Refuse collectors in the Netherlands are being followed by close protection officers after getting the power to issue red and yellow cards to force householders to properly recycle. The new football-style card system has led to a series of rubbish rage incidents in the south of the country, with collectors threatened, abused and one bin lorry hemmed in to a street by furious householders who had not had their waste taken away.

The Netherlands has been a pioneer in household recycling with some municipalities charging for the collection of bin bags which contain non-recyclable rubbish, and asking householders to separate refuse into up to seven different categories.

However officers known as the buitengewoon opsporingsambtenaar (BOA), who are not police but have the power to arrest suspects and issue fines, had to be brought in to protect the refuse collectors of Best, a town near Eindhoven, after they became responsible for not only collecting the rubbish but inspecting it and dishing out cards to recalcitrant households. Yellow cards are issued to warn people if they have wrongly separated their waste. Red cards are given to repeat offenders, and their rubbish is left to rot on the side of the road, leading to angry confrontations.

The mayor of Best, Hans Ubachs, said: “A garbage man was told: I know where your children go to school. That is unacceptable. “They must stay away from our people, and also from the people who work for us. Residents are not allowed to bother these men in their work, threaten them verbally or swear at them. Fortunately, no physical violence has yet been used.(theguardian)…[+]

Police in Canada have launched an investigation after it emerged that one of North America’s most influential white supremacists lives in Montreal and has been organising a small network of neo-Nazis in the city since 2016. An investigation by the Montreal Gazette unmasked the neo-Nazi propagandist who goes by the pseudonym Zeiger and is best known for his writings on the extreme rightwing news site Daily Stormer. In its report earlier this month, the paper identified him as a local IT consultant in his 30s named Gabriel Sohier Chaput.

The revelation made waves across North America, and cast a spotlight on the more than 100 hate groups and dozens of far-right figures in Canada. “Zeiger is one of the far right’s most credible, most competent and one of the most influential radio personalities and propagandists out there,” said Ryan Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups throughout North America. “He’s proven to be a very effective presence and personality amid this rise in the alt-right.”(theguardian)…[+]

The leaders of the Five Star Movement and the far-right League are to announce their nominee to be prime minister of Italy’s first populist government at a meeting with the president. Italian press reports suggest Giuseppe Conte, 54, a lawyer and M5S member, is to take the job after Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League, and the M5S leader Luigi Di Maio, ruled themselves out. The parties will also present their cabinet lineup and government programme to the president, Sergio Mattarella.

Speaking on Sunday, Salvini said: “We have agreed on the head and ministers and hope that nobody will veto a choice that represents the will of the majority of Italians.”

He had reiterated a day earlier that the prime minister would be neither Di Maio nor himself, but “a professional who contributed to the drafting of the contract”.Conte, relatively unknown in the political world, is a law professor at the University of Florence. He is Di Maio’s personal lawyer and the mastermind behind the anti-establishment party’s pledge to abolish more than 400 “useless laws” that it claims will cut bureaucracy and free up the economy.(theguardian)…[+]