Free Republic

Germany is the most admired country in the world for the third year running, leaving the US in a tight battle for distant second place with China and Russia, according to a new global leadership poll. The annual poll, conducted by Gallup, casts more doubt on US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s claim on Friday that the US was “perfectly positioned” to lead the free world in a new ideological rivalry with the Chinese Communist Party. The US had a 33% global approval rating for 2019, just one percentage point ahead of China and 3% ahead of Russia. Germany outshines...

In her first address to the nation on the coronavirus pandemic, German Chancellor Angela Merkel calmly appealed to citizens’ reason and discipline to slow the spread of the virus, acknowledging as a woman who grew up in communist East Germany how difficult it is to give up freedoms, yet as a trained scientist emphasizing that the facts don’t lie. Then, wearing the same blue pantsuit from the televised address, the 65-year-old popped into her local supermarket to pick up food, wine and toilet paper to take back to her Berlin apartment. Merkel has run Germany for more than 14 years...

Princess Leonor of Spain is not your average teen. The 14-year-old heir to the Spanish throne — nicknamed Spain’s “Disney Princess” for her flowing blonde locks — delivered an important speech at the Princess of Girona Foundation awards in Barcelona on Monday amid a backdrop of anti-royal street protests aimed at her father, King Felipe Vi, 51. (Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, a semi-autonomous region in northeast Spain whose push for independence has resulted in the country’s biggest political crisis in decades.) To make matters even more daunting, Leonor — who holds the title of Princess of Girona —...

MADRID, December 11, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Spanish authorities revealed that tens of thousands more citizens died than were born in the first six months of 2019. The alarming statistics not only reveal this time period to have the lowest birthrate in almost 80 years, but they also highlight the country’s trend toward what observers are calling the country’s “demographic suicide.” According to the Spanish National Statistical Institute (INE), between January and June of this year, Spain saw only 170,074 children born. In this same time frame, 215,478 citizens died. This means that there was a decline in Spain’s population by...

Many commentators have suggested that the greatest threat to the authoritarian regime in Russia would be a Ukraine that successfully navigated the difficult passage to economic development and political freedom, but apparently even Ukraine’s moves in that direction are a problem for the Kremlin. That is because, as the SerpomPo telegram channel put it, the chief reaction of Russians to the debates between the two Ukrainian presidential candidates is envy, envy that each of those who watched as many Russians did could decide for himself or herself who won and how they would if they could vote, something not possible...

Russia over the weekend mounted its most serious aggression against Ukraine since President Trump took office, and America punted. Trump’s outgoing ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, described the chain of events that led to the current standoff at the Black Sea as an “outrageous violation of sovereign Ukrainian territory.” She vowed that Washington and its friends would stand with Kiev. So what’s the plan? “It is our expectation that our European partners will lead this effort through the Normandy Four format,” Haley said, referring to a toothless Barack Obama-era gabfest that has mostly served to legitimize Moscow’s illegal...

This document contains an update on the work of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in Syria (FFM) regarding the alleged use of toxic chemicals as a weapon in Douma, the Syrian Arab Republic, on 7 April 2018. The work of the FFM was conducted in accordance with preambular paragraph 8 and operative paragraphs 5 and 6 of decision EC-M-48/DEC.1 (dated 4 February 2015) and other relevant decisions of the OPCW Executive Council (hereinafter “the Council”), as well as under the Director-General’s authority to seek to uphold at all times the object and purpose of the Chemical Weapons Convention, as reinforced by...

European participants in the Obama-arranged "deal" that is supposed to discourage Iran from developing nuclear weapons insist that the country's stepped up uranium enrichment program does not violate the terms of the agreement. Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini, explained that "a careful reading of the terms shows that Iran has only agreed to forego attacking us with nuclear weapons until they are 'physically able to do so.' All work on bombs and delivery systems prior to the attainment of this capability are unconstrained by the agreement brokered by former US President Obama and his Secretary of...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she expected “contentious discussions” at a G7 summit this week, given differences with US President Donald Trump on trade, climate and security. Speaking two days before the Canada meeting of the club of major industrialized democracies, Merkel also said the leaders may not necessarily manage to agree on a final joint statement. “I think everyone knows there will be difficult discussions there, because G7 summits deal with the global economy, trade, climate protection, development—and foreign policy,” she told German parliament. […] Merkel vowed to enter the talks “in good faith”, but stressed that...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A spokesman for Poland's Navy says that three Russian-made submarine signaling missiles have been found in recent days at different locations on Poland's Baltic Sea beaches. Speaking from a from a Navy base in Gdynia, Cmdr. Radoslaw Pioch said Wednesday the missiles came from a submarine type Kilo, made in Russia. They were found at two locations on the Hel Peninsula and on the Sobieszewska Island, within the Bay of Gdansk area that borders Russia's Kaliningrad region with its military port.

Violent Russian thugs who attacked Liverpool fans in Ukraine have issued a stark warning to England supporters planning to attend the World Cup. Trouble Company, a notorious hooligan group, said fans traveling abroad will face 'hell' during the 2018 competition. The group's followers have released a string of messages on social media claiming responsibility for the violence in Kiev, which saw Brits hospitalised.

Ukip has collapsed in the polls and faces the loss of almost every council seat it won four years ago. With the results still coming in, the Brexit cheerleaders have already lost 86 of the 166 seats they won last time. Ukip is currently on just two seats - one of which is a gain in Derby in defiance of the nationwide performance.

The hidden battle in Syria – the one that rarely appears on our television screens – has been raging for years between Israel and a coalition comprising the Syrian government, Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Watching over the proceedings without directly intervening has been Russia, although that might be about to change. The prize is control over Syrian territory but the battlefield is Syria’s skies.

... But a threat is hanging over oil. What is most ominous is the spread of the destructive idea that, because of climate change, all fossil fuels, including oil, must be kept in the ground. Russia bears some of the blame for that underhanded campaign, using social media to twist American public opinion against oil production to achieve its own devious goal: push up world oil prices. With Russia’s help, the keep-it-in-the-ground movement threatens to impede the production of oil offshore and stifle hydraulic fracturing in shale formations. At the same time, Russia is spearheading opposition to the construction of...

Accusations and recriminations between Britain and Russia are set to escalate with the news that scientists at the Porton Down military research facility have been unable to establish exactly where the novichok nerve agent used to carry out the Skripal attack was manufactured. The admission comes the day before Moscow convenes an emergency meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague in which it is expected to demand access to samples from the Salisbury poisoning for analysis by Russian scientists. Russia’s embassy in London responded that Porton Down’s assessment “proves that all political declarations...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the European Union on Monday to back a new U.S. peace initiative in the Middle East, after President Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital met with widespread condemnation and triggered clashes in the Palestinian territories. Netanyahu, making the first official visit by an Israeli premier to the EU’s Brussels headquarters in 22 years, told reporters that recognizing Jerusalem merely stated the reality on the ground. He said he expected many European countries to follow Trump’s lead. But EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who chaired talks between Netanyahu and EU...

Multiple eyewitnesses said that community police officers fled from Borough Market in London after seeing two men with knives stabbing people as part of a terror attack Saturday. These eyewitnesses told The Guardian’s Lisa O’Carroll that two men started stabbing people outside a restaurant in Borough Market, close to where the first terror attack took place on London Bridge, resulting in multiple fatalities. “I saw two guys with big knives downstairs outside Roast. They were stabbing people,” the eyewitnesses said. Perhaps the most jarring part of the testimony was a report that, instead of running to the stabbing to stop...

Europe "must take its fate into its own hands" faced with a western alliance divided by Brexit and Donald Trump's presidency, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday. "The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I've experienced that in the last few days," Merkel told a crowd...

European Union nations bracing for the looming Donald Trump presidency showed defiance Monday in the face of the president-elect's stinging comments on everything from NATO and German cars to the crumbling of the EU itself. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the U.S. president-elect's view that NATO was obsolete and his criticism that European allied members aren't paying their fair share had "caused astonishment." Trump also said Britain's decision to leave the 28-nation European Union would "end up being a great thing," and he predicted that other countries would also leave. At a meeting of EU ministers, French Foreign Minister...

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's emphasis that the guiding principle for foreign policy under his administration will be "America first" has made some of our European allies nervous. Germany's foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier characterized Trump's stance as "arrogant and selfish. To put America first is offensive to my ears. He is denying our equality and our right to participate in determining what America must do to protect all of our mutual interests. If this kind of self-centered viewpoint had prevailed in an earlier era my country and perhaps all of western Europe would today be run by fascists or communists."...