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Berlin: The state finance minister of Germany's Hesse region, which includes Frankfurt, has been found dead. Authorities said he appears to have killed himself and the state's governor suggested Sunday that he was in despair over the fallout from the coronavirus crisis. The body of Thomas Schaefer, a 54-year-old member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, was found Saturday on railway tracks at Hochheim, near Frankfurt. German minister Thomas Schaefer commits suicide over coronavirus worries, body found on railway tracks File image of Thomas Schäfer (CDU), Minister of Finance of Hesse. AP

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...

The party of Angela Merkel has seen an eleven percent decline in support and its partner party has also lost support in today's election in the German state of Hesse. In the 2013 election they had 38.3 percent support but now the (CDU) (Christian Democrats) are projected at 27.2 percent support in today's election. In 2013 the SPD (Social Democrats) were at 30.7 percent and today they are projected at 19.8 percent support. The anti-mass immigration, anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany will be in the Hessian parliament for the first time with 13.2 percent support projected.......

A man in a refugee shelter died on Thursday while trying to set his wife on fire, leaving the woman seriously injured and part of the building ablaze, police said. The 45-year-old man, whose nationality was not given, was previously known to police, said authorities in Rüdesheim on the Rhine river in the central state of Hesse. The woman, who had previously separated from her husband, was taken to hospital by helicopter, police said. …

The central state of Hesse is overhauling their constitution, making sure to get rid of one thing in particular that no other state has: the death penalty. In the wake of the Second World War, Germany wrote a new Constitution with reforms intended to shake off its violent Nazi past, including to clearly define where the country newly stood on the death penalty. “Capital punishment is abolished,” states Article 102 simply, with no further explanation. The Constitution, or Grundgesetz, was signed in 1949, but just three years before, the state of Hesse apparently had its own ideas about capital punishment....

The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) stole huge amounts of votes off the established political parties in elections in central Germany, while a small neo-Nazi party won 17 percent in one district. Confirming polling which shows that the AfD have hugely increased their share of the vote since Germany decided to open its doors to refugees in late August 2015, the right-wing party won on average 13.2 percent of votes at local election in the central German state of Hesse on Sunday. This result made the AfD the third largest party behind Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and...

In the course of an educational dig in Gernsheim in the Hessian Ried, archaeologists from Frankfurt University have discovered a long lost Roman fort: A troop unit made up out of approximately 500 soldiers (known as a cohort) was stationed there between 70/80 and 110/120 AD. Over the past weeks, the archaeologists found two V-shaped ditches, typical of this type of fort, and the post holes of a wooden defensive tower as well as other evidence from the time after the fort was abandoned. An unusually large number of finds were made. This is because the Roman troops dismantled the...

Aerial Image of the foundation of a Roman stone building. Length of the leveling staff (White) at the upper edge of the Picture: 5 meters. Credit: Dennis Braks ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- During their first Gernsheim dig last year, Frankfurt University archaeologists suspected that a small Roman settlement must have also existed here in the Hessian Ried. Now they have discovered clear relics of a Roman village, built in part on the foundations of the fort after the soldiers left. This probably occurred around 120 AD. At the time the cohort (about 500 soldiers) was transferred from the Rhine to the Limes, and...

FRANKFURT - Scientists say a Roman horse head made from bronze and plated in gold has been discovered at an archaeological site in Germany. Hesse state archaeologist Egon Schallmeyer says the head is part of a horse and rider statue and "qualitatively one of the best (pieces) created at that time."

A cow injured two men in central Germany on Wednesday while making a break for freedom from an abattoir. One of the victims was so badly hurt he had to go to hospital. A farmer in Hesse planned to take the eight-year-old cow to slaughter. But as he was unloading her from the truck, she bolted, injuring the 66-year-old driver on her way out. The animal raced about 500 metres away from the abattoir at Tann near Fulda at around 10am, eventually coming across two brothers who were walking down the road carrying tools. One of the men, a 53-year-old...

Two wealthy German states have filed a lawsuit in the country’s highest court challenging a system under which money is redistributed to less prosperous regions. Bavaria’s state government said it and the state of Hesse filed the suit Monday with the Federal Constitutional Court. … The system is supposed to help ensure equal living conditions nationwide. …

BERLIN, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The leader of Germany's Social Democrats in Hesse does not have enough support in her own party to win a vote in parliament on Tuesday and become premier of the influential western state, party sources said on Monday. The news is an embarrassment for the SPD and strengthens Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose conservative ally Roland Koch will continue for now as premier of an important state which is home to Germany's financial centre of Frankfurt. Merkel's conservatives rule in an uneasy federal coalition with the SPD in Berlin, but will battle them in the next...

To judge from its state election campaigns, Germany's governing parties are flirting with recklessness. THE blows were struck in Bavaria but the impact was felt as far away as Hesse. On December 20th a young Greek and his Turkish companion answered a pensioner who told them to stop smoking on the Munich underground by beating him up. “We have too many young foreign criminals,” responded Roland Koch (above, with Angela Merkel). Mr Koch is fighting to be re-elected for a third term as Hesse's premier. Foreign miscreants, he declared, should be deported; young ones should be taught a lesson with...

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...

    March 25, 2004 TERRORIST ATTACKS IN MADRID Suspect from Hesse Arrested In the investigation into the terrorist attacks in Madrid, authorities have hit upon their first clues leading to Germany. At least one of the three suspects Spanish police arrested on Wednesday shall have lived for years in Hesse. Chief Federal Prosecutor Nehm has taken up the case. AP Arrests in Madrid: Clues leading to Germany? Hamburg - The Spanish police have come a step further in the search for the ringleaders of the attacks on three commuter trains in Madrid. As the Spanish Department of the...

BERLIN: Germans began voting on Sunday in two state elections, with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats widely expected to suffer crushing defeats for their handling of the stagnant economy. Opinion polls indicated his SPD would lose power in Lower Saxony, Schroeder's home state, and fail to oust the conservative-led government in the central state of Hesse, which includes the financial capital Frankfurt. Polling booths opened at 8 am (0700 GMT) and are set to close 10 hours later when first exit polls will be broadcast. Ten million people are eligible to vote in the two states, in the first test...