Free Republic

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he backs the NATO charter’s demand that all members be prepared to defend each other, weeks after jarring allies by not restating U.S. support for the agreement. At a joint news conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, Trump said he supports the NATO charter’s Article 5, the requirement that each member of the alliance defend each other if they come under attack. During a visit to NATO headquarters last month in Brussels, Trump had pointedly not mentioned U.S. support for the critical portion of the NATO charter. He used his speech there...

A week before the Paris air show, the head of Airbus Defence & Space's military aircraft division has called on France to participate in the development of a new airborne weapon system proposed by Germany and Spain to succeed the Eurofighter Typhoon. "I really hope that France will be involved," says Fernando Alonso, speaking to reporters on 9 June at Airbus media day. "We have to do this in Europe. There's no place to do two or three different systems." The objective of a single European fighter programme first arose 25 years ago, but Germany and France pursued different paths:...

There are crises everywhere you look these days: from the Middle East, with its constant political turmoil; to Turkey, sliding toward autocracy under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; to the US, where President Donald Trump appears to question the shared values of the West on a daily basis. Perhaps this is why Germans are apparently so happy to have Angela Merkel as their chancellor. In a new study conducted by polling institute infratest-dimap, in conjunction with German public broadcaster ARD, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) earned her best approval rating since the beginning of the refugee crisis in...

You could still see his mouth and his chin, but only the right side of his face from the nose up. The rest of the photo and the document on which it was printed -- except for the man's first and last name and a broken series of numbers -- was charred or burnt away. Investigators searching the area in Pennsylvania where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, found this telltale piece of evidence. It was the tourist visa that let Ziad Jarrah enter the United States from Germany. On the face of it, Jarrah was a...

It looks unseemly, but it is legal under German law. And thanks to a brand-new European court ruling, people who are not EU citizens but who are the parents of an EU citizen are considered to have a legal right to residence, giving them a way to bypass the immigration system in some cases. "We are talking about a large number of cases which we come across every month," said Berlin prosecutor Martin Steltner. "In some cases we have people who have claimed fatherhood for over ten babies."

Germany's largest bank has failed to respond to a request from Democrats on a U.S. House of Representatives panel for details about U.S. President Donald Trump's possible ties to Russia, a Democratic staffer said on Sunday. Several Democrats on the U.S. House Financial Services Committee sent a letter last month to John Cryan, Chief Executive Officer of Deutsche Bank, seeking details that might show if Trump's loans for his real estate business were backed by the Russian government. The letter asked for details of internal reviews of Trump's transactions and gave the prominent German bank until Friday to respond. The...

I am sure the leftwing “welcome-refugee” crowd will blame:a) the child b) Trump c) “islamophobes” and/or “racists” d) all of the above Five-year-old child stabbed to death at refugee shelter in Germany Police said it had to do with a dispute at the refugee shelter. A FIVE-YEAR-OLD child was stabbed to death by an Afghan national at a refugee shelter in southeastern Germany.The 41-year-old assailant also injured the child’s mother, a Russian national, and a six-year-old child at the scene was treated for shock and taken to hospital.Police said they did not know why the man carried out the attack,...

Germany's services remained in solid shape in May while humming factory activity propelled overall private sector growth to a six-year-high, a survey showed on Monday, another sign that a robust upswing in Europe's biggest economy is set to continue. Markit's composite Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), which tracks the manufacturing and services that account for more than two-thirds of the economy, rose to 57.4 from 56.7 in April. The reading, a 73-month high, was well above the 50 line that separates growth from contraction and came in a tick better than a preliminary estimate of 57.3. The main support came from...

A conservative group in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party is urging a change of approach to climate change, arguing that the melting of sea ice could carry more opportunities than problems. Lawmaker Philipp Lengsfeld wrote on Twitter Sunday that the Berlin Circle group wants “massive course corrections in climate and energy policy.” […] The statement doesn’t mention the [Paris] accord, but says the goal of limiting the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius isn’t realistic. …

A knife-wielding attacker from Afghanistan has captured and lethally injured a 5-year-old boy and wounded his Russian mother in the Bavarian municipality of Arnschwang. The carnage unfolded in the migrant shelter on Saturday afternoon, police report. Police, who had promptly arrived at the scene, shot dead the assailant, who was identified in a police report as a 41-year-old Afghan national, a resident of the same shelter as his victims.

Despite its own many problems, Europe should remain committed to the western Balkans amid renewed tensions stemming from the wars of the 1990s, Germany’s president said Saturday. Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke in Slovenia after a European Union-backed meeting of Balkan leaders designed to boost cooperation in the troubled region. A joint statement called for further EU integration, strengthening of dialogue and refraining from “nationalistic and inflammatory rhetoric.” Steinmeier said in comments translated into English that “the discussion today has shown that the past has not been fully overcome.” He also warned that “what happens in this region and also what doesn’t...

<p>ISTANBUL — Two Kurdish German men accused of helping to kill their sister in 2005 because of her Western lifestyle were acquitted Tuesday in a Turkish court, in the latest failed attempt to prosecute them in a case that became a benchmark for cultural tensions between Turkey and Germany.</p>

Germany has delivered an ominous message to British negotiators in impending Brexit talks by insisting that even the worst-case scenario would be bearable for the EU. Germany’s Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries said Friday that “even in the most adverse case,” Brexit would be “bearable for the EU economy and in particular for the German economy.” Zypries said that a new study by Germany’s ifo institute, commissioned by her ministry, pointed to “economic opportunities and risks.” While Zypries said Germany would seek “the best results” from talks, her appraisal of a bearable hard Brexit is bad news for hardline Brexiteers. They...

-The court heard how Amer K. stabbed the mother of his three children in the chest and neck more than twenty times with a large kitchen knife, because he thought she wanted to divorce him. -"Then he takes the knife and plunges it into her chest, [penetrating] the pericardium and heart muscle. A second stab opens the left abdominal cavity. Nurettin B. then pulls out the ax. With the blunt side he hits her head, cracking her skull. Then he grabs the rope. On one end he ties a gibbet knot around her neck, then he ties the other end...

Exit President Trump, offending almost everyone. Enter China, eager to talk. […] “Trump’s turn away from America’s classic leading role is having a destabilizing effect,” wrote Henrik Müller, a professor at Technical University of Dortmund, in his weekly column on the global economy for Der Spiegel. “One consequence: Global economic policy is sorting out in a new way. The other two big economies — the E.U. and China — are seeking new partners to work on the international problems.” […] … [T]he Chinese view Mr. Trump’s harsh behavior in Europe as a gift to be capitalized on. It helps Beijing...

A group of Arab nationals reportedly killed a Kurdish refugee in Germany’s Oldenburg on Thursday over refusing to fast during Ramadan.Social media activists published graphic photographs showing a man covered in blood with emergency personnel attempting to save him.A Syrian Kurdish refugee resided in Germany, stated on his Facebook account that a group of Arab men stabbed Abed Hannan Yaghoub to death after they found him smoking cigarette and refusing to fast as it is Ramadan, the Muslim’s holy month during which they avoid eating, drinking and smoking in daytime.Yaghoub is reportedly a Kurdish national from Syrian Kurdistan’s Afrin province.Kurdish...

Donald Trump has been lambasted by a German newspaper with the headline 'Earth to Trump - f**k you!' after he pulled out of the Paris climate change accord as world leaders unite to criticise him. The Berliner Kurier used the expletive headline as German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday vowed 'more decisive action than ever' to protect the climate after the US pullout. 'We in Germany, in Europe and the world will band together to take more decisive action than ever to confront and successfully surmount major challenges to humanity such as climate change,' she told reporters. She pledged her...

Continental Europe’s three biggest economies — Germany, France and Italy — criticized Donald Trump’s decision Thursday to quit the Paris climate agreement and said the pact was “not renegotiable.” “We note the United States’ decision with regret,” the three countries said in a rare joint statement. “We are firmly convinced that the agreement cannot be renegotiated,” they added, referring to Trump’s announcement that Washington was open to negotiating a new agreement. …

Billionaire financier George Soros said Thursday the European Union is in an "existential crisis" and needs to be reinvented in the face of growing threats. "The reinvention would have to revive the support that the European Union used to enjoy," the Hungarian-born Soros said at the Brussels Economic Forum. Such reinvention would have to review the past and explain to European citizens what went wrong and then make proposals to make things right. Soros welcomed a German idea to cut European funds aimed at reducing income inequalities at the regional level for those countries disrespecting the rule of law. Both...

Germans do not seem too friendly to Americans these days. According to a recent Harvard Kennedy School study of global media, 98 percent of German public television news portrays President Donald Trump negatively, making it by far the most anti-Trump media in the world. Yet the disdain predates the election of Trump, who is roundly despised here for his unapologetic anti-European Union views. In a 2015 Pew Research Center survey of European countries, Germany had the least favorable impression of America. Only about 50 percent of Germans expressed positive feelings toward the U.S. Former President Barack Obama, who visited here...