Free Republic

German police have busted a child sex abuse site on the dark web where images and videos were exchanged. The secret Elysium website had 87,000 members and was launched on the internet in December, prosecutors say. The suspected ringleader, a 39-year-old man, was arrested in the state of Hesse. The forum was also used to make appointments to abuse children. Police seized the website's server. They found that toddlers were among the children sexually abused, reports say. The chief suspect was arrested at his home in the Limburg-Weilburg area north of Frankfurt on 12 June. He has been linked not...

Hamburg (AFP) - German police and protestors clashed Thursday at an anti-G20 march in Hamburg, with police using water cannon and tear gas to clear a hardcore of masked anti-capitalist demonstrators flinging bottles and stones, AFP reporters said. With US President Donald Trump having arrived in the afternoon, several people were injured as riot police in helmets charged to disperse the demonstration which took an ugly turn shortly after it began at 7:00 pm (1700 GMT). Chanting "Get lost! A-A-Anticapitalists!", the 12,000-strong contingent bearing the banner "Smash G20!" and "Welcome to Hell" was halted as some 1,000 hard-left Black Bloc...

U.S. President Donald Trump arrived for a G20 summit in Hamburg on Thursday risking isolation on climate policy and the wrath of anti-capitalist protesters threatening to disrupt the meeting of the world's leading economic powers. Trump, who paused to wave as he descended the steps of Air Force One with his wife Melania, faces a testy confrontation with leaders of the other big G20 economies after deciding last month to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate deal. Trade policy is another area of contention at the summit, which protesters have vowed to disrupt. "Welcome to Hell"...

However, the media-driven PR campaign backfired as the news of the opening of the Berlin 'liberal mosque' reached Muslim communities in Germany and abroad. The liberal utopian dream quickly turned into an Islamist nightmare. [snip] The newly unveiled 'liberal mosque' in Berlin was supposed to showcase a 'gentler' Islam. An Islam that could be reformed and modernized while it emerges as the dominant demographic force in Europe. German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle touted the opening of the mosque as a "world event in the heart of Berlin." [snip] However, the media-driven PR campaign backfired, as the news of the opening...

Next week’s G-20 meeting in Hamburg promises to be more interesting than usual. The expected unhinged leftist crowds are already much in evidence and could be counted on for a dose of violence and turmoil. More seriously, this time the fireworks are more likely to come from inside the conference rooms than outside. In preparation for the event, the German chancellor Angela Merkel has already accused Trump of “Abshottung” (door closure or foreclosure) and promised to challenge him directly on a number of issues. Whether she already feels like the leader of the free world (as many pundits are trying...

Western European efforts to isolate President Trump for rejecting the Paris climate change agreement appear to be faltering as leaders gather for a summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, at the end of the week.The gulf between Mr. Trump’s worldview and that of most European leaders on topics from trade to immigration will be on display in the coming days. But nowhere is the difference as stark as it is on climate change, which Mr. Trump has mocked as a hoax.In announcing last month that the United States would withdraw from the Paris agreement, the president portrayed the pact signed by...

German police used water cannon to disperse around 500 anti-capitalist protesters overnight in the port city of Hamburg where Chancellor Angela Merkel will host leaders of the G20 leading economies in a two-day summit starting on Friday. Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to march in the city this week against globalization and what they say is corporate greed and a failure to tackle climate change. German authorities believe around 8,000 demonstrators were prepared to use violence, the interior minister said on Tuesday. Some 20,000 police officers will be deployed. Hundreds of mainly young left-wing activists gathered and marched...

The female founder of a new “liberal” mosque in Berlin has found herself under 24-hour police protection after receiving over a hundred death threats. Female lawyer Seyran Ates is the founder of the liberal Ibn Ruschd-Goethe mosque, which was established earlier this year. Ms. Ates, a Kurdish Muslim born in Turkey, blames the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, saying Erdoğan supporters were behind the daily death threats, Kronen Zeitung reports. Diyanet, the Turkish government’s religious authority, immediately slammed Ates and her mosque accusing the founders of being close to the Gulen movement who they blame for the attempted...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's second foray on the world stage will include navigating a much-anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a potentially chilly reception from European leaders over his recent decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. The stakes for Trump are especially high as he travels to the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, beginning Friday to discuss critical issues of counter-terrorism, the civil war in Syria, and trade, among other topics, with his European counterparts. In his meeting with Putin, Trump will have to work to confront and deter Russia, but also find ways to...

German security forces expect some 8,000 violent protesters to converge on the northern city of Hamburg this week where Chancellor Angela Merkel will host leaders of the G20 leading economies, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Tuesday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) would introduce a law which would focus immigration on trained professionals, if she is re-elected in September. Speaking at the presentation of her party program in Berlin, Merkel said that the CDU, along with Bavarian sister party the CSU, would introduce a “skilled employee migration law.” The Chancellor said that the goal of the law would be that “no job vacancy remains unfilled,” Spiegel reports. A booming economy and an aging population have put pressure on the German government to increase the levels of immigration into the country...

... Last week, Nomura and Daiwa — Japan's two biggest brokerage firms said they would move some European operations from London to Frankfurt to smooth over potential difficulties with the UK's exit from the EU.

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will have their first face-to-face meeting this week on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. But experts say any big changes in US-Russia relations are unlikely to come from the encounter. "I don't think a lot can come from this meeting, because obviously these two guys don't really know each other," said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution. U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster didn't elaborate on what the two leaders would be discussing. "It's really going to be whatever the president wants to talk about,"...

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives will promise to all but eliminate unemployment in Germany by the year 2025 when they announce their 2017 election campaign platform on Monday. Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), will present their platform for the Sept. 24 election on Monday with other already known policies such as income tax cuts worth €15 billion per year and promises to build flats. “A major point is that we’d like to achieve full employment,” Horst Seehofer, CSU chairman and state premier in Bavaria, said on Sunday on his way into a...

Istanbul police found a machine that printed and distributed political leaflets, provoking people against President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, in a hotel room booked by a German national in Istanbul's Taksim district. Hotel personnel notified the police on Saturday morning as hundreds of leaflets were flying from the hotel room window of 26-year-old Morius Sebastian Enden, who was staying near Taksim's Gezi Park. After determining the source of the flying leaflets, police entered Enden's room and discovered an automated machine combined with a printer that automatically received commands online to print leaflets, and launched them from the window to the street....

Britain is pulling out of an agreement that permits fishermen from five other countries to operate in U.K. waters, the first step in reasserting control over its fishing industry as it prepares to leave the European Union. The government announced Sunday it will trigger the two-year process of leaving the London Fisheries Convention, which allows vessels from France, Belgium, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands to fish between six and 12 nautical miles off the U.K. coastline. Britain signed the convention before it joined the EU and would be bound by its terms after leaving the bloc unless it starts to...

Berlin on Friday warned Ankara against interfering in how people in Germany practised their religion, as a new row erupted over a new "liberal" mosque in the German capital. Diyanet, which oversees religious activity in Turkey, on Wednesday voiced distaste over the Berlin mosque where men and women pray side-by-side, saying it was incompatible with the principles of Islam. Diyanet's criticism sparked strong words from Germany, with foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schäfer firmly rejecting the Turkish agency's comments "which are targeted at limiting people's right to practise their religion and freedom of opinion".

Summits of world leaders are usually highly choreographed affairs that leave little to chance. They are held in locations that are easily shielded from demonstrators. And policy differences are papered over by envoys behind closed doors well ahead of time. But the G20 meeting in Hamburg next week will be different. Host German Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a high-risk gamble by choosing to hold the summit in the center of the northern port city, partly to show the world that big protests are tolerated in a healthy democracy. This has created a huge challenge for police. On the policy...

Germany has passed a law in lightning speed to rid themselves of Erdoğan’s political shows. The law bars foreign leaders from holding rallies in the country. Following the new Erdoğan rally crisis with the AKP regime, the Federal Government of Germany passed a law yesterday restricting foreign politicians’ ability to run election campaigns in the country. The law is dubbed the “Erdoğan Act” in the public, while notices have been sent to foreign representation offices in Germany. The law concerns countries outside of the European Union. Foreign state representatives and politicians won’t be allowed to run election campaigns in the...

Americans are still waiting for a border wall, but France is set to get a wall of their own by the end of the year. Unlike the American iteration, this barrier won’t be erected on the French border. It’s set to surround the Eiffel Tower to shield it from terrorist attacks. Last month, the Paris city council approved a $20 million bulletproof glass wall, just over 8 feet high, that will surround the iconic tower. In a country proudly obsessed with art and beauty, this will be an obnoxious eyesore and a reminder that war and violence is just a...