Free Republic

Nearly one in four residents in Germany now come from migrant backgrounds, as almost 200,000 migrants gain the right to reunite with their families through chain migration. According to new figures released by the Germany Federal Statistical Office, the number of Germans with a migration background increased by 4.4 percent in 2017 to a total of 19.3 million people — or 23.6 percent of the total population of the country, Die Welt reports. The German government recognises anyone as having at least one non-German parent as coming from a migration background. It released further details showing that 49 percent do...

On the day European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reached a surprise deal on trade with Donald Trump, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas was standing in front of a wood-paneled government building 11,000 kilometers (6,800 miles) to the east. Maas was in Japan on his first trip to Asia as foreign minister, and expectations were high. “We share the same values,” said Maas, who is a member of the center-left Social Democrats, as his host, Japanese President Shinzo Abe, nodded. “In the current geopolitical situation, it is good to clearly emphasize this once again.” But the guest from Germany brought more...

President Trump on Monday insisted that the United States will not drop sanctions against Moscow. “Sanctions on Russia will remain as is,” Trump said, even as Putin demands that they be dropped. Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte first broached the subject and said lifting the sanctions would be “unthinkable.” Trump also scolded Germany — just as he did at the NATO summit — for agreeing to use a Russian natural gas pipeline while, in his estimation, not paying enough for defense.

A Berlin court ordered Germany’s far-right party to retract a false accusation that the country's environment ministry gave money to Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. Georg Pazderski, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) party, was ordered to scrub its website of the accusation and issue a correction stating that the German ministry "paid no money whatsoever to support the election campaign of Hillary Clinton,” Deutsche Welle news reported Monday. Pazderski and his party claimed that millions that Germany’s Federal Environment Ministry donated to the Clinton Foundation’s climate initiatives in Africa were really funneled into Clinton’s campaign....

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - The trade relationship between the United States and Europe is improving, German Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner said on Saturday, but there is no guarantee the bloc will buy the quantity of soybeans that Washington expects. U.S. President Donald Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, struck a surprise deal on Wednesday that ended the risk of an immediate trade war between the two powers. After the talks, Trump highlighted benefits for U.S. farmers. “The European Union is going to start, almost immediately, to buy a lot of soybeans,” he told...

In Germany, firefighters are now encountering a new challenge: WWII-era ammunition being set off by the flames. Firefighters used a tank to tackle a blaze near Berlin, as fears over WWII ammunition explosions mounted. Tens of thousands of unexploded bombs and other types of ammunition are still hidden beneath cities and in forests across the country, which regularly results in evacuations as specialists work to defuse the still-lethal war remnants. In Sweden, meanwhile, authorities on Thursday opted for the unusual measure of using bombs themselves. Aiming to cause a lack of oxygen in the wildfire's center, the country's military used...

Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini has rejected an EU offer to pay out €6,000 for every new migrant they take. Salvini has seen his popularity surge with the adoption of tough new policies to protect the Mediterranean country’s maritime borders and block the NGOs which have been ferrying thousands of illegal migrants to Europe from smuggler boats off the coast of Libya. the EU has so far attempted to use the carrot rather than the stick against the Italians, attempting to induce them to accept more migrants through financial incentives rather than financial penalties...

The U.S. is likely to maintain a trade deficit with China even if all tariffs are removed. Why? The U.S. is the largest economy in the world, and the American consumer has a ferocious appetite for goods and services. The U.S. economy simply consumes more than it exports. This is not going to change anytime soon. Tariffs are a different deal. They are imbalances. Take the automotive industry, for example. The Chinese and Europeans charge higher tariffs on U.S. cars coming into their markets than corresponding Asian and European automobiles entering the U.S. markets. This has been going on...

The Ankara chief's words were in response to Israel's new "nation-state" law, with Erdogan branding Israel the "most Zionist, racist and fascist country". He argued the new law legitimises "unlawful actions and oppression". The "nation-state" law has been criticised for effectively ruling out a two-state solution to the long-running Israel-Palestine conflict. Palestinians have threatened to go to the International Criminal Court and the UN to protest against the new legislation. Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has hit back, saying Turkey has become a "dark dictatorship" under Erdogan. In a war of words, he accused the Turkish president of "massacring...

Europol signed a strategic agreement with the Israel Police on Tuesday, marking the first-ever working agreement signed between the European Union criminal intelligence agency and a non-EU country. The agreement was signed in The Hague by Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich and Catherine De Bolle, Executive Director of Europol. The signing of the “Police to Police” agreement followed intensive discussions and a vote at the Europol headquarters which was unanimously approved by 28 representatives of member countries. Europol said in a press release that the agreement will be important for tackling priority crime areas affecting both the European Union and...

Germany’s long-understaffed army has a new plan to boost recruitment: allowing foreigners from other European Union countries to serve in the unified armed forces (Bundeswehr). The defense ministry confirmed on Saturday that it was seriously considering the idea. “The Bundeswehr is growing. For this, we need qualified personnel,” a Defense Ministry spokesman told German news agency DPA. Speaking with local newspaper Augsburger Allegemeine, Social Democrat (SPD) defense expert Karl-Heinz Brunner said that he could imagine EU citizens serving in the Bundeswehr. But he warned that any soldier who fought for Germany must be promised citizenship. “If citizens of other countries...

In a local election on Sunday, the residents of Kaufbeuren, a small town in Bavaria, voted against providing public land for the construction of a mosque. At issue was the question of whether the city would provide the local branch of the nationally active Turkish-Islamic religious association DITIB with a 5,000 square meter (54,000 square foot) plot in an industrial area. At least 45 percent of the approximately 34,000 voters took part in the election. A minimum of a 20 percent turnout was necessary to make the vote valid. The city must now break off its negotiations with DITIB. According...

Plans for US far-right figure Steve Bannon to exert his influence on the European parliament’s 2019 election have been met with alarm across Germany’s political spectrum. Bannon has become a controversial figure, known for his ties to the campaigns for the UK to leave the European Union and the election of US President Donald Trump. “We have to fight now, with good arguments, confident and true,” said Michael Roth, a center-left Social Democrat (SPD) lawmaker and Minister of State for Europe in an interview with the Welt newspaper. Europe should not “be afraid of nationalist campaigns with which Mr. Bannon...

Renewable energy has become a potent rallying cry uniting Hollywood and the Beltway. “We can move our economy town by town, state by state to renewable energy and a sustainable future,” Leonardo DiCaprio says in his eight-minute climate movie Carbon, released in August. In his fiscal-showdown speech during his first term, in April 2011, President Obama put Paul Ryan’s proposals for a 70 percent cut in clean energy at the top of his list of reprehensible and unnecessary reductions. “These aren’t the kind of cuts you make when you’re trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings...

British Prime Minister Theresa May has endured swift condemnation from conservatives for agreeing to a "soft Brexit" deal that keeps the UK too closely aligned with the European Union. A few members of her own cabinet, like popular conservative Boris Johnson, resigned. Brexit hardliners are particularly peeved by May's agreeing to a "common rule book" with the EU, which would still tie Britain to some of the EU's regulations. It was the cause for Brexit Secretary David Davis's resignation... the measures would prevent Britain from collecting tariffs on behalf of EU nations unless the EU does the same for them....

Rejects 'migrants-for-money' deal in interview with Bild(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, JULY 20 - Libya is staunchly against the idea of the EU building facilities in the country to house migrants that the EU does not want, Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj told the German daily Bild in an interview. He added that the country would not sign agreements with the EU to take in migrants in exchange for money, either. Al-Serraj said in the interview that he was surprised that Europe did not want to receive migrants but was at the same time asking Libya to take in hundreds of thousands....

During the recent NATO summit meeting, a rumbustious Donald Trump tore off a thin scab of niceties to reveal a deep and old NATO wound -- one that has predated Trump by nearly 30 years and goes back to the end of the Cold War. In an era when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact are now ancient history, everyone praises NATO as "indispensable" and "essential" to Western solidarity and European security. But few feel any need to explain how and why that could still be so.

Yorai Feinberg has gotten used to hearing from “Ludwig Fischer.” Every few days the Berlin restaurant owner receives emails from a man who writes under the pseudonym of one of Hitler’s most notorious SA henchmen. He calls Feinberg a “filthy rat,” says the Holocaust is just a “scam” and rants that all Jews will land in the gas chamber. […] The last few months have seen several high-profile attacks on Jews in Germany. Just last week a Jewish-American professor was attacked by a young German of Palestinian descent in the city of Bonn. In April, an attack on a yarmulke-wearing...

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Wednesday spoke out over US President Donald Trump’s attempts to backtrack on comments he made during Monday’s Helsinki press conference with Vladimir Putin. Maas said Germany and other western allies demanded a “minimum degree of reliability” from Trump and his foreign policy. “It is, quite simply, extremely difficult to craft policies when the information or facts have a half-life of 24 hours. This will not work,” Berlin’s top diplomat added after meeting with his Chilean counterpart Roberto Ampuero. “This also seems to be the unanimous opinion within the United States,” he added. […] Germany’s...

The European Union hit Google with a record antitrust fine for abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system. It ordered Google to put an end to illegal conduct within 90 days, or else face additional charges of up to 5 percent of Alphabet's average daily worldwide turnover. The ruling comes little over a year after the EU fined the company $2.7 billion for favoring its shopping service over competitors. European Union regulators have slapped Alphabet-owned Google with a record 4.34 billion euro ($5 billion) antitrust fine for abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system, which is...