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The Christian Social Union is projected at 37.4 percent, the party of current Minister President Markus Soder that got 47.7 percent last election. This is the sister part of Angela Markel's Christian Democrats. The SPD (Social Democrats) are at 9.6 percent (also part of Merkel's national coalition government).....

The Christian Social Union (CSU), who have almost single-handedly ruled the wealthy beer-and-lederhosen state since the 1960s, are expected to lose their absolute majority, polls say. The other partner in Merkel's fragile 'grand coalition', the Social Democrats, are also set to do poorly while the far-right and anti-immigration AfD look certain to enter the state assembly. The biggest winners, however, may be the left-leaning Greens who have doubled their poll ratings to around 18 percent since the last state elections, which would make them the second strongest party. If the surveys prove correct, the Bavarian election will mark another step...

Voters in the southern German state of Bavaria go to the polls on Sunday in a regional election that could shake the fragile coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. The Christian Social Union (CSU) -- a conservative sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrat Union (CDU) -- has dominated Bavarian politics for almost seven decades. Apart from a three-year period in the 1950s, the party has continuously governed the state since 1949. At this election, however, the CSU could lose votes to the anti-immigration, far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party and to the left-wing, environmentalist Greens.

"He arrived in our hallowed German land. Because he can't get a lady, he helped himself to one with a knife" 14-year-old Ida Marie Muller's poem that caused a storm in Germany recently All expectations are of a sharp rebuke to Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union, in the Sunday October 14th state election in the southernmost state. The outrage over mass migration and the social consequences of it for Germany are boiling with the anti-mass immigration Alternative for Germany Party now polling as the second most popular party nationwide behind Merkel's party which is...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — High above Yemen’s rebel-held city of Hodeida, a drone controlled by Emirati forces hovered as an SUV carrying a top Shiite Houthi rebel official turned onto a small street and stopped, waiting for another vehicle in its convoy to catch up. Seconds later, the SUV exploded in flames, killing Saleh al-Samad, a top political figure. The drone that fired that missile in April was not one of the many American aircraft that have been buzzing across the skies of Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001. It was Chinese.. Across the Middle East,...

GERMAN Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen says the structures for a European Defence Union have been “activated”, and also hopes to develop a system that tells Europeans when to use their “forces”.

A man protecting his 21-year-old daughter against a bottom groping African will be charged with causing bodily harm. At the Munich Hackerbrücke train station, a drunk 28-year-old migrant from Eritrea grabbed a German woman under her skirt on Tuesday. When her father saw the sexual assault, he punched the African man in the face to make him stop. An employee of the German railway company Deutsche Bahn, witnessed the incident and alerted federal police. The German police decided to file two charges: One against the migrant for sexual assault and one against the father for causing bodily harm. Many Germans...

The ancient mythical Greek island of Lesbos is today better known as anchorage ground for human traffickers and the problems and conflicts that have arisen in connection with the boat traffic. It is now reported that a large cross monument on the Greek Orthodox Christian island has been levelled to the ground. This after a group claiming to promote intercultural coexistence argued that the cross could be perceived as offensive to the predominantly Muslim boat migrants. The cross monument was built on the cliffs of Apellia, beneath the castle of Mytilene, in memory of people who have died in the...

A big drop in stock prices yesterday with the Dow Jones going down 3 percent in value and NASDAQ even more at 4 percent. Asian markets in Japan and Hong Kong also fell overnight and in Europe today there were also declines.... Two are reported dead after Hurricane Michael slammed into the Florida Panhandle and southwestern Georgia.... An emergency landing this morning in Kazakhstan for an American and a Russian astronaut headed for the international space station.... President Trump stumped for Republicans at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania last night..... President Trump says that the United States is demanding answers...

European Union officials are working on tougher car emissions standards aimed at fighting global warming — but which the auto industry cautions could hurt workers and consumers. Officials from the council of EU member governments, parliament and the executive Commission were to negotiate Wednesday in the wake of environment ministers’ agreement late Tuesday to lower average emissions of carbon dioxide by 35 percent from 2021. The Commission had initially proposed 30 percent, and the parliament voted for 40 percent; talks now aim to reach a final agreement. Some European officials expressed disappointment that the 35 percent goal agreed on under...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that he is preparing for a military solution to the violence on the country’s southern border. “If the reality of civil distress in Gaza is diminished, that is desirable, but that is not certain to happen, and so we are preparing militarily,” Netanyahu said in the cabinet meeting. “That is not an empty statement.” The prime minister’s remarks come after the Defense Ministry ordered IDF troops to send reinforcements to the region on Thursday in preparation for a possible escalation.

An Associated Press correction last week and reactions to it show that the question of whether the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were allies at the dawn of World War II remains a hot-button issue for many Russians and eastern Europeans. The correction was issued to an article about a Holocaust commemoration in the Ukrainian city of Lviv that originally called the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany “former allies.” The AP concluded that the pact reached on Aug. 23, 1939 by the German and Soviet foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov didn’t constitute a formal alliance, thus the...

Thousands have marched through a German city after racist violence flared up following the arrest of an Iraqi and a Syrian over a fatal stabbing. Marchers demonstrated both for and against migrants in the eastern city of Chemnitz. Sunday and Monday evenings saw outbreaks of violence triggered by the arrest of two suspects allegedly involved in the stabbing of Daniel Hillig, a 35-year-old German-Cuban. Following the arrests, mobs attacked people they took to be foreigners, including an Afghan, a Syrian and a Bulgarian man.

CHEMNITZ, Germany — Waving German flags, with some flashing Nazi salutes, the angry mob made its way through the streets, chasing after dark-skinned bystanders as police officers, vastly outnumbered, were too afraid to intervene. A Syrian refugee and father of two, Anas al-Nahlawie, watched horrified from a friend’s fourth-floor balcony. They were hunting in packs for immigrants just like him, he said. “Like wolves.” For a few perilous hours over two days this week, the mob owned the streets of Chemnitz, where anger exploded after word spread that an Iraqi and a Syrian asylum seeker were suspected in a knife...

The German city of Chemnitz was in lockdown Saturday after armed police launched a huge manhunt for a Syrian suspected of planning a bomb attack, as the country grapples with a weakened sense of security following recent terror assaults. Police, who told people to stay in their homes, named the suspect as 22-year-old Syrian Jaber Albakr. Photographs posted on social media showed armed police clad in black balaclavas and helmets at an apartment building in the eastern city. Germany has been on edge after suffering two attacks claimed by the Islamic State group (IS) in July -- an axe rampage...

German police have launched a manhunt for a suspected Syrian bomb plotter after raiding a building in the eastern city of Chemnitz. The suspect was identified as Jaber Albakr from Damascus and police urged anyone with information about his whereabouts to come forward. "We have to assume that the person is dangerous," Tom Bernhardt, spokesman for the state criminal police, was quoted as saying. An image released by police showed a dark-haired man wearing a hooded sweatshirt. He was said to have been wearing similar clothes when he was last seen. Police raided an apartment in the Fritz-Heckert-Gebiet neighbourhood after...

Poland is striving, in a stumbling and halting way, to maintain its identity, an identity that is both European and inextricably Catholic. To do that, it must avoid the twin pitfalls of Russian revanchism and Western cultural decadence. The Russian occupation of Crimea and continued fighting in Ukraine are taken with deadly seriousness in Warsaw. Polish distrust of Russia, now and in the past, explain Poland’s eagerness to strengthen military ties with the United States. This also explains Poland’s frustration with the European Union’s dependence on Russian energy, a frustration President Trump shares. Tugging at Poland from the West is...

Angela Merkel, Germany’s Chancellor and dubbed “mutti Merkel”, mother of refugees, just committed what can be described as political seppuku. Again. This time, she threatened Italy with a new migrant-flood via German flights transferring so-called refugees. No, this is not a joke, but the sad political state of affairs in the European Union. Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who just became my personal hero, had a very short and concise answer to Merkel’s “proposal”: we will close airports to German flights bringing refugees to Italy. In other words, read my lips Angela: Italy will accept no more refugees. It’s your...

The German economy is booming. Unemployment is at a near-record low. In Europe and around the world, the country is seen as a beacon of wealth and efficiency. So why are these prosperous young Germans so doggedly pessimistic about their future? Peter Matuschek, chief political analyst at the German polling institute Forsa, says that while Germans tend to be content with their own lives, they feel less at ease with the direction the country is taking. And while the assumption may be that this is a phenomenon among older Germans, it’s also very much affecting the younger generation. Mirroring the...

Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour on Friday launched a racial attack against Sen. Susan Collins, saying the Maine Republican was guilty of espousing “white supremacy” with her decision to support the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Ms. Sarsour, a prominent Palestinian-American activist, blasted Ms. Collins on Twitter as a “white woman” and the “mother & grandmother of white women in America who gave us a Donald Trump presidency.”