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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross's video address to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's political party's business conference in Berlin was cut off on Tuesday after Ross went over his time limit, prompting conference attendees to laugh and cheer. Ross's video feed at the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) conference was faded out after roughly 20 minutes for going over his time limit, according to Bloomberg. Attendees then began to applaud and laugh at the move. "That was the U.S. secretary of commerce, who had promised us a 10-minute statement," the head of CDU Economic Council Werner Bahlsen said.

Authorities in Hamburg said on Tuesday that the city had asked a group of some 220 Berlin police officers stationed in the city ahead of upcoming G20 summit to return home immediately. A representative for Berlin's police force later confirmed witness accounts that the officers had engaged in a weekend of revelry, including public sex acts, excessive drunkenness and misuse of firearms. "This behavior is embarrassing for the Berlin police," spokesman Thomas Neuendorf told the Berliner Morgenpost. In a separate interview with Die Zeit newspaper, Neuendorf gave a half-hearted excuse: "They were bored. There was no television." However, he said...

The Bundestag (German parliament) could hold a vote on legalizing gay marriage as early as Friday, after Chancellor Angela Merkel told her party members to vote on the issue according to their consciences.The Christian Democrats (CDU) are preparing for a vote on gay marriage on Friday, insiders told DPA on Tuesday. At a meeting of CDU parliamentarians on Tuesday, Merkel told MPs to vote with their conscience during the vote, meaning there will be no compulsion to follow the party line. In an open vote, a gay marriage bill is almost certain to pass through the Bundestag. Volker Kauder, leader...

German business confidence unexpectedly rose in June to a record high, in a fresh sign that company executives are more upbeat about the growth outlook of Europe's largest economy. The Munich-based Ifo economic institute said its business climate index, based on a monthly survey of some 7,000 firms, rose to 115.1 from 114.6 in May. The reading compared with a Reuters consensus forecast for a value of 114.4. "Sentiment among German businesses is jubilant," Ifo's chief Clemens Fuest said in a statement.

BERLIN — In a coordinated campaign across 14 states, the German police on Tuesday raided the homes of 36 people accused of hateful postings over social media, including threats, coercion and incitement to racism. ... The raids come as Germans are debating the draft of a new social media law aimed at cracking down on hate speech, a measure that an array of experts said was unconstitutional at a parliamentary hearing on Monday. ... According to Mr. Mihr, Germany’s current instruments for persecuting hate speech, as demonstrated by Tuesday’s raids, are working. “The raid shows that we don’t need this...

As negotiations between Britain and the EU over Brexit get underway, a senior German politician has declared that a “European Army” is inevitable. Hans-Peter Bartels, the parliamentary commissioner for the Armed Forces, insisted: “In the end, there will be a European Army.” Bartel alleged the age-old system of national armies accountable to national governments was “disorganised, technically fragmented and duplicate structures unnecessarily”. He claimed Europe’s peoples “do not want to go down the solitary national path anymore. Not in Germany, not in the Netherlands, not in the Czech Republic and not in Italy.”

[I]t is important to point out that the popular image both of Angela Merkel and of modern Germany is deeply flawed. Because far from representing a negation -- or a misguided attempt at negation -- of past German policies and attitudes, the modern German mentality is in many ways a mutation or an update of the same mentality that has guided Germany since the eighteenth century, and especially since the unification of the country in 1870. Let us begin with the more obvious parallel: German support for further European integration. Despite all the German talk about subordinating narrow national interests...

Germany on Thursday passed a controversial new law that expands the power of authorities to spy on the content of encrypted message services such as WhatsApp and Skype. Amid the wave of jihadist attacks in Europe, German lawmakers voted in favor of the law designed “to reinforce the effectiveness of criminal procedures”. German investigators will now be able to insert into users’ cellphones and computers spy software (or a “Trojan horse”) to access data in encrypted message services such as popular applications WhatsApp and Skype, including as part of criminal investigations. Up to now, such surveillance tools were not authorized...

Germany’s refugees — and there are many — will by and large be on the public dole for life, according to a new study provided labor officials. For the rest? Public assistance and taxpayer benefits would be their lifetime reward, he said. From the Express: “The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found only 45 per cent of Syrian refugees in Germany have a school-leaving certificate and 23 per cent a college degree. “It said 484,000 of the refugees are looking for work, up from 322,000 last July — an increase of 50 per cent. “Of those, 178,500 are officially unemployed,...

THREE quarters of Germany’s refugees will be long-term unemployed and claiming benefits for years, it was admitted today. Aydan Özoğuz, commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, told the Financial Times that only a quarter to a third of the newcomers would enter the labour market over the next five years, and “for many others we will need up to 10”. The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found only 45 per cent of Syrian refugees in Germany have a school-leaving certificate and 23 per cent a college degree. Statistics from the Federal Labour Agency show the employment rate among refugees stands...

Germany's foreign intelligence service long spied on numerous official and business targets in the United States, including the White House, Spiegel weekly reported Thursday. The magazine said it had seen documents showing that the intelligence service, the BND, had a list of some 4,000 so-called selector keywords for surveillance between 1998 and 2006. These included telephone or fax numbers, as well as email addresses at the White House as well as the US finance and foreign ministries. Other monitoring targets ranged from military institutions including the US Air Force or the Marine Corps, space agency NASA to civic group Human...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has described UK plans to ensure the rights of EU citizens in Britain after Brexit as "a good start". However, she said there were "many, many other questions" about Brexit and there was "still a lot to do". The UK proposal was unveiled by Prime Minister Theresa May at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday. It would grant EU migrants who had lived in the UK for five years a new "UK settled status". That would allow them to stay in the country and access health, education and other benefits. The plan would affect 3.2...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that the EU’s future took priority over Brexit talks, in a rebuke to British Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans to bring the negotiations up at a Brussels summit. “For me, the future of the (remaining) 27 member states comes before the exit negotiations with Great Britain,” said Merkel, Europe’s most influential leader, as she arrived for the two-day meeting. “We want to conduct these negotiations in a good spirit,” she nonetheless added. …

Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel will open gamescom, the world’s largest event for computer and video games, for the first time on Tuesday, 22 August 2017 in Cologne. This was announced today jointly by Koelnmesse, organiser of gamescom, and the German Trade Association of Interactive Entertainment Software (BIU) as gamescom sponsor. “We consider it a great honour and a sign of recognition that Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel will this year participate in the opening tour of gamescom”, says Felix Falk, Managing Director of the German Trade Association of Interactive Entertainment Software (BIU). “The visit of Dr. Merkel underlines the importance of...

German newspaper editor Jakob Augstein, who has been identified as an anti-Semite by some groups in the past, wrote that Muslims in Germany who attended an anti-terror protest in Cologne are “Uncle Toms”. Mr. Augstein wrote that the Muslims in Germany were being “told” by the German government to demonstrate against Islamic State terrorism. Those who showed up to the failed Cologne anti-terror march over the weekend were doing the bidding of their “German overseers”, he wrote in a column for Der Spiegel. 10,000 demonstrators were hoped for over the weekend in the Cologne anti-terror march, but fewer than 2,000...

BERLIN — In a coordinated campaign across 14 states, the German police on Tuesday raided the homes of 36 people accused of hateful postings over social media, including threats, coercion and incitement to racism. Most of the raids concerned politically motivated right-wing incitement, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office, whose officers conducted home searches and interrogations. But the raids also targeted two people accused of left-wing extremist content, as well as one person accused of making threats or harassment based on someone’s sexual orientation. “The still high incidence of punishable hate posting shows a need for police action,” Holger...

In a hidden room in a house near Argentina's capital, police believe they have found the biggest collection of Nazi artifacts in the country's history, including a bust relief of Adolf Hitler and magnifying glasses inside elegant boxes with swastikas. Some 75 objects were found in a collector's home in Beccar, a suburb north of Buenos Aires, and authorities say they suspect they are originals that belonged to high-ranking Nazis in Germany during World War II. "Our first investigations indicate that these are original pieces," Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich told The Associated Press on Monday, saying that some pieces...

Rail traffic in parts of Germany was disrupted after seemingly coordinated arson attacks early Monday morning on segments of track, sparking security fears in the run-up to the G20 summit in Hamburg next month. Police in the Saxony region of Germany said there were 12 incidents of arson nationwide between 1 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. Monday on railroad tracks of national rail operator Deutsche Bahn. The statement said the police found fire in trackside cabling at each of the incidents and believe they were part of a coordinated plan. German media cited security fears connected to the upcoming G20 meeting.

German Development Minister Gerd Muller warned Sunday that up to 100 million Africans could head north as economic and climate refugees. Germany is making a push to promote peace and investment in Africa at the G20 summit in Hamburg in July. Muller believes unprecedented migrant populations could head for Europe if climate goals aren’t met and the economic outlook in Africa remains the same. “If we continue as before, people in many parts of Africa have no other chance than to get to us,” Muller, a member of the Christian Social Union, told German tabloid Bild am Sonntag. “If we...

Europe in 2017 is racked with uncertainty—the eurozone crises, the endless challenges of the European Union, national elections that resemble endless rounds of bullet-dodging. Yet even these events are insignificant compared with the deep tectonic shifts beneath the Continent’s politics, shifts that Europeans—and their allies—ignore at our peril. Throughout the migration crisis of recent years I traveled across the Continent, from the reception islands into which migrants arrive to the suburbs in which they end up and the chancelleries which encouraged them to come. For decades Europe had encouraged guest workers, and then their families, to come. As Germany’s Chancellor...