presidential visits and COP26. 'We are talking about bespoke workforce plans because although this is a well-established workforce we are cognisant we cannot deliver this without impacting on individual officers across the country. 'What that means in simple terms is some may be required to work 12-hour shifts for example, which normally wouldn't happen. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'That is the type of change cops will see during this event. 'We also need to consider how officers will eat and drink and rest during this policing which will be a challenge.' He stressed that despite the added pressures the public should be reassured officers will continue to deliver community policing. 'This is already a difficult time for Police Scotland as they are trying to organise and deliver this at short notice during a period of high annual leave,' he said. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Time off 'very unlikely' 'We are not going to be telling officers they cannot go on holiday, but those who ask for time off at short notice are very unlikely to get it. 'Operation Roll is a very high demand event but we will continue to deliver community policing. 'Inevitably there will be an impact on our ability to do that, but the public should be reassured that emergencies will still be responded to, there just might be an impact on service delivery. 'There are so many people committed to this event but the public should be confident that we are excellent at what we do and our experience of policing things like Operation Unicorn and the Commonwealth Games should we can deliver.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Police Scotland is reported to have requested extra officers from across the UK to support the upcoming visit by Mr Trump. Assistant Chief Constable Emma Bond said a policing plan will be in place to 'maintain public safety, balance rights to peaceful protest and minimise disruption,' adding: 'The visit will require a significant police operation using local, national and specialist resources from across Police Scotland, supported by colleagues from other UK police forces as part of mutual aid arrangements. "Officers make sacrifices every day to keep people safe, and their dedication and professionalism is the reason we manage to deliver significant operations." Flying regulations Notices filed by the Civil Aviation Authority reveal that sweeping flying regulations will be put in place over the Aberdeenshire site for nearly two weeks. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad While Mr Trump's visit - his first to his mother's homeland since 2023 - will begin on Friday, the CAA restrictions began today, and will remain in place until 10 August. It means that over that 22 day period, no unmanned aircraft will be allowed to fly below 1,000 feet within a one mile radius surrounding Trump International Golf Links. The ban not only covers drones, but parachutes, paramotors, small balloons, and any kites, according to the documentation drawn up by the CAA's regulators. During Mr Trump's visit to Scotland in his first term in office, widespread protests included a paraglider who descended on his Turnberry resort in South Ayrshire brandishing a banner which read 'Trump: well below par'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In the wake of the incident in July 2018, Police Scotland warned the paraglider that they had put themselves in 'grave danger,' given armed officers from the US and the UK were protecting Mr Trump, who had arrived at Turnberry shortly beforehand. A 55-year-old man was subsequently arrested, charged and released pending further inquiries, while that November, Police Scotland said a 35-year-old man had been reported to the procurator fiscal in connection with the incident. However, the Crown Office announced the following year that no criminal proceedings would be brought. Series of upcoming tournaments Mr Trump's Aberdeenshire resort is set to host a series of tournaments in the coming weeks. The Legends Tour Staysure PGA Seniors Championship, an event featuring veterans including Colin Montgomerie, Paul Lawrie, and José María Olazábal will be staged between 31 July and 3 August. It will be followed by the DP World Tour Next Championship, which takes place between 7 August and 10 August. But the CAA restrictions will be in place for ten days before the first of the two tournaments begin. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Balmedie resort is also set to welcome players to its new course come 13 August. Mr Trump is expected to take part in the opening ceremony for the recently constructed links, named after his mother, when he visits. It has already been confirmed Mr Trump will meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer while in Aberdeen, while plans are being put in place for the president to meet First Minister John Swinney, according to the Scottish Government. The president will return to the UK in September for his second state visit. Last week, Mr Trump told the BBC the north-east of Scotland - the oil and gas capital of Europe - should "get rid of the windmills and bring back the oil". Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The US president has long been an opponent of wind farms, objecting to a development off the coast of Aberdeen which can be seen from his golf course. There had also been speculation the King would host the American leader in Scotland after Charles suggested the meeting, at Balmoral or Dumfries House, in a letter he wrote to Mr Trump in February inviting him to make the state visit.
Scotsman
3 hours ago
- Scotsman
Huge policing operation for Trump's Scotland visit - 'Few if any cops will not be impacted'
Strict airspace regulations will also be in place as part of vast security operation Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The head of the Scottish Police Federation has said all officers in Scotland could be affected by the visit this week of US president Donald Trump. David Threadgold, who chairs the body that represents rank and file officers, said some may be expected to work 12-hour shifts, posing a 'challenge' for how they eat, sleep and rest. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Strict airspace restrictions will also be in place over Mr Trump's inaugural Scottish golf resort as part of a vast security operation. Donald Trump has spoken fondly of his links to Scotland (Picture: Andy Buchanan) | AFP via Getty Images Speculation mounted about a potential visit of the president this month when Police Scotland confirmed it was in the early stages of planning for such an event. In Washington DC on Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Mr Trump will visit both of his golf courses in Scotland - Turnberry in Ayrshire and Menie in Aberdeenshire - between July 25 and 29. Mr Threadgold told Scotland on Sunday: 'This is a huge policing event for Scotland and we will require mutual aid because of the huge demand on my colleagues. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Very few if any cops will not be impacted by next week's visit and beyond. 'I suppose the natural comparison in terms of scale is previous presidential visits and COP26. 'We are talking about bespoke workforce plans because although this is a well-established workforce we are cognisant we cannot deliver this without impacting on individual officers across the country. 'What that means in simple terms is some may be required to work 12-hour shifts for example, which normally wouldn't happen. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'That is the type of change cops will see during this event. 'We also need to consider how officers will eat and drink and rest during this policing which will be a challenge.' He stressed that despite the added pressures the public should be reassured officers will continue to deliver community policing. 'This is already a difficult time for Police Scotland as they are trying to organise and deliver this at short notice during a period of high annual leave,' he said. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Time off 'very unlikely' 'We are not going to be telling officers they cannot go on holiday, but those who ask for time off at short notice are very unlikely to get it. 'Operation Roll is a very high demand event but we will continue to deliver community policing. 'Inevitably there will be an impact on our ability to do that, but the public should be reassured that emergencies will still be responded to, there just might be an impact on service delivery. 'There are so many people committed to this event but the public should be confident that we are excellent at what we do and our experience of policing things like Operation Unicorn and the Commonwealth Games should we can deliver.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Police Scotland is reported to have requested extra officers from across the UK to support the upcoming visit by Mr Trump. Assistant Chief Constable Emma Bond said a policing plan will be in place to 'maintain public safety, balance rights to peaceful protest and minimise disruption,' adding: 'The visit will require a significant police operation using local, national and specialist resources from across Police Scotland, supported by colleagues from other UK police forces as part of mutual aid arrangements. "Officers make sacrifices every day to keep people safe, and their dedication and professionalism is the reason we manage to deliver significant operations." Flying regulations Notices filed by the Civil Aviation Authority reveal that sweeping flying regulations will be put in place over the Aberdeenshire site for nearly two weeks. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad While Mr Trump's visit - his first to his mother's homeland since 2023 - will begin on Friday, the CAA restrictions began today, and will remain in place until 10 August. It means that over that 22 day period, no unmanned aircraft will be allowed to fly below 1,000 feet within a one mile radius surrounding Trump International Golf Links. The ban not only covers drones, but parachutes, paramotors, small balloons, and any kites, according to the documentation drawn up by the CAA's regulators. During Mr Trump's visit to Scotland in his first term in office, widespread protests included a paraglider who descended on his Turnberry resort in South Ayrshire brandishing a banner which read 'Trump: well below par'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In the wake of the incident in July 2018, Police Scotland warned the paraglider that they had put themselves in 'grave danger,' given armed officers from the US and the UK were protecting Mr Trump, who had arrived at Turnberry shortly beforehand. A 55-year-old man was subsequently arrested, charged and released pending further inquiries, while that November, Police Scotland said a 35-year-old man had been reported to the procurator fiscal in connection with the incident. However, the Crown Office announced the following year that no criminal proceedings would be brought. Series of upcoming tournaments Mr Trump's Aberdeenshire resort is set to host a series of tournaments in the coming weeks. The Legends Tour Staysure PGA Seniors Championship, an event featuring veterans including Colin Montgomerie, Paul Lawrie, and José María Olazábal will be staged between 31 July and 3 August. It will be followed by the DP World Tour Next Championship, which takes place between 7 August and 10 August. But the CAA restrictions will be in place for ten days before the first of the two tournaments begin. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Balmedie resort is also set to welcome players to its new course come 13 August. Mr Trump is expected to take part in the opening ceremony for the recently constructed links, named after his mother, when he visits. It has already been confirmed Mr Trump will meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer while in Aberdeen, while plans are being put in place for the president to meet First Minister John Swinney, according to the Scottish Government. The president will return to the UK in September for his second state visit. Last week, Mr Trump told the BBC the north-east of Scotland - the oil and gas capital of Europe - should "get rid of the windmills and bring back the oil". Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The US president has long been an opponent of wind farms, objecting to a development off the coast of Aberdeen which can be seen from his golf course. There had also been speculation the King would host the American leader in Scotland after Charles suggested the meeting, at Balmoral or Dumfries House, in a letter he wrote to Mr Trump in February inviting him to make the state visit.
Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
On patrol with Poland's ultra-nationalist border vigilantes
Binoculars in hand and slathered with homemade bug spray, Maly and Marius head into the wilderness, their eyes peeled for any sign of asylum seekers in the woods of north-west Poland. As they creep along the border with Germany, Maly scans the treeline while Marius checks the ground for footprints. With no migrants in sight, the pair end the patrol and return to their campsite to swap shifts with other volunteers near Stolec, a village by the Krzyz Barnima border crossing. Then a cyclist appears, and Marius gives him a friendly look. Sometimes, he says, locals come over to congratulate them for defending Europe's borders. 'Get a real job!' the cyclist shouts in Polish as he furiously rides away. Suffice to say, this was no ordinary ride-along with Polish border guards – Maly and Marius are vigilantes, the self-appointed guardians of a remote stretch of woodland on the Polish-German border that they say is so badly protected they need to do it themselves. Over the past fortnight, 'citizens' patrol' groups have sprung up across Poland as part of an escalating diplomatic spat with the German government, under which Friedrich Merz, the country's chancellor, is turning away asylum seekers from its land borders. The decision has caused outrage among Polish Right-wingers and some border communities, who claim that their side of the frontier risks becoming a dumping ground for rejected asylum seekers and illegal migrants. In an attempt to placate the vigilantes, Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, this month deployed armed border guards to all 52 crossings with Germany, including the spot where Maly and Marius conduct their patrols. But the gesture seems to have backfired – the vigilantes have now declared a David-and-Goliath style victory over the Polish government, and are vowing to keep up the patrols unless further demands are met. While the volunteers here say they are an apolitical grassroots organisation, the wider 'citizens' patrol' movement appears to be driven by the Polish hard-Right, and in particular Robert Bakiewicz, a nationalist activist. Since the patrols started, Mr Bakiewicz and other Right-wing activists have flooded the internet with viral videos, which purportedly show German police vans secretly dropping off unwanted migrants on the Polish side of the border. In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Bakiewicz accused the German government of waging 'hybrid warfare' on Poland by pushing back asylum seekers, echoing the West's term for Russian sabotage attacks on Nato allies. 'As you know, the Russians have been trying to destabilise the situation by pushing migrants from the east,' he said, referring to the influx of migrants from Belarus, and more recently, Belarus via Lithuania. 'Now the Germans are doing the same to us, and because our government is Germany-friendly, they allow it to happen.' Mr Bakiewicz claimed Germany's actions were rooted in jealousy of Poland's vast economic success over the past few decades. 'Poland is getting stronger and stronger, and this is their way of making Poland weaker,' he said. Germany denies that its new border policies are unlawful. Some vigilantes believe they have managed to stop German border forces from sending asylum seekers back to Poland. 'We've seen German police vans with tinted windows coming to the border, most likely full of asylum seekers,' says one 51-year-old patrol member, also named Marius, who works as a welder in the Stolec area. 'When they saw us, the car turned around. In my opinion, we scared them away.' Patricia, 45, another volunteer who patrols the forests surrounding Stolec, adds: 'We consider it a success because we forced the government to do something. But the government has only sent the guards here for 30 days, and we are afraid after that the roads will be empty. So we still patrol. We want the controls to be permanent.' In May, Mr Merz ordered his border guards to turn back asylum seekers under pressure from the far-Right, anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party, which came second in last February's elections and is now the de facto opposition. The chancellor has also faced public anger over a string of recent terror attacks in Germany committed by asylum seekers facing deportation orders. Some vigilantes say this is a key part of their motivation – they fear that Germany is pushing mentally ill or extremist asylum seekers onto their side of the border, who may then commit similar atrocities. Back at the border near Stolec, Maly and Marius have allowed The Telegraph to join them for another sortie on the condition that their faces and surnames are not published. While they insist they are not breaking the law, the Polish government has threatened to prosecute anyone suspected of impersonating border guards or hindering their work. During that patrol, the pair once again found no migrants, though they did lead The Telegraph to a clearing where soiled clothing was strewn on the ground. 'We think maybe this was a meeting point with smugglers where they changed their clothes and left,' says Maly. 'But we are not sure if they were coming into Poland or going to Germany.' Standing at the patrol's makeshift headquarters, a green gazebo full of high-viz jackets, coffee mugs and water bottles, next to a border checkpoint manned by Polish soldiers with assault rifles, Marius later says: 'We get on well with the border guards, there is no hostility.' The vigilantes' presence seems to be tolerated by two young border guards on the crossing, perhaps because they are too busy flagging down drivers to check their passports and inspect their car boots. Many of the drivers seem far from happy about the checks, which have been imposed mainly to appease the vigilante border patrols. 'I've always felt strongly about security at the border,' says Marius, 'but many Polish people are hostile to us. The country is very divided, and they are not thinking about the well-being of Poland – they are thinking about ideology.' As the end of the week draws near, more vigilantes turn up at the checkpoint, hoping to join in. Among them is Maksymilian Katarzynski, a teenager who has dressed up in tactical-style fatigues with the Polish flag on the epaulettes. Viewed from a distance, he could easily be mistaken for a Polish border guard, and that seems to be the idea. But the 19-year-old says he is not worried about the legal consequences because he is acting out of patriotism. 'If we see any illegal persons, we will apprehend them and take them to border control,' he says, as he sets up a tent near the border checkpoint with a 'no illegal immigration' banner. 'I'm here as a duty to my society.' While there is no doubt that asylum seekers are active on the German-Polish border, official statistics suggest the numbers are low compared to other migration routes in Europe. In mid-May, when the new German border rules were introduced, the total number of people requesting asylum at Germany's nine land borders was recorded as between two and 13 per day, peaking on May 17. In total, 105 asylum seekers were rejected from Germany's land borders during that period, with only 28 of those rejections taking place at the Polish-German border. By comparison, as many as 1,100 migrants have been known to cross the English Channel on small boats in a single day. Critics of the vigilantes say this means they are over-reacting to the problems at the border, and that their work potentially risks benefiting their arch-foe Russia, which revels in spreading disinformation across Europe, particularly around migration. The flood of public anger about poor border security has also been a huge benefit to Poland's Right-wing opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS). Last month, Karol Nawrocki, the party's preferred candidate in the Polish presidential elections, swept to victory and has since become one of the border patrollers' most vocal cheerleaders. Once he is sworn in as president next month, Mr Nawrocki will be able to veto key legislation by Mr Tusk's government, which has the potential to collapse his centrist coalition. Rumours abound in Warsaw that encouraging anger towards the Tusk government in the border regions could also be part of PiS's strategy.
