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Social Democrats want to put marriage equality on the table, and over 80 percent of Germans support expanding the right to marry to same-sex couples. But many Christian Democrats are still pushing back. Marriage equality is legal in 22 countries, including Argentina, South Africa and the United States. Germany is not one of them. But now members of the junior governing Social Democratic Party (SPD) are pushing to change that. They are calling on their coalition partners, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU), to go along with a change of law that would grant same-sex couples...

Leaders of France, Germany, Spain and Italy have called for a European Union which allows groups of member states to advance at their own pace, in a joint effort to cushion the impact of the Brexit. French president François Hollande hosted his counterparts on Monday evening in Versailles, near Paris, to prepare for a larger EU meeting later this week. “Europe must be able to draw the consequences of the Brexit,” he said in a joint statement with the other leaders of the European Union’s major economies. […] Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni joined...

A report has found that more than 900 extremists traveled to the Middle East from Germany. The revelation comes amid growing concern from German officials over domestic terrorism. Weekly news magazine Der Spiegel reported the increase in the number of homegrown jihadis in their latest issue, not long after Germany’s domestic intelligence service warned that Islamic extremism was spreading in the country. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) said that 910 suspected jihadis had left Germany to travel to Iraq and Syria, a noticeable increase from the roughly 800 extremists reported about a year ago, Spiegel...

President Barack Obama was dragged into the trans-Atlantic spying row after it was claimed he personally authorised the monitoring of Angela Merkel’s phone three years ago. The president allegedly allowed US intelligence to listen to calls from the German Chancellor’s mobile phone after he was briefed on the operation by Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), in 2010.

As thousands of refugees walked to Germany in September 2015, Merkel’s government was ready to close the border, a report has found. The plan was stopped at the last minute only because no one wanted the responsibility. “Wir schaffen das,” or “We can do this” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the peak of the European refugee crisis in the fall of 2015. It’s a phrase the chancellor has held on to since those decisive months and repeated like a mantra. It’s a phrase that advocates have praised and critics have abhorred — but it’s also a phrase the chancellor...

Outgoing President Joachim Gauck criticized US President Donald Trump in an interview on Friday, saying the American leader is calling into question what the US and Europe have worked towards together. In an interview with Spiegel published on Friday, Gauck — who will be replaced by Frank-Walter Steinmeier this month — voiced his concerns about the Republican President. “It worries me a lot that the American President is putting some things into questions that generations of other Americans have achieved with Europeans,” said Gauck. The German President further condemned Trump’s fraught relationship with the media as he has referred to...

President Donald Trump will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House later this month. A White House official says the meeting will take place on March 14. […] The White House official was not authorized to publicly confirm a visit that has not been formally announced and spoke on condition of anonymity. …

Polls show Germans generally wouldn’t vote Republican, and the vast majority don’t support US President Donald Trump. So for American immigrants in Germany who do, it can make for some difficult conversations. […] “If you go out socially and the topic turns political, you hear that Republicans don’t always feel comfortable. I tend to downplay it [being a Republican] for fear that someone won’t understand that there can be big differences in opinions [in the party],” explains Thomas Leiser, a Texan transplant in the Frankfurt area who leads the German Republicans Overseas branch. “Before the election, some people would make...

The election of Donald Trump has added to the “deep trouble” that Europe is in, but the new US president might change when he learns how the world works, according to former Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski. Europe’s challenge “is not just the American election,” Sikorski told EUobserver. “It’s also the continued assertiveness of Russia that is a revisionist power that has changed borders by force; it’s the failure and defeat in Syria, and also in the eastern neighborhood; and Brexit; and the continuing reverberations of the euro crisis and the creaking of the Schengen zone,” he added. “We’re in...

A high school in western Germany has banned the use of prayer rugs and other traditional Muslim rituals saying it is “provocative” to other students, sparking a debate about freedom of religion. The Wuppertal school sent a letter to staff in February saying Muslim students had been using prayer rugs and performing ritual washing in the restrooms, and that they should get a “friendly reminder” it’s not permitted and will be reported to the administration. …

French centre-right presidential candidate Francois Fillon has said he will fight on, as he announced that a judge was placing him under formal investigation. For weeks, he has fought allegations that his wife was paid for year for work she did not do. "It's a political assassination," Mr. Fillon told reporters on Wednesday. He has now been summoned to appear before the judge, Serge Tournaire, on 15 March. The date is just two days before the deadline for candidates to submit their final applications. The first round takes place on 23 April, followed by a second-round run-off on 7 May......

The conservative government in Bavaria is preparing a radical alteration to the state’s preventive custody laws that would allow judges to set their own limits on the incarceration of “dangerous persons,” rather than stick to the 14 days that German law currently allows. The bill, which has already been approved by the Bavarian cabinet, is part of a new “anti-terror” package designed to improve surveillance of people security forces deem “Gefährder” (a term used by the intelligence agencies literally meaning “endangerer”). […] The measures include extending police powers to search and keep tabs on potential suspects. But the proposal to...

A Berlin mosque attended by the young Tunisian who attacked a Christmas market in December has shut its doors and been banned, as police on Tuesday launched a major raid against the capital’s Islamist scene. Berlin authorities have banned the Fussilet mosque, which Anis Amri used to attend. Meanwhile around 460 officers searched 24 locations across the capital city in the early hours of Tuesday morning in a raid linked to the mosque. Amri had visited the mosque regularly before he drove a truck into a Christmas market on December 19th, killing 12 people, in an attack later claimed by...

The German capital of Berlin banned the so-called “Fussilet 33” mosque Tuesday after 400 law enforcement officers raided 24 locations across the city. The mosque is considered a meeting place for radical Islamists in the German capital. Anis Amri, the Tunisian refugee behind the truck attack Dec. 19 at a Christmas market in Berlin, frequented the mosque. (RELATED: Berliners Come To Terms With Terrorism Being The New Normal) The mosque has been under surveillance since 2015 for its links to recruitment activities for Islamic State. It is also accused of raising funds for the terror group’s activities in Syria. Berlin...

Hundreds of German police have launched raids across Berlin, targeting a mosque and Muslim association linked to radical Islamists and the Islamic State Christmas Market attacker. The now banned “Fussilet 33” association is thought to be linked to Anis Amri, the Tunisian migrant who drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in December last year, killing 12 and injuring 50.

The Brexit debate in the UK is focusing on the rights of EU migrants in the country, among them about 300,000 Germans. Many people are worried about what will happen to them after Brexit. But how are the 100,000 Brits in Germany feeling? The BBC's Damien McGuinness says many are hurrying to apply for citizenship. "So, when are you becoming German?" It's one of those questions that always seems to crop up when I'm chatting to British friends here in Berlin these days. Most are either applying for German citizenship or counting the days until they've spent enough time here...

German cities held their annual Rose Monday float parades today, with many mocking U.S. President Donald Trump, Brexit, and European populist leaders. The carnival celebrations in Germany are one of the biggest holidays of the year and a part of the celebrations are a float parade on Rosenmontag or Rose Monday. From Cologne to Dusseldorf the major theme of the float parades this year was U.S. President Trump, whom they depicted performing sex acts with the Statue of Liberty, and being decapitated by a guillotine.

ISIS-linked terrorists Published February 27, 2017 FoxNews.com Facebook Twitter Email Print German hostage Jurgen Gustav Kantner kneels before his Islamic militant captors at an undisclosed location. German hostage Jurgen Gustav Kantner kneels before his Islamic militant captors at an undisclosed location. (SITE Intel Group via AP) A German sailor who had survived two months as a hostage of Somali pirates nearly a decade ago was beheaded in the Philippines by Islamic terrorists, a short video released Monday showed, after a deadline to pay the man’s ransom passed. Jurgen Gustav Kantner's beheading was the first murder of a hostage by the...

It seems evident that there is a problem, until last couple years it was unknown or at least unreported. There is an apparent disdain within Islam for women. This disdain is not only seen in the way they treat women as property to be bought and sold, or even the sex slave passages in the Quran.The biggest indication of this comes from the fact that Islamic men are prone to rap. This is seen in almost every place that the Islamic asylum seeker goes. Further, it should be pointed out that this holds true for every point of origin.Whether he...

The German government admitted Friday it deported fewer than half the Afghans who were due to be repatriated on a charter plane earlier this week, after some went into hiding.Fifty Afghans whose asylum requests had been rejected were to have boarded the aircraft for their home country late Wednesday, but “in fact, only 18 got on the flight,” said interior ministry spokesman Tobias Plate. But he sought to play down the issue, saying that “if one looks at other flights, the numbers are always below that of the planning figure”. …