African Union and European Union countries should work together to strengthen protections for human rights defenders in Africa and migrants in Europe, Human Rights Watch said in recommendations to the AU and EU released today. The annual AU/EU human rights dialogue will be in Brussels on November 20, 2013.

Paul Sykes is David Cameron’s worst nightmare: a Ukip supporter with a pile of cash, and ready to spend it. By his own reckoning, this 70-year-old Yorkshire businessman has donated around £6 million to campaigns designed to keep Britain from the clutches of Europe. Now, after a lengthy period avoiding the political limelight, he is again about to dig deep into his own pocket to finance one more effort to sever the UK’s 40-year tie-up with the Continent.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso was right. Had the European Union instead of the United States fallen into partial government shutdown, the world would not have hesitated to use this as an opportunity to berate Europe and its influence as a global leader. The trade in caricatures about the EU is a favourite past time. World leaders stand ready to offer free advice to European governments and institutions that they see as having no capacity to lead.

Late-October elections in the Czech Republic yielded no parliamentary majority for any party. In an email interview, Robert Kron, a senior analyst at the Center for European Policy Analysis, explained why the vote was inconclusive and the prospects for coalition negotiations.

It’s a 7-per-cent tax, unseen and insidious. Do business across a provincial boundary and that’s what the federal government estimates you’ll face in extra costs due to the myriad of conflicting regulations, standards, registrations and restrictions. Canada’s Agreement on Internal Trade, a deal struck in the early days of Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government to reduce trade barriers between provinces, will be 20 years old in 2014.

Iceland wants to turn itself into a hub for business in the Arctic and strike more trade accords on its own after scrapping talks to join the European Union, its foreign minister said. “The focus of Iceland’s foreign policy is on the Arctic,” Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson said in an Oct. 25 interview in Reykjavik. The island will work for deeper cooperation within the Arctic Council and seek to provide a base in the region to help support trade with China, Singapore and South Korea, among others, he said.