Free Republic

A top level economic report on Thursday urged European heavyweights France and Germany to implement urgent economic reforms, warning that Europe risked falling into a “stagnation trap”. “In France, we fear lack of boldness for decisive reforms. In Germany, we fear complacency,” said the report, drawn up by two leading economists for the French and German governments. In a hotly-awaited set of proposals to jumpstart the traditional Franco-German motor that drives the European economy, Henrik Enderlein and Jean Pisani-Ferry concluded: “France and Germany spend a lot of time on joint declarations and initiatives. We miss action.” […] “We think the...

The German far-left look set to make history this week in a deal that will lead to them taking their first regional state premiership since the Berlin Wall fell a quarter-century ago. Bodo Ramelow, 58, a member of the Linke, the successor to the former East Germany's ruling Marxist-Leninist Social Unity Party (SED), will break political taboos by signing a deal that will see him appointed regional prime minister in the state of Thuringia next month. The move is part of a power-sharing deal with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and environmentalist Greens to be signed this week and then...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a concrete plan of invading Europe, taking it under his total rule. The covert plot was exposed by Germany's well-known newspaper, the BILD, citing credible sources from the intelligence community. Mr Putin's grand plan was reportedly outlined in a supposedly classified document titled "Putin: the new leader of international conservatism." The blueprint was drafted by Moscow's Centre for Strategic Communications...

900 Austrian Police Raid Mosques and Homes in Terrorist Search MAINZ, Germany — Some 900 police officers swooped in on mosques, prayer rooms and homes across Austria early Friday in an operation against suspected jihadi recruiters and alleged financiers of the ISIS terror group, local media reported. Prosecutors confirmed to NBC News in a statement that 13 people were arrested in the raids. They provided limited details but, according to Austrian newspapers, the raids took place in in Vienna, Graz and Linz and were the culmination of a two-year investigation into people suspected of recruiting young people to fight in...

The Federal Statistical Office revised October's unemployment number from 6.7% to 6.6%, November's figure was also 6.6%. Both figures were adjusted for seasonal variation. Meanwhile inflation fell to its lowest rate in nearly five years in November. Official figures showed inflation dropped to 0.5% in November from 0.7% in October.

A decades-long study has found that budding lawyers are increasingly in favor of harsher punishments. Professor Franz Streng at the University of Erlangen in Bavaria asked his first-year law students the same set of questions every year from 1989 to 2012. “At the beginning of their studies, they’ve still only had their opinions formed by school, their parents and the media,” Streng said. He found that despite the young people feeling less at risk from crime from year to year, they became more and more positive about harsher punishments for criminals. …

Early Bronze Age battle site found on German river bank 22 May 11 02:38 ET ? By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News Fractured human remains found on a German river bank could provide the first compelling evidence of a major Bronze Age battle. Archaeological excavations of the Tollense Valley in northern Germany unearthed fractured skulls, wooden clubs and horse remains dating from around 1200 BC. The injuries to the skulls suggest face-to-face combat in a battle perhaps fought between warring tribes, say the researchers. The paper, published in the journal Antiquity, is based primarily on an investigation begun in...

- A new deadline for a political framework agreement for Iran's Nuclear talks has been set for March 1, 2015, a Western diplomat tells CNN on Monday, with a deadline for final agreement including annexes on July 1. Negotiators had been scrambling to reach a deal on Iran's nuclear program before a Monday night deadline. The negotiators included representatives from Iran and the P5+1 countries -- the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain), plus Germany.

A popular bike path became the scene of a gruesome murder late Thursday when a life insurance executive was killed while running near her Connecticut home. Melissa Millan, 54, a triathlete and mother of two, was found stabbed at about 8 p.m. in the Hartford suburb of Simsbury, Conn. Police have stepped up patrols of the bike path and scoured the area on Saturday, but no suspect has been named and the murder weapon has not been recovered, WFSB reported. Millan, a senior vice president who had been with MassMutual Financial Group since 2001, was transported to an area hospital,...

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Saturday that the outcome of Iran’s nuclear talks with six world powers was “completely open”. Despite huge gaps in the negotiations, “we have never been closer in more than 10 years,” Steinmeier said as he joined the talks in Vienna. “If Iran is ready to take this opportunity, then movement is possible … Whether we can get a result is right now completely open,” he said. …

Police in Kelheim said on Friday they had arrested a man who hoarded guns, ammunition and bomb-making material in a nuclear-proof family bunker he built fearing an attack by Russia. The 59-year-old electrician had constructed the emergency shelter by expanding and reinforcing the basement of his family home in the small town near Regensburg in Bavaria. Police said they had confiscated two submachine guns, 80 rifles, 60 handguns, 20,000 rounds of ammunition and 40 kilograms of materials to make explosives. …

Ambassadors from five major European Union (EU) member states met with the Foreign Ministry's senior diplomat Alon Ushpiz in Jerusalem on Thursday, where they voiced opposition to the demolition of the homes of Arab terrorists. Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain were the five countries whose consul generals argued that such demolitions, which are meant as a deterrent for future terrorists and a punishment for heinous crimes, are "counterproductive." The ambassadors also denounced the attack on a Jerusalem synagogue this Tuesday in which four Jews and a Druze police officer were murdered by two Arab terrorists, reports Haaretz citing Israeli...

German anti-Semitism and resentment towards Israel have risen sharply in recent months, a new survey has found. More than one in four respondents in the new poll equated the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs to Nazi persecution of Jews during World War Two, Reuters reported on Thursday. The bi-annual survey on xenophobia in Germany by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation showed broad measures of anti-Semitism on the decline over the past decade. However, it also showed a spike in negative views towards Israel and Jews in general between June and September, coinciding with the conflict between Israel and Hamas in...

'It is the height of the Second World War. A group of codebreakers stands in a dimly lit warehouse 50 miles northwest of London, a giant machine composed of spinning drums and wires looms in front of them. It's taken years of work -- as well as a few shouting matches -- to get the device assembled and ready to start sorting through 159 quintillion combinations in search of the one that will let the British crack the Germans' infamous Enigma machine. The switch is flipped and nine rows of drums begin spinning as the assembled group waits... and waits....

Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, has indicated that the country will abandon its commitment to reducing CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2020, from a 1990 base level. In doing so he has won the ongoing clash with his own environmental minister Barbara Hendricks over energy policy, telling her that he will tolerate no further resistance to the change of direction, according to Der Speigel.

Under the punned headline “No wonder Vladimir Putin was Russian to leave the G20 summit,” the Daily Mail told of how he had eaten lunch alone, and of how commentators had joked that Mr Putin had been ‘relegated to Siberia’ in the ‘family photo’ of world leaders. It concluded that Mr Putin had fled the summit after a “stern” discussion with British Prime Minister David Cameron, in which Cameron told Putin that he was “at a crossroads”. Sounding wearily schoolmaster-ish, Cameron later commented “There's a real choice here, there's a different and better way for Russia to behave that could...

BRUSSELS - Europe’s new foreign relations chief has denied the EU is in talks on Israel sanctions, despite a leaked paper on the issue. Federica Mogherini, who chaired her first foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Monday (17 November), told press the leaked paper is a “technical working hypothesis” which “member states requested” when her predecessor was in office. She added: “It is not at the heart of today’s discussions on how to start a positive process with the Israelis and Palestinians. There’s currently no question of sanctioning anybody. The question is rather how to motivate people to … restart...

Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain have through their Eurofighter project signed a 1 billion euro (0.83 billion pound) contract to provide their jointly backed Typhoon jet with a new sort of radar, in an effort to secure new orders. The fighter is produced by Eurofighter partner companies BAE Systems (BAES.L), Airbus (AIR.PA) and Finmeccanica (SIFI.MI), and BAE said it signed a contract worth 365 million pounds ($572 million) to integrate the new radar onto the jets. Under the deal signed in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Wednesday the Typhoon jet will in future be available with the "Captor E-Scan radar". The four...

“Mr Gorbachev, Tear down this Wall!” Who can forget the famous line? In fact most people forgot it shortly after President Reagan detonated them at the Brandenberg gate in June 1987. At the time they got little press-play, and what it got was mostly negative.President Reagan’s own advisors, Colin Powell and “Howard Baker, denounced the proclamation that become President Reagan’s most admired and famous as “unpresidential” and “extremist.” It was only in November 1989 as the wall was finally torn down that the proclamation was recalled, dusted off, and festooned with the fame now almost universal—at least among conservatives. The...

It is a fundamental principle of German foreign policy that talks are the best way to solve diplomatic problems. Such was the rationale behind Gernot Erler's recent trip to Moscow to speak with Russian parliamentarians about the ongoing Ukraine-related difficulties. Erler is the German government's Russia liaison and he has spent much of his political career working towards better relations between Germany and Russia. But his recent trip to the Russia capital was a painful one. There was no one in parliament who was willing to speak with him.