The war of words between President Barack Obama and Republicans lawmakers and governors over the issue of letting Syrian refugees into the United States escalated yesterday, with the president describing the position of GOP governors who want to block the settlement o Syrian refugees in their states, and of lawmakers who want to block funds for the refugee resettlement program, as “offensive and hysterical.” House Speaker Paul Ryan announced on Tuesday that he had formed a taskforce to examine ways to block the administration’s refugee resettlement program. “This is a moment where it is better to be safe than to be sorry,” he said.

Republican lawmakers in the House are drafting a bill which would block federal funding for resettling Syrian refugees in the United States until the federal government adopts a “processes to ensure that refugee and related programs are not able to be co-opted by would-be terrorists.” The draft bill also requires that the administration create a “longer-term monitoring process” to track Syrian refugees in the United States.

France will this week call for an effective suspension of the Schengen Agreement on open borders across Europe. The agreement was in 1985 in the town of Schengen in Luxembourg. It removes border checks within Europe, meaning that anyone. France will not call for a formal abrogation of the agreement, but would rather demand that all members of the Schengen Zone begin border identity checks, a move which amount to an effective suspension of the 30-year old agreement

The Berlin-based Ifo Institute, a German center for economic studies, has increased its estimates of German government expenditure on refugees. The Ifo Institute now expects the costs to amount to 21.1 billion euros for 2015 alone, based on the assumption that 1.1 million refugees will arrive in Germany by the end of the year. The Institute previously estimated the costs for the state at 10 billion euros for the first twelve months, just to cover accommodation and food for 800,000 people.

A leading German economist says that Germany stands to gain from the wave of migrants arriving in the country. The long-term economic gains from the large number of refugees arriving in Germany, he said, will far outweigh the considerable immediate costs Germany faces. Germany is facing an imminent demographic crisis, which would see the country’s working population shrink by around 4.5 million over the next decade unless a sufficient number of immigrants is allowed to come and work. This promises great opportunities for new arrivals to be integrated into the workplace. “In the long run the refugees are an incredible opportunity for Germany,” says Marcel Fratzscher, the head of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).

In September the EU agreed to transfer 160,000 refugees over the next two years from the most affected states, such as Italy and Greece, to permanent locations elsewhere in Europe, but EU member states have so far relocated only 116 refugees and only 1,418 places have been readied by fourteen EU member states. About 770,000 asylum applications were filed in all EU member states in the first nine months of 2015, compared to 625,920 in 2014 and 431,090 in 2013.

Slovenia is planning to employ private security firms to help the tiny mountainous country of 2 million manage the flow of tens of thousands of refugees entering the country on their way to countries in northern Europe. The interior ministry said 50-60 private security guards would help the country’s small police force where and when necessary. EU members have committed themselves to sending 400 police officers from different EU countries to Slovenia to help the country deal with the flow of refugees.

The EU has called for an urgent mini summit with leaders of several Balkan countries on the refugee crisis. The call came in response to Slovenia’s decision the other to block the entry of refugees into Slovenia, and leave them in a make-shift tent camps on the border between Slovenia and Croatia, where the refugees are exposed to the increasingly cold and wet late-fall weather. Croatia began to direct refugees to Slovenia after Hungary closed its own borders to refugees. Since Saturday, when Hungary sealed off its border with Croatia, more than 24,450 refugees have arrived in Slovenia, a tiny mountainous country of two million people.

A new report finds that British Muslims are least likely to hold professional or managerial jobs of any religious group in Britain — at only half the average level (16 to 30 percent) — and that more likely to be unemployed or living in poverty. The report calls for urgent action from government, employers, universities, and within the Muslim community to encourage economic participation and prevent conscious or unconscious discrimination.