Free Republic

A woman's sex drive begins to plummet once she is in a secure relationship, according to research. Researchers from Germany found that four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex. Conversely, the team found a man's libido remained the same regardless of how long he had been in a relationship.

Germany’s weapons industry is booming, and even the vice chancellor’s attempt to stop selling tanks to the Saudis is a minor concession for the world’s third biggest arms exporter. But the trade is destabilizing security. […] Henrik Heidenkamp, German defense industry expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told The Local the economic value was not the point, but about nurturing Germany’s defense industry so that it will be able to supply arms to the German army and its allies. “Only a commercially viable defense industry can deliver needed equipment to the armed forces in order to sustain the national...

Germany warned of war in Europe on Monday, with vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel stating the continent was being “dragged” into a “smoldering conflict” with Russia over Ukraine. Gabriel—at an event commemorating World War I with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls—warned of resurgent nationalist forces both within Europe and “in its neighborhood”. He said that good news several months ago from Ukraine—including an end to bloody violence against protesters—had since given way to “an ongoing military confrontation” and the realization that “Russia is apparently willing to let tanks cross European borders.” …

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Friday portrayed the Ukraine crisis as an opportunity for the European Union and the United States to revamp their relationship after the fallout of the NSA spying scandal. “I am confident that the Ukraine crisis will help us to strengthen transatlantic ties and rediscover our common interests,” Schäuble said in a speech on the sidelines of the annual IMF/World Bank spring meetings. Moscow’s “backslide into patterns from the previous century” has caused both sides of the Atlantic to move closer together, he said. “Like no two actors on the global stage, the United States...

Last week’s three-day strike at Lufthansa drew attention to structural problems at a company that is critical to Germany’s globalized economy. The flag carrier is losing ground against competitors, but its pilots are remaining firm. […] (Vereinigung Cockpit)’s slogan for the strike, “Stop the profit greed” […] ended up backfiring on the pilots’ union. In the public and the press, on television and in many Internet forums, discussions of the pilots’ strike, instead of triggering debates over greedy fund managers, were focused on the pilots themselves. People across Germany were talking about whether the strike was justified or excessive. The...

PARIS (AP) — NATO's top military commander in Europe, drafting countermoves to the Russian military threat against Ukraine, said Wednesday they could include deployment of American troops to alliance member states in Eastern Europe now feeling at risk. Foreign ministers of the 28-nation alliance have given Breedlove until Tuesday to propose steps to reassure NATO members nearest Russia that other alliance countries have their back. "Essentially what we are looking at is a package of land, air and maritime measures that would build assurance for our easternmost allies," Breedlove told the AP. "I'm tasked to deliver this by next week....

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO will triple its usual number of fighter jets patrolling over the Baltics next month to beef up its eastern European defenses due to tension with Russia over Ukraine, a NATO military official said on Tuesday. Four NATO fighters are usually based in the Baltics but the United States, which currently has responsibility for patrolling the skies there, increased that to 10 F-15s to reassure those states following Russia's occupation of Ukraine's Crimea region. The number of fighters assigned to the Baltic "air policing" mission is now set to increase further to 12, three times the normal...

The U.S. Senate is keeping up the pressure on the European Union (EU) to not hamper U.S. production and exports through the appropriation of common food names. This time the focus is on commonly used meat names, such as “bologna” and “black forest ham”. In a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the senators urged them to defend common names, especially in negotiations with the EU on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).Last month the Senate sent a similar letter focused on common cheese names that are under attack, including “parmesan”, “feta” and...

In an interview, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, 60, warns that American spying has become “boundless” and expresses sorrow that approval ratings for the United States have plummeted in Germany. […] “I am thinking of the foreign policy damage. Because the greater damage has actually been inflicted by the Americans and not the Germans. And I say this as a staunch trans-Atlanticist. Approval ratings for Americans in German polls are lower right now than they have been in a long time. The last time this was the case was during a certain phase of the policies of George W....

(Reuters) - Britain's economy could grow by 1.3 billion pounds if it left the European Union due to less regulation and more trade with emerging economies, a British diplomat who dreamt up a prize-winning blueprint for the country's EU exit said on Tuesday. Britain's free market Institute of Economic Affairs on Tuesday awarded a 100,000-euro prize to Iain Mansfield, a British diplomat based in the Philippines, who it decided had come up with the best blueprint for a 'Brexit,' a British departure from the EU. Amid widespread public disenchantment in Britain about the EU's perceived over-bearing role in everyday life...

BERLIN (AP) -- German authorities have banned an organization they say has raised millions of dollars for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which the European Union considers a terrorist organization. Emily Haber, a deputy interior minister, said police raided 19 locations early Tuesday in six German states used by the so-called "Orphaned Children Project - Lebanon."

The Chattanooga plant’s February secret-ballot vote to remain non-union was seen as a major triumph for the right-to-work community. But Volkswagen has since been under intense pressure from the company’s highly influential German union IG-METAL to figure out how to void the election result.

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are Christians and the parents of six children. When their kids attended the German public schools, they were bullied and harassed because of being Christians. The parents began looking into the schools and what their kids were being taught. They found a number of objectionable and inappropriate things in the textbooks that they didn’t want their kids learning. They strongly believed that their children would receive a better education grounded in biblical principles by being schooled at home rather than having their children indoctrinated by the German schools. Uwe said: “We knew that homeschooling would not...

Fifteen-year-old Daniel Romeike loves America -- his adopted country. But if the Obama Administration has its way, Daniel, his parents and his brothers and sisters will be deported in a court battle over the right to home school. "If I had a chance to talk to President Obama, I would ask him to let us stay in this great country of freedom and opportunity," Daniel told Fox News. The Romeike family fled their German homeland in 2008 seeking political asylum in the United States -- where they hoped to home school their children. Instead, the Obama administration wants the evangelical...

Negotiations to end the division of Cyprus have been ongoing for years. Now, Northern Cyprus Foreign Minister Özdil Nami tells Spiegel that a deal is close. And he wants Germany to help with reunification. […] “We have asked Germany for support for the process of reunification. Finally, the two parts of Cyprus—the Greek south and the Turkish north—are prepared for this step, after 40 years. It cannot be allowed to fail. It is an historic opportunity.” […] “With the large untapped natural gas reserves off the coast, we could help Europe reduce its dependency on Russia.” …

Eighteen countries, including five of the world’s leading arms exporters, ratified a landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade on Wednesday, giving a significant boost to the campaign for the treaty’s entry into force. […] Five of the world’s top 10 arms exporters—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—turned in their ratification documents at the ceremony. The other 13 were Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Among the hold-outs is the United States, the world’s largest weapons exporter. The Obama administration has signed the treaty but there is strong resistance in...

Germany’s environment minister has called for the controversial gas extraction technique known as “fracking” to be made illegal. Her comments came ahead of an emergency energy summit. The country’s 16 state premiers were set to meet on Tuesday evening in Berlin in an attempt to smooth over disagreements around the financing of the country's switch over to renewable energy, known as the Energiewende. Ahead of the meeting, Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said Germany should never consider turning to fracking as a solution for its energy needs, despite the success of the technology in the USA. Fracking involves blasting water mixed...

Why Poland Loves Ukraine ... For Now MARCH 28, 2014 Slawomir Sierakowski Eastern Europe, which beginning with Poland is celebrating its 25th anniversary of freedom from Communism, has suddenly awakened from a beautiful dream about the end of history. No less an authority than Adam Michnik, the legendary Polish anti-Communist dissident, recently announced that 2014 marks the end of the best period in Poland’s history in three centuries. We are entering uncertain times: In contrast to Eastern Europe’s foray into independence after World War I, no close intraregional alliances were formed in the aftermath of 1989; rather, each country placed...

NATO's foreign ministers ordered an end to civilian and military cooperation with Russia on Tuesday and told their generals and admirals to quickly figure out ways to better protect alliance members that feel threatened by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. The 28-member alliance, the keystone of U.S. and European security since the end of World War II, was reacting to its most serious crisis in years: Russia's unilateral annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which the U.S. and its allies have condemned as an illegal land grab. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the other ministers, meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels...

The boom in American natural-gas production during the past several years, and the consequent crash of domestic natural-gas prices, has caused many to call for the liberation of U.S. natural-gas exports. The ongoing Russian invasion of the Crimea and threat to the rest of Ukraine has added still greater urgency to these calls, as the need take action to weaken Russian President Vladimir Putin’s natural-gas stranglehold over Europe has become vital. Despite these economic and national security imperatives, there are still those who maintain that allowing American natural-gas producers to export their product would damage the national interest. According to...

Germany's labor ministry has banned managers from calling or emailing staff out of hours except in emergencies. The ministry says the measure is intended to prevent staff from suffering undue stress by being constantly on call. Daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Friday that the ministry is following the lead of major German companies such as automaker Volkswagen and Deutsche Telekom.

Germany has said its air force is ready to increase security on NATO’s border with Russia, despite Moscow’s promise not to escalate the crisis in Ukraine. A German defense ministry spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency on Sunday (30 March) “the army could take part in flights to patrol airspace with AWACS machines [surveillance planes] over Romania and Poland as well as training flights in the framework of a NATO air policing mission over Baltic states”. The statement comes after Denmark and the US in the past few weeks agreed to send more than a dozen extra F-16 fighter jets...

As Germany’s Mr. Euro, Wolfgang Schäuble is one of the country’s best-known politicians abroad. When the finance minister speaks, people generally tend to listen. But on Monday morning, public statements at his ministry raised eyebrows. Schäuble made statements drawing parallels between the politics of Adolf Hitler and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Schäuble said Russia’s actions in Ukraine remind him of the expansionism of Nazi Germany. “Hitler already adopted such methods in Sudetenland,” Schäuble said at a public event at the Finance Ministry in Berlin on Monday morning. “That’s something that we all know from history.” Schäuble’s comments were directed at...

As parents in Germany have protested a new pro-homosexual “sexual diversity” curriculum in their schools, homosexual activists have attacked them by hurling feces and destroying their property, according to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, which documents anti-Christian incidents in Europe. "Protesters were physically attacked and it was felt that the police failed to protect the parents’ basic right of assembly," said a statement from the Observatory describing incidents at recent rallies in Baden-Württemberg and Cologne. According to eyewitnesses, says the Observatory, "Christian parents were shouted at with obscenities.” "They were spit at, eggs were thrown, and little...

Lawmakers in Washington are debating whether to export more natural gas to combat Russian threats to cut off its gas supplies to Europe. Our D-C reporter Matt Laslo has a look at what that could mean for Wyoming’s economy – and environment… MATT LASLO: Wyoming's junior senator, John Barrasso, made waves when her first came to Washington. And while he's now in the Republican leadership team in the U-S Senate, he's starting to get brushed aside by many reporters and politicians because of his near singular focus on dismantling what he terms Obamacare. But this week lawmakers of all stripes...

LONDON — President Obama spent Wednesday in Brussels talking up the importance of the security relationship between Europe and the United States, but it is considered unlikely that Russia’s seizure of Crimea will prompt increased European military spending at a time of economic anemia and budget cuts. NATO and the European Union regard the Russian move in Ukraine as a wake-up call, a reminder that hard power can easily trump 21st-century assumptions about Europe as a sphere of trade, international law and cooperation. Despite the newly militant tone, NATO members will continue to spend paltry amounts on defense, experts say....

On Thursday ENI’s [Italian oil/gas] chief executive, Paolo Scaroni, was in Washington to meet with Obama administration officials at the State Department and National Security Council to discuss natural gas, Russia and Ukraine. "What is relevant is that this dependency is going to go up and not down because domestic European production [including North Africa] is going down." Scaroni takes a dim view of American LNG as a means to liberate Europe from Russian gas, in part because he says that transporting LNG from the United States to Europe is expensive, Russian gas production costs are very low and Russia...

Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret Paul H. Rosenberg and Foreign Policy In Focus The Ukrainian nationalist party Svoboda holds a rally in Kiev, January 1, 2014. (Reuters/Maxim Zmeyev) As the Ukrainian crisis has unfolded over the past few weeks, it’s hard for Americans not to see Vladimir Putin as the big villain. But the history of the region is a history of competing villains vying against one another; and one school of villains—the Nazis—have a long history of engagement with the United States, mostly below the radar, but occasionally exposed, as they were by Russ...

German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has said discussions on revising the treaty to secure the eurozone’s architecture will begin after the May EU elections. “After the EU elections, the debate about treaty change will be back on the table. The federal government will plead for institutional improvements, at least in the eurozone. The monetary union needs a joint finance- and economic policy, with corresponding institutions,” Schäuble said in an interview with Handelsblatt published on Thursday (27 March). He repeated his call for a eurozone parliament and a permanent chief of the Eurogroup, the informal gathering of eurozone finance ministers. …

<p>GREER, S.C. (AP) — BMW is celebrating its 20th anniversary of building cars in the United States by investing $1 billion in its plant in South Carolina to build two of its new X-series vehicles at the facility that ushered in a wave of foreign automakers building Southern plants.</p>

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Barack Obama of dramatically weakening the United States' position in the world, drawing a straight line between Obama’s ever-yielding foreign policy and the increasing troubles around the world. Rice “Right now, there’s a vacuum,” she told a crowd of more than two thousand attending the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner last night in Washington, D.C. “There’s a vacuum because we’ve decided to lower our voice. We’ve decided to step back. We’ve decided that if we step back and lower our voice, others will lead, other things will fill that vacuum.” Citing Bashar...

The West has not yet reached a stage where it will be ready to impose economic sanctions on Russia, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, stressing that she hopes for a political solution to the stalemate over Ukraine crisis. The chancellor said she is “not interested in escalation” of tensions with Russia, speaking after Wednesday meeting with the South Korean president in Berlin. “On the contrary, I am working on de-escalation of the situation,” she added, as cited by Itar-Tass. Merkel believes that the West “has not reached a stage that implies the imposition of economic sanctions” against Russia, advocated by...

(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft, Jeff Mason and Steve Holland; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Paul Taylor) (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama told the European Union on Wednesday it cannot rely on the United States alone to reduce its dependency on Russian energy, as relations with Moscow chill over its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. Speaking on a visit to Brussels to discuss trade relations and the Ukraine crisis, Obama said concluding a new transatlantic trade pact, now under negotiation, would make it easier for Washington to license more gas exports. :snip: During a 65-minute lunch, European Council President...

Most of us already suspect that environmentalists are dictatorial wolves dressed in the democracy sheepskin. Despite all the lip service they pay to justice and liberty, they are really all about state power and regulation. So it is with Germany’s authoritarian statists and greens, who not long ago called for the enactment of a nationwide “Veggie Day” once a week in order to start weaning people off climate-killing diets containing meat. Fortunately the citizens roundly rejected the nonsense, sending the wackos off – to return another day. Electric heater German city of Bremen attempts to form a green police to...

Mounting tension in the Crimea is prompting calls for compulsory military service to be reintroduced in Germany. A number of German ex-generals have raised fears over the nation’s military strength should it be drawn into a NATO-led conflict. “We need compulsory military service. There is no other way for Germany to guarantee national defense within the [NATO] mutual defense alliance,” retired NATO general Egon Ramms told Bild newspaper. “[It certainly can’t be done] on a voluntary basis.” Ramms was commander of the Allied Joint Forces Command between 2007 and 2010, one of the highest-ranking positions in the NATO alliance. …

Germany’s defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Sunday that NATO should show greater support for member countries who could face military aggression from Russia. However, the comments were met with sharp criticism from some German parliamentarians, who accused her of contributing to the escalation of tension around Russia’s actions in Crimea. In an interview with German public broadcaster ARD, the defense chief dismissed those critics and stood by her position. “It’s important to make clear that NATO isn’t just something on paper, but that we are there for each other,” von der Leyen said in comments that were...

Germany’s top court ruled on Tuesday morning that politicians have too much influence over the country’s state broadcaster. The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe decided that several aspects of broadcaster ZDF’s state contract were against the constitution. […] Politicians can also have “no decisive influence” over the selection of members for the television board, the court added. …

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AbstractOn February 28, Russian troops, aided by pro-Russian local militia, occupied important sites across the Crimean Peninsula under the pretext of “protecting Russian people.” Now Crimea is under Moscow’s de facto control and the Russian parliament has voted to annex the region into the Russian Federation. The failure of the Obama Administration’s Russian “reset,” the unilateral disarming of Europe, and the U.S. reduction of forces and disengagement from Europe have led Russia to calculate that the West will not respond in any significant way. The Administration can demonstrate America’s commitment to its NATO allies and support for the Ukrainian...

World leaders played an interactive nuclear war game designed to test their responses to a terrorist atomic "dirty bomb" attack that threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. David Cameron joined Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Xi Jinping and other world leaders to play a "nukes on the loose" war game to see how they would cope with a terrorist nuclear attack. The German chancellor grumbled at being asked to play games and take tests with the Prime Minister, US and Chinese presidents around a table with dozens of heads of state at a nuclear summit in The...

Checking out Rembrandts and checking in with European allies, President Obama seems blind to the rubble around him. The U.S. leadership vacuum has left NATO as ravaged as a post-World War II battlefield. In May 1945, a sizable force of Allied bombers flew photographers over European cities to document the destruction of what was then, and remains, the worst war in history. Their images of urban craters and flattened buildings are permanent reminders of the evils of totalitarianism. One can't help wondering, if Barack Obama had been on board, whether he would have looked down and remarked on the day's...

Some 150 Israeli Arabic-speaking Christians on Sunday demonstrated outside the European Union mission in Tel Aviv, demanding that the international community stop nitpicking against Israel and start combatting the severe persecution of Christians everywhere else in the Middle East. “Nations, organizations and international missions are quick to raise an accusing finger against Israel at every opportunity,” said Father Gabriel Nadaf, spiritual father of the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum, which organized the rally. Those same nations and organizations “don’t life a finger against the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East,” the priest continued. Father Nadaf went on to explain...

Today, the G8 minus 1 met in the Hague and, rather than kick out Russia outright, simply reformed as the G7, thereby punishing (in their minds) Russia for annexing part of the sovereign nation of Ukraine. ("Countries of the G7 end their membership in the G8," read the headline of the Soviet-era wire agency ITAR-TASS.)Really, though, it was the organization--and Russia--returning to a more natural state: The G8 just went back to being the organization it was until 1998, when Bill Clinton invited Russia in, hammering what he hoped would be the final nail in the Cold War coffin. Since then, Russia underwent...

Europe’s far left is set to almost double its deputies in the upcoming European Parliament elections in May. Poll predictions indicate that the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group is set to become the parliament’s third or fourth largest group, with the number of deputies rising from the current 35 to around 60. At third place, it would replace the liberals (ALDE), behind the center-left S&D and center-right EPP. […] The parties are against what they describe as neo-liberal policy-making at the EU level, want more funding for social programs, and want to create what they describe as “another...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–Nev.) is facing a revolt among Republicans for adding controversial language to an aid package for Ukraine.The Senate is expected to vote on the Ukraine measure next week. The controversial provisions, which have support of the Obama administration and liberals from both parties, would increase U.S. financial support to the International Monetary Fund.A growing number of Republicans warn that attaching the IMF language would reduce U.S. power while expanding Russia’s influence on the global stage in the wake of its annexation of Crimea.>>> Q&A: Why Do Conservatives Oppose the IMF Reform Package?Yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz...

Vladimir Putin running rampant in Ukraine showcases how the Obama administration's abdication of global leadership is making the world a more dangerous place. Instead of providing clarity to our nation and our allies, the Obama administration offers tortured semantics. "Kinetic action" glamorizes the failed policy of leading from behind in Libya. A "spontaneous protest" explains the coordinated al Qaeda attack on American officials in Benghazi. The interim agreement over Iran's nuclear program -- described by one of our closest allies as a "historic mistake" -- is in this universe referred to as a display of "international unity." And on Friday,...

President Obama promised Friday there would be “costs” if Russia moved troops into Ukraine, but he didn’t specify what those costs might be. Sen. John McCain has several suggestions for Obama, including the sanctioning of high-level Russian officials; restarting missile defense plans in Eastern Europe; and bringing Georgia, a former Soviet republic, into NATO. McCain said he plans to push from the Congressional side, he told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview Saturday evening. McCain wants the administration to expand its threat to pull out of the G8 Summit in Sochi scheduled for June. That limited move is unlikely...

The leaders of the Group of Eight have suspended Russia's participation in the body over Moscow's activities in Ukraine, the French foreign minister said Tuesday. In an interview with Europe-1 radio, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that "it is envisaged that all the other countries, the seven leading countries, will unite without Russia," The Associated Press reported. The other seven members had already pulled out of preparations for a G8 summit set to be held in June in the Russian city of Sochi. Fabius and French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian earlier postponed a trip to Moscow to meet with...

The world's leading industrial powers threatened further sanctions to deter the Kremlin from invading other parts of Ukraine and boycotted what was to be a Group of Eight summit hosted by President Vladimir Putin. Meeting for the first time since last week's annexation of Crimea by Russia, Group of Seven leaders said they won't attend the planned G-8 meeting which was to have to been held in Sochi, site of the Winter Olympics, and will instead hold their own summit in June in Brussels. "We remain ready to intensify actions including coordinated sectoral sanctions that will have an increasingly significant...

President Barack Obama and leaders of the world’s largest industrialized countries expelled Russia from the group until it “changes course” in Ukraine and formally canceled plans to attend an economic summit in Russia in June. The move was aimed at Russian President Vladmir Putin’s plan to host the G-8 group of economic powers at Sochi, Russia, which would have been its second starring role on the world stage after this winter’s Olympics. Instead, the G-7 leaders will meet in Brussels without Putin. At the same time, the group said it would not send its foreign ministers to a planned G-8...