Free Republic

Northern Germany is braced for a violent winter storm which is forecast to hit on Thursday. The coastline could see huge waves, the worst flooding since 1962, and wind speeds of up to 140 kilometres per hour. Named Xaver by meteorologists, blue skies will turn black as the low pressure system arrives on Thursday from Greenland. It may well be the worst storm the north has seen since the 1960's. Thursday morning will, meteorologist Thomas Ruppert from state weather service DWD said, see wind up to force 12 on the coast – the same level as a hurricane - and...

More than half of Germans want greater state control over websites, but about the same share are worried about surveillance of their own online activity, a survey on Tuesday revealed. Many users are concerned about the threats they face online, above all from computer viruses (72 percent), surveillance of their browsing activity (57 percent) and the misuse of personal data (50 percent), the survey conducted by the Allensbach Institute for the German Institute for Trust and Security in the Internet showed. But in a seeming contradiction, a considerable majority (61 percent) also believed there should be greater state controls on...

SINGAPORE: Singapore, which has Southeast Asia’s most modern military, said Monday it was acquiring two new submarines from German defence contractor ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. In a statement, the defence ministry said it signed a contract to acquire two “Type 218SG” submarines, which are projected to be delivered in 2020. It said the deal included a logistics package and a crew training arrangement in Germany, but did not reveal the total cost. The two new submarines, along with Archer-class submarines purchased from Sweden in 2005 will replace its Challenger-class submarines that were built in the 1960s and acquired by the city-state...

The Supreme Court has ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to respond to the Home School Legal Defense Association’s (HSLDA) petition on behalf of the Romeike family, a German family who sought legal asylum in the United States to escape persecution because homeschooling is largely prohibited in their home country... the order is a hopeful sign that the High Court will hear the case. ... the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals had denied asylum to the Romeikes following the Obama administration’s appeal of an earlier decision by a U.S. immigration judge who had granted them political asylum. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike...

Iran will decide the level of uranium enrichment in its nuclear programme based on its energy and other civilian needs, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in remarks reported Saturday. His remarks appeared to conflict with the landmark nuclear deal struck with world powers in Geneva last weekend, which states that the enrichment level must be mutually defined and agreed upon by both sides in further negotiations. "Iran will decide the level of enrichment according to its needs for different purposes," Zarif said late Friday night, according to the official IRNA news agency. "Only details of the enrichment activities are...

Over a decade of experience has shown that the nationalization of airport screening was a mistake. ... Private airport screening is the successful approach used by many other high-income nations. Indeed, all main airports in Canada use private screening firms, as do more than 80 percent of Europe’s main airports.

Poland believes German-made submarines are not up to the job of defending Polish shores, but sources have told The Local that on the back of a landmark naval deal between the two countries, Poland is likely to lease two subs anyway. On May 27th German Defence Minister Thomas de Maizière and his Polish counterpart Tomasz Siemoniak signed a “Letter of Intention” to increase co-operation between the two countries’ navies in 28 areas including through a “submarine operating authority”. The agreement pledged to “provide a sound foundation for the further enhancement of the German-Polish naval cooperation in the future,” in several...

An investigation initiated by the American CIA and FBI in 2009 revealed that at least 100 Islamic extremists had infiltrated the U.S. military, and that some of these individuals had been in touch with Islamic radicals who had infiltrated military units in Spain, as well as Britain, France and Germany. The military is an attractive employment option for many young Muslims born in Spain, where the unemployment rate is stuck at 27%, and the jobless rate for individuals under 25 exceeds 60%. Often, a stint in the military opens doors for civilian jobs with national or local police or other...

Iran's six-month temporary rollback of its nuclear activities agreed to in the recent deal has not begun and the start date has not yet been set, a spokesman for world powers' chief negotiator said Wednesday. "The actual date for the beginning of the six-month period of the first step has yet to be decided," Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, told AFP.

BERLIN — During the Cold War, Berlin was one of the most spy-ridden cities in the world. Now it’s the place where people go to escape government surveillance. An international cadre of privacy advocates is settling in Germany’s once-divided capital, saying they feel safer here than they do in the United States or Britain, where authorities have vowed to prosecute leakers of official secrets. Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who was one of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s main conduits of leaked data, lives here now. So does Jacob Appelbaum, a former spokesman for WikiLeaks. They were joined this...

BRUSSELS — Most French Jewish parents enroll their children in private schools because of anti-Semitism, a leader of France’s Jewish community said. Anti-Semitism “affects Jewish families very seriously and is the main reason there are so few Jewish children in public schools,” Roger Cukierman, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, said Tuesday during a symposium on anti-Semitism at the European Parliament. “Most of them go to Jewish or Christian private schools.” Cukierman spoke at a symposium organized by the European Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith International with European lawmakers on the findings of a recent survey...

A Jewish boy who hid from the Nazis in a hayloft was on Wednesday reunited after 70 years with the son of a couple who risked everything to save him. Beaming American Holocaust survivor Leon Gersten, 79, embraced and clasped the hand of a visibly moved Czeslaw Polziec, 81, whose Polish parents saved five Jews during World War II. Gersten welcomed Polziec to New York's JFK Airport after his trans-Atlantic flight, supported by his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday (27 November) said the EU will keep its door open to Ukraine and urged Russia to let eastern countries decide for themselves about European integration. Merkel is just one of the 20 EU leaders gathering in Vilnius Thursday and Friday for the so-called Eastern Partnership summit. But Germany's privileged economic relations with Russia and Merkel's standing as the most powerful leader in the EU make her words carry weight. She is to meet the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovich, who last week said he will not sign a long-negotiated association and free trade...

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel and her main rivals agreed early Wednesday to a blueprint for Germany’s next government, bringing to a close five weeks of negotiations that ended in a 17-hour session.

Stay-at-home mums cooking lunch for the children while dads earn the money—Germans’ opinions on gender roles are more conservative today than they were in the 1990s, a survey revealed on Monday. Today just under half of women (48 percent) could imagine their husband taking a step back in his career to enable them to further their own, the Tagesspiegel reported. Back in 1993, the number was 54 percent who thought such a thing likely. Men have also hardened their views, with today 40 percent said they could see themselves putting a dent in their career to help their partners, while...

It was not just the US - Britain, Russia, China and North Korea were also tapping Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone, German security services believe, according to magazine reports. Focus magazine said an analysis by German security services showed Merkel's calls were listened into by even more people than initially thought. It said analysis by German security services showed the four countries, and not just the US, were eavesdropping. The British Embassy in Berlin declined to comment on the allegations. Relations between Germany and the US have turned chilly since it was alleged that its National Security Agency (NSA) has...

Union Verdi is preparing more strikes to step up pressure on Amazon in Germany, its biggest market outside the United States, in a dispute over pay and conditions, German media reported. Workers at Amazon centers in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig will walk out for at least one day on Monday, Heiner Reimann of Verdi told daily Stuttgarter Nachrichten. The union has organized several short strikes this year in a bid to force the world's biggest Internet retailer to accept a collective agreement on employment conditions similar to deals for the mail order and retail sector, which are more generous than...

Poland is acquiring Leopard 1A4 and Leopard 2A5 main battle tanks from Germany under an agreement signed by defense ministers of both countries. The agreement covers 105 Leopard 2A5s, 14 of the 1A4s, 200 other armored vehicles -- such as recovery vehicles and trucks -- and peripheral material.

The American Center for Law and Justice says the Obama administration should never have struck a deal with Iran without part of the terms being the release of imprisoned pastor Saeed Abedini and other Americans being held in Iranian prisons. ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow says basically, President Barack Obama and Secretary of John Kerry turned their back on their fellow Americans. "It is outrageous and a betrayal of American Pastor Saeed Abedini who has spent more than a year in an Iranian prison simply because of his Christian faith," Sekulow said following word of a deal with the Islamic...

Oil prices are likely to drop, analysts said, as the nuclear accord between Iran and six world powers potentially paves the way for more crude oil to reach the global market.

Shortly after the historic nuclear agreement was reached with Iran in the early hours of Sunday morning, John Kerry, US secretary of state, took to Twitter to announce a “first step that makes the world safer”. In one of those gestures that would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani promptly retweeted his comment. Yet within hours, both men had also revealed substantial disagreements over the nuclear negotiations in Geneva which served to expose the very large gaps that still lie between this initial deal and a final agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme over the next...

Canada is "deeply skeptical" about Iran's intentions, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said on Sunday. "Every diplomatic [effort] should be taken to ensure that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon," Baird said. He added that effective sanctions brought the Iranian regime to its more moderate front, and led to the interim deal signed in Geneva. Canada will therefore continue to impose its sanctions on the Islamic Republic in full force, Baird said. "A nuclear Iran is not just a threat to Canada or its allies but it would also seriously damage the integrity of decades of work for nuclear...

U.S. President Barack Obama called Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday to discuss an international nuclear deal with Iran that has threatened to raise tensions between the close allies, the White House said. "The two leaders reaffirmed their shared goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon," deputy White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One As Obama headed to the U.S. West Coast, reported AFP. "Consistent with our commitment to consult closely with our Israeli friends, the president told the prime minister that he wants the United States and Israel to begin consultations immediately...

AFTER 40 years of hesitation and seven hard years of reform and lobbying, Turkey is basking today in the most qualified of invitations to begin the process of joining Europe - a continent whose eastern half the Ottoman empire controlled for centuries. A European Commission report released yesterday, which paves the way for a deciding vote by the 25-member European Union at its December summit, was heavily qualified, and Turkish leaders were muted in their expressions of delight at their initial success. Presenting the decision to the European parliament last night, commission president Romano Prodi said it was a "qualified...

...Hollande is much more focused on tapping into Israel’s know-how to help his country’s beleaguered economy. “Israel is, from an economic point of view, with the high-tech industry, considered to be very valuable,” Dr. Tsilla Hershco, a senior research associate at Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies told The Media Line. “With all the turmoil around us, Israel is considered the one stable state in the Middle East from a political and economic point of view.” France has suffered greatly since 2008, when a worldwide economic downturn brought the European Union to the brink of collapse. Since then,...

Iran and six world powers clinched a deal on Sunday curbing the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for initial sanctions relief, signaling the start of a game-changing rapprochement that could ease the risk of a wider Middle East war. Aimed at ending a long festering standoff, the interim pact between Iran and the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia won the critical endorsement of Iranian clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Germany’s next government is set to scrap the country’s air passenger duty, which could make flights up to €40 cheaper. The move follows pressure from the airline lobby, but has upset environmental groups. … The tax was introduced in Germany two years ago, but the parties believe that it is costing the country more money than it brings in, as passengers are put off flying from German airports by the high cost of travel. If the duty is abolished, ticket prices would be reduced by €7.50 on short-haul journeys, €23.43 on medium-haul and slashed on long-haul flights by €42.18, the...

The euro rose to a four-year peak against the yen and gained for a second straight day versus the dollar on Friday after much-stronger-than-expected German business sentiment pointed to a continued rebound in Europe's largest economy. Comments from Federal Reserve officials saying a reduction in stimulus would be discussed at next month's monetary policy meeting failed to boost the dollar. Analysts said the market has already priced in Fed tapering talk in December, limiting its impact on the greenback.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that she is prepared to accept demands for a national minimum wage as part of a coalition deal that would give her a third term in office. Merkel had opposed the center-left Social Democrats’ call for an €8.50 ($11.50) hourly minimum wage in the run-up to the September election. Despite a clear victory at the ballot box, her conservative Union bloc lacks enough seats in parliament to form a government on its own, forcing her into lengthy negotiations for a “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats. …

The financial security of Germany’s hospitals has fallen sharply in the last year with one in every two hospitals making a loss. A study released on Wednesday blamed rising insurance premiums for the precarious situation. … Net operating profits fell in almost 60 percent of the country’s hospitals and this year just 13 percent of clinics forecast a strong financial position. Smaller hospitals with fewer than 3,000 beds were particularly badly affected, the Spiegel reported, with 57 percent making a loss. …

Partnering with the private sector, Germany wants more potatoes to take root in Sub-Saharan Africa in an effort to address chronic food shortages there, but development aid groups are skeptical about mixing business interests with public funding. “The potato must go to Africa,” said Hans-Jürgen Beerfeltz, state secretary at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), a few months ago. Beerfeltz was keeping a straight face as he marked the launch of the Potato Initiative Africa (PIA), which is supported by BMZ. Under the leadership of German potato producer Europlant, a number of companies—including multinational corporations like...

WASHINGTON — The United States is battling to win Qatar’s multi-billion-dollar fighter-jet competition. Industry sources said the administration of President Barack Obama has been lobbying the Gulf Cooperation Council emirate to select a U.S. warplane for Doha’s largest combat air project. The sources said the administration has succeeded in delaying Qatar’s tender, which included proposals from Britain and France. “After Saudi Arabia, the Qatar project will be the biggest aircraft procurement for years to come,” a source said. The sources said Qatar, which established an evaluation panel, was moving slowly in a tender for up to 72 advanced fighter-jets, a...

The path to a fully multi-role Eurofighter Typhoon is finally becoming clear. At a media briefing here tomorrow (Wednesday), the company hopes to announce the first test flight in Italy of an aircraft carrying the MBDA Storm Shadow cruise missile. The jet’s full operational clearance to drop smart bombs came recently. Meanwhile one of the prototypes will fly next spring with the Selex AESA radar. Neither the Storm Shadow nor the AESA radar is yet under contract. There have been media reports that Saudi Arabian money is funding these integrations. Laurie Hilditch, Eurofighter capability manager, told AIN here Monday that...

The US Government hit out on Friday at a highly-critical report in a German newspaper claiming the country had become the “headquarters” for America’s “secret wars”. The Süddeutsche newspaper published an investigation in its Friday edition into America’s foreign policy and wars being conducted from German soil. It claimed: “The U.S. knows no limits. And Germany looks on—even asking where it can help.” But on Friday afternoon, the US Embassy’s press department in Berlin took the unusual step of sending out a statement attacking the “outrageous” claims. It described the story as “full of half-truths, speculation, and innuendo”. …

That the socialist French government of François Hollande just blocked a bad deal with Tehran, emerging as the hero of the Geneva negotiations, is on one level a huge surprise. But it also follows logically from the passivity of the Obama administration. American foreign policy is in unprecedented free-fall, with a feckless and distracted White House barely paying attention to the outside world, and when it does, acting in an inconsistent, weak, and fantastical manner. If one were to discern something so grand as an Obama Doctrine, it would read: "Snub friends, coddle opponents, devalue American interests, seek consensus, and...

The Geneva talks on Iranian nukes have turned into a "pull my finger" charade. Iran says that it's only making electricity, not nuclear bombs. The U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany are somehow all supposed to agree on reeling Iran in -- but let's face it: Russia and China are close Iranian allies and trading partners, while even Germany and France have significant geopolitical ties to Russia through, for example, the European defense conglomerate EADS and the Nord Stream pipeline running Russian gas into Europe. And Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman reportedly bragged to Russian journalists at the...

Revealed: Iran's Supreme Leader is a Billionaire Iran's supreme leader controls a business empire worth around $95 billion, exposes Reuters. While Iran has been buckling under the sanctions that have been crippling its economy, the country’s supreme leader is apparently enjoying the billions he has in the bank. The Reuters news agency exposed on Monday that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls a business empire worth around $95 billion, a sum exceeding the value of his nation’s current annual petroleum exports. The little-known organization, called Setad, is one of the keys to the Iranian leader’s enduring power and now holds...

As PM demands that Washington keep up the economic pressure on Tehran, Kerry prepares to ward off new sanctions bills Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday fired another volley in what has turned into an ongoing, very public war of words with the Obama administration, saying that from what he had seen of a proposed interim solution to the Iranian nuclear standoff, the terms would allow Tehran to advance toward an atomic weapons capability while throwing off the yoke of economic sanctions. “Israel prefers a diplomatic option to other options, but we demand a real diplomatic solution in order to...

What's novel here is that in Europe, doubts about America's wisdom, strength and resolve are increasingly focused on the person of the president. Beyond the espionage, think of Mr. Obama's hesitations on Iran and turnabouts concerning Syria—or his role in lengthening the U.S. budget shutdown, or in providing America with a new but crippled national health program. These days, and to varying degrees, the governments of France, Britain and Germany regard Mr. Obama as a problem. No longer expressed only in private, the notion represents a decline in the reflexive acceptance and respect that had cushioned European attitudes about his...

Even before it emerged that the National Security Agency had wiretapped her mobile phone, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was calling for the Internet to have something like Airbus—a joint European initiative able to compete with the dominance of American and Chinese high-tech companies, just as Airbus does with the US aerospace giant Boeing. Currently, the global market for software and online services is firmly in American hands. What’s more, American corporations, such as Google, are subject to the PATRIOT Act, which requires them to allow American intelligence agencies access to their data centers. On the other hand, the equipment that...

Talks in Geneva between world powers and Iran ended late Saturday night without a deal, after hitting a snag earlier in the day when France questioned the terms of a proposed agreement. Chances of bridging all differences appeared to diminish as the day went on, but efforts continued. The foreign ministers of the seven delegations discussing Iran held a last-ditch meeting late Saturday, and were later joined by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in an apparent effort to salvage the talks. Earlier Saturday, Zarif said talks would resume within seven to 10 days, if an agreement would not be...

Following recent revelations about NSA spying, Spiegel has learned that Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution recently issued a security warning to authorities in the country’s 16 states. The domestic intelligence agency warned in an Oct. 30 letter that “an emotional response from certain segments of the population cannot be ruled out” and recommended that “security measures aimed at protecting US facilities in Germany should be increased.” The agency said the background behind the “potential threat” was ongoing discussions about the “collection of Germans’ data by the United States.” …

'Dorothy Ellis, 93, the last surviving widow of a soldier from the First World War, laid a wreath in memory of her late husband, Wilfred, who died in 1982, at a ceremony commemorating the Armistice in Staffordshire this morning. Wilfred Ellis survived being shot, gassed and left for dead in the mud of northern France to return home to eventually marry Dorothy, who was born three years after the end of the war. His remarkable wartime experiences formed part of the inspiration for War Horse, the children's book by Michael Morpurgo which was made into an award-winning play and then...

'A 13-year-old boy who ran away to join up fought on the front line in the First World War until his mother sent his birth certificate to the War Office and pleaded that he should be sent home. Sidney Lewis, who has been recognised as Britain's youngest soldier to serve in the Great War, enlisted with the East Surrey Regiment in August 1915, five months after his 12th birthday, and was fighting on the Somme by the age of 13. But within weeks he was ordered home to his mother, Fanny Lewis, in Tooting, south London, after she told officials...

'This Sunday, people across Britain will remember those who sacrificed their lives for the country in World War Two. And it will be a particularly poignant day for Winston Churchill's "secret army", who will be parading at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday for the first time.'

'As war raged during World War One, the military purchased most of England's horses and sent them to the Western Front. Many farmers and traders had to find alternative beasts of burden, but none more exotic than elephants.'

Nude studies have been part of Western art from time immemorial, and have no intrinsic or inherent connection with lewdness or pornography. But the example of Michelangelo and everyone else goes out the window when it comes to appeasing Muslims. The principle is absolute: in Muslim countries, non-Muslims must conform their behavior to Islamic sensibilities. In non-Muslim countries, non-Muslims must conform their behavior to Islamic sensibilities."Berlin: Artist not allowed to show nude sketches 'out of respect for Muslims,'" by Cheradenine Zakalwe for Islam Versus Europe, November 10 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):In the invitation to the private art show...

Iranian officials said Sunday the country made progress with world powers during "serious" talks over Tehran's nuclear program, but insisted the nation cannot be pushed to give up uranium enrichment as negotiations move into tougher ground over ways to ease Western concerns that Iran could one day develop atomic weapons. The remarks on enrichment repeat past declarations on the country's "right" to produce nuclear fuel, which is a key element of the talks over its scope. But President Hassan Rouhani and his top envoys seek to assure hard-line critics that Iran will not make sweeping concessions in the negotiations, which...

When Iran appeared close to a preliminary deal with world powers over its nuclear program, France stepped up to say: Not so fast—a surprise move that exposed divisions among the United States and other Western negotiators who had long been in lockstep on the issue. France, analysts say, was motivated by factors including its tough stand against the spread of nuclear weapons, skepticism about Tehran’s trustworthiness, and the longstanding French tradition of speaking out on the world stage. Critics faulted France for alleged grandstanding and seeking closer ties with Iran’s foes. … After the failure of European-led talks with Iran...

With a first round of nuclear negotiations with world powers ending without agreement, Iranian officials looked ahead Sunday to parallel talks with the U.N.’s nuclear chief amid reminders that concessions by Tehran have limits. The overall message from Iran closely mirrored the work-in-progress tone of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other powerful envoys, who failed to seal a first-step accord during overtime talks in Geneva and but then quickly agreed to try again next week. The administration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is emphasizing that the talks are a work in progress. He’s mollifying hard-liners by reasserting that...