Free Republic

Germany’s most in-the-red towns could soon get help from the government, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Saturday. In an interview with the Funke media group, Scholz said Berlin “has signaled its willingness” to help remove a €40 billion ($44 billion) debt from local authorities on a “one-off basis.” Out of Germany’s 11,000 local authorities, Scholz said the plan concerns “around 2,500 cities and municipalities that are squeezed by so much debt that they can barely breathe.” Removing the debt would likely set local authorities up to spend more on much-needed infrastructure repairs and renovations on schools, kindergartens and swimming...

After the newly-elected state leader of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, renamed all 12 ministries under his administration, he publicly responded on Monday to inquires as to why. […] Laschet decided to alter the names of the ministries, for example turning the “Justizministerium” (Justice Ministry) and “Finanzministerium” (Finance Ministry) into “Ministerium der Justiz” (Ministry of Justice) and “Ministerium der Finanzen” (Ministry of Finance), respectively. Nothing else about the ministries has changed, but the renaming will cost taxpayers a total of €26,000. […] On the question of efficiency improvements in the state administration posed by Ziemkeit, Laschet replied: “We are not dealing...

The German government says 91 mosques were attacked in the country in 2016. The interior ministry said in a report sent to The Associated Press late Friday that most attacks — 21 of them — took place in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which is the country’s most populous state with a high number of Muslim immigrants. …

Prosecutors have said that Islamists arrested in Berlin and western Germany on Thursday may have been planning an attack on the capital. [...] There are conflicting reports in the media about what the exact target of the attack was, with tabloid Bild citing investigators who say it was Alexanderplatz, the iconic center of the former east of the capital. Berlin daily Tagesspiegel meanwhile, says popular tourist spot Checkpoint Charlie - once the most famous crossing in the Berlin Wall - was to be hit, citing security sources. [...] Security sources told DPA the group's ringleader was a 35-year-old Algerian arrested...

Salafists who caused outrage by mounting patrols in western Germany as "Shariah Police" have ditched their vests and changed their name, but pledged to continue to take action. It comes as political leaders were accused of creating a "safe zone" for Islamists. North Rhine-Westphalia has become the national front runner in imports and exports of holy warriors,” Christian Democratic Union (CDU) state parliament member and interior policy spokesman Theo Kruse said on Friday. Kruse argued that the state had become a “national space of peace and recovery for Salafists" and a "safe zone" for Islamists. ... Salafism is the fastest-growing...

THE FOILING OF AN Islamist terrorist plot this week in Germany is noteworthy for several reasons that may not have been obvious from the headlines. The first is the involvement of an ethnic Turk. On Tuesday, police in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia seized three men identified as a Turk and two German converts to Islam (under German court rules, their full names were not released). While the activity of converts in terrorism is not new, the Turkish community in Germany has so far been free of the plague of religious extremism. Turkish and Kurdish immigrants to Germany and...

Three men have been arrested for planning attacks on Frankfurt's international airport and the U.S. military base in Ramstein, the German Defense Minister said Wednesday. "There was an imminent threat," Franz Josef Jung told Germany's ARD broadcaster. He declined to elaborate. Two of the suspects had German citizenship while the third was Pakistani, Germany's Sudwestrundfunk public broadcaster said. German federal prosecutors said they had arrested three suspected members of "an Islamic motivated terrorist organization." It was not immediately clear whether the three were suspected of having links to al Qaeda. Sudwestrundfunk said the men were arrested Tuesday evening and were...