Free Republic

The biggest and most violent protest in Germany erupted in Berlin over the weekend exactly with our models calling for an explosion in civil unrest.Some 1800 police were called in and at least 120 policemen were injured in what is becoming a street battle. This has been the most aggressive and violent protest in Germany for the past five years.Protesters were throwing bottles, cobblestones and fireworks, as well as they destroyed cars in addition to attacking police officers. It appears at least 3,500 rioters took part in the uprising and possibly more than 4,000.The protest is against police operations and...

A young man reported being attacked in the east of the capital in Tuesday evening by a group of three men who spotted his religious skullcap. The attack happened at around 9:30 pm in the Alt-Treptow neighborhood, police report. According to the 21-year-old victim, three men of Arabic appearance reacted to his kippah — a religious cap worn by Jewish men — and then started to insult him. The men then went on to kick and punch him before running away from the scene. …

An interfaith group is laying the groundwork for what will likely be the world’s first ever joint house of prayer. The center of worship, which will be called the "House of One," will combine simultaneous Jewish, Muslim, and Christian prayer services. The House of One is planned to be built on the site of Berlin’s first church, the Petrikirche. One of the organizers of the interfaith group behind the planned church/mosque/synagogue, Rabbi Tovia Ben Chorin, said that the House of One is a reminder that despite the dark history of Berlin in the 20th century it is now a center...

Children whose parents want them to live a vegan lifestyle — or a stone-age or fruitarian one for that matter — will have to bring their own food to school, a Berlin court ruled on Wednesday. While it might seem that veganism has become the dominant form of nutrition in certain neighborhoods of Berlin — and no meat-based restaurant’s opening is likely to set off a police operation — Berlin judges still bracket the diet with fads such as fruitarianism and raw foodism. On Wednesday, Berlin’s administrative court stated that schools are not obliged to bow to the dietary diversity...

A worker was allowed access to secure areas of both of Berlin’s airports for up to 10 months after authorities found out he had links to fundamentalist Islam, media reported on Wednesday. Recep Ü., a Turkish-born aircraft cleaner for a private firm at the airport, was allowed into the secure areas of Tegel and Schönefeld airports to do his job. German air security law states that only people who have passed a security check can work in such sensitive zones of an airport. But although Ü. had passed such a check in 2011, he did not lose his security clearance...

When I tell people I'm moving to Berlin for the summer, I usually get one of two reactions: 1. Berlin! Such a cool city. I'm jealous! 2. Why? I would never step foot in Germany. Berlin made headlines among Israelis when the "Milky controversy" broke out in 2014. An Israeli Berliner bragged how cheap the cost of living is in Berlin compared to Israel, if grocery receipts are the judge. According to the chocolate pudding index (the Israeli brand being “Milky), the difference is 300 percent. My calculations are not necessarily financial, although I don’t think I could afford living...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Thursday criticized U.S. Republican front-runner Donald Trump for a speech in which he said it would be "America first" if he were elected president. Trump said on Wednesday that if elected, his foreign policy would leave European and Asian allies of the U.S. fending for themselves if they did not pay more for U.S. defense measures. "I can only hope that the election campaign in the USA does not lack the perception of reality," Steinmeier said. "The world's security architecture has changed and it is no longer based on two pillars...

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. ~ Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965) (speech, Fulton Missouri, 5 March...

Berlin’s mayor has been forced to answer questions in parliament over the decision to grant a lucrative contract to the consultancy McKinsey. The US firm has hired one of the mayor’s old party colleagues. The list of companies turning a profit from Germany’s influx of refugees grew a little longer in early March, when US consultancy McKinsey signed a €238,000 ($268,000) contract to come up with a plan to integrate the city’s influx of 80,000 refugees. Now that deal, much criticized a month ago because it had been handed to the company without a tender process, has gained an extra...

Berlin police have launched a murder inquiry after car bomb exploded in a travelling vehicle, killing the driver. The explosion occurred as the car moved through the western Charlottenburg district towards the centre. It flipped the vehicle into the air, police said. They have identified the victim as a 43-year-old man of immigrant background. Officials believe the blast was linked to organised crime and say there is no evidence of any link with terrorism.

Police closed off Pariser Platz in central Berlin on Friday morning after a man placed a suitcase in front of the US embassy, demanding revenge for Osama bin Laden. The man arrived at the embassy, which lies adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate, at 7.25 am, a statement from the embassy reported. Going to the main entrance, the man handed a guard a US passport and said he wanted to renew it. The guard told him he had to go to consular services and provided him with the address. Out of nowhere, the man punched the guard in the face, the...

The number of attacks motivated by anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia or other forms of discrimination nearly doubled in the capital city in 2015, hate crime monitoring groups report. Hate crime monitoring groups ReachOut and Berliner Register reported on Tuesday 320 incidents of assault in 2015, up from 179 in 2014. Twenty-five of the attacks last year were connected to anti-Semitism, compared to 18 the year before. […] The groups also reported 401 anti-Semitic incidents in 2015 — 34 percent higher than the number of incidents known in 2014 and more than twice the number of anti-Semitic crimes reported by Berlin police...

Germany will on Tuesday open a shelter for homosexual refugees with space for more than 120 people, the association behind the project said. Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Marcel de Groot, who runs the Schwulenberatung advisory center which is responsible for the project, said the Berlin shelter will house gay, lesbian and transsexual migrants. Many gay asylum seekers come from countries where their sexual orientation "is considered a crime," de Groot said. ...

A mysterious campaign in Berlin to stoke fears of "Jewish terror" is spreading and becoming increasingly sophisticated. According to a report by the Department of Research and Information on Anti-Semitism (RIAS), flyers, cards, and notices warning of "Jewish terror" threatening "attacks on Berlin's citizens" have increased around the city since October of 2015. [...] While the campaign initially appeared to be limited to the spreading of propaganda, it now appears to be actively tracking Jews living in Berlin. ...

Prosecutors have said that Islamists arrested in Berlin and western Germany on Thursday may have been planning an attack on the capital. [...] There are conflicting reports in the media about what the exact target of the attack was, with tabloid Bild citing investigators who say it was Alexanderplatz, the iconic center of the former east of the capital. Berlin daily Tagesspiegel meanwhile, says popular tourist spot Checkpoint Charlie - once the most famous crossing in the Berlin Wall - was to be hit, citing security sources. [...] Security sources told DPA the group's ringleader was a 35-year-old Algerian arrested...

Bavarian minister-president Horst Seehofer stoked anger over the weekend with plans to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chancellor Angela Merkel's greatest foreign opponent. Seehofer defended his plans to travel to Moscow on Thursday on ZDF television on Sunday evening, saying that "we're not running a parallel foreign policy in Germany". ...

Police in Berlin said on Wednesday evening that there was "no dead refugee", after news that a young Syrian man died after queuing for days outside a government office had spread on-line. [...] Police questioned the volunteer after he reported on Facebook the story of a refugee who supposedly stood for days in front of the Berlin Health and Social Affairs Office (LaGeSo) - where all Berlin refugees have to be registered - and died of exposure to the cold. [...] Over 40 lawyers filed a criminal complaint against the city's health senator Mario Czaja in December, alleging institutional neglect...

The Kremlin on Tuesday turned Russian media reports about the rape of a 13-year-old girl in Berlin into a diplomatic spat with Germany. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Germany of "covering up reality in a politically correct manner for the sake of domestic politics" in his annual press conference on Tuesday, Spiegel Online reports. [...] Lavrov was referring to reports in the Russian media that a 13-year-old girl from a Russian immigrant family was abducted in Berlin on January 11th by "Arab-looking men" and raped repeatedly over a 30-hour period. Berlin police have furiously denied this version of events,...

A heated debate ensued on Thursday evening about plans to transform Berlin's defunct Tempelhof airport grounds into a refugee facility for 7,000 people - which would make it the largest in the country. The Berlin town hall meeting on Thursday evening to discuss plans for the refugee facility was met with skepticism and a barrage of questions from citizens as city officials pushed the plan to house 7,000 refugees. [...] The city wants to further expand accommodation on the airport grounds, but that runs contrary to a referendum passed in 2014 to protect Tempelhofer Feld from the city's plans for...

She is just one of 120 women who were abused that horrific night in the square, which is dotted with bars, nightclubs and coffee shops, and is where Cologne locals have seen in the New Year for centuries. The men, speaking Arabic and seemingly either drunk or high on drugs, moved around in large groups among a gathering of around 1,000 male migrants and deliberately targeted women. The men easily outnumbered the 190 police officers on duty, who were quickly overwhelmed. In other cities across Germany, including Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Munich and Berlin, where a tourist was sexually assaulted by...