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Germany Tag

The top EU court has prohibited bus companies from checking passenger passports on cross-border buses, making it difficult for German police to identify illegal immigrants entering the country, say local media. The ruling by the European Court of Justice could prevent the German police from stopping thousands of illegal border crossings and embolden the migrant traffickers. Last year, the police caught around 14,000 illegal immigrants trying to enter the country by bus and train.

Germany has officially revealed plans to shut down all 84 of its coal-fired power plants over the next 19 years in its quest against climate change.
The announcement marked a significant shift for Europe’s largest country — a nation that had long been a leader on cutting CO2 emissions before turning into a laggard in recent years and badly missing its reduction targets. Coal plants account for 40% of Germany’s electricity, itself a reduction from recent years when coal dominated power production.

Earlier this week, Mary wrote about the chaos in Venezuela as Juan Guaido Proclaims Himself Interim President, [and the] Military Backs Maduro.  At that point, the U.S. and Canada recognized Guaido as Venezuela's leader. Since then, Britain, Germany, France, and Spain said that Venezuela must agree to hold elections or they will recognize Guaido as the country's leader.  These countries have given Venezuela eight days to call the elections.

German authorities have banned the Iranian airline Mahan Air from operating in the country amid fears of espionage and terrorism.  Iran's second largest airline has been linked to regime's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. The German Federal Aviation Office, equivalent of the U.S. FAA, has barred the airline from landing in the country with intimidate effect, German news outlets reported Monday.

German army has caught an Iranian spy working in its ranks. A 50-year-old German-Afghan man has been arrested on charges of spying for Iran's Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS). The man, named by the state prosecutor as Abdul Hamid S., has been passing on sensitive military intelligence to the Iranian spy agency for many years, the local newspaper reports said.

Germany's biggest opposition party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), is pushing for the country to leave the European Union ahead of the EU parliament election. According to the manifesto drafted for the EU election scheduled for late May, the AfD called for Germany to leave the EU if party's demands for drastic reforms were not met. The reforms proposed by the party include abolishing the EU Parliament and giving control back to the national governments.

Germany is rolling out a 'counselling service' to combat the surge of Islamist indoctrination across the country. The taxpayer-funded service "will mainly target Turkish and Arabic-speaking families" where children may be "flirting with extremism," German newspapers report. The programs comes at a time when Chancellor Angela Merkel is allocating huge sums of public money in hopes of preventing the country's growing Muslim population from becoming more radicalized. According to the German state broadcaster MDR, the government spent nearly €100 million on Islamist 'de-radicalization' programs in 2018. "Nobody knows if the money is put to meaningful use," the broadcaster noted.

Berlin will be lobbying the United Nations to secure a permanent seat at the Security Council for the European Union, German state media said. "Over the next two years, Germany's main concern will be to try and ensure that the European Union as a whole is given a permanent seat," public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported Tuesday. This year, Germany takes up the non-permanent seat at the Council for a two year term.

The year began with an ominous warning from the German authorities. A team of researchers commissioned by the Ministry of Family Affairs found a "correlation between the refugee arrivals and violent crimes." Not that anyone needed a report to prove the obvious. The mainstream German media predictably trashed the findings and politicians in Berlin ignored them.

German prosecutors have charged a 27-year-old ISIS bride with the murder of a 5-year-old 'slave' girl. The German national, named in the media as Jennifer W., traveled to Syria in 2014, where she and her husband bought the little girl as a slave.

Germany wants to introduce a "mosque tax" for German Muslims to fund mosques and Islamic religious activities. The measure proposed by the lawmakers of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition aims to win the loyalty of Muslim clerics who receive generous funding from Islamic countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

German weekly Der Spiegel has fired an award-winning journalist for faking news stories for years, the publication said Wednesday. "Claas Relotius, a reporter and editor, falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues," Der Spiegel disclosed.

The German parliament approved a 'third gender' identity, allowing people to identify themselves as "diverse" on official documents instead of the usual male or female option. The new law introduced by Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition has been passed by both chambers of German Bundestag, with the upper house adopting it on Friday.

The number of weapon permits in Germany is soaring to record heights since Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the country's borders to migrants in the spring of 2015. German authorities issued 600,000 basic weapon licenses since 2014, an increase of 130 percent, figures published by the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle show. The surge in weapon ownership reflects the waning public confidence in the German government's ability to protect ordinary citizens.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been working behind the scenes to prevent European Union member countries from recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the newspaper Jerusalem Post reported. The revelation was made by Tomas Sandell, the director of the European Coalition for Israel in Brussels. Chancellor Merkel made a series of calls to European leaders in April while "many of the nations were seriously considering moving their embassies." Sandell said. "This is not the Germany we once knew. This is not the even Angela Merkel we once knew when she was elected."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has successfully lobbied the United Nations to classify Climate Change as legitimate grounds for migration, a communique issued by the German parliament disclosed. "In order to shape migration in the context of Climate Change in sustainable manner, Germany advocated to recognize Climate Change as basis for migration in international negotiations for the global migration pact," a parliamentary bulletin surfaced on Monday said.  The document was made public on Twitter by Ralf Schuler, the parliamentary correspondent for the German newspaper Bild.

Amid rising antisemitism and anti-Israel activism in Europe, over 3000 members of Jewish diaspora and supporters of Israel gathered in Frankfurt, Germany, for the 5th German Israel Congress this weekend. Widely regarded as the biggest pro-Israel event in Europe, the conference was attended by leading politicians, government officials, and public figures from Germany and Israel. Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan took the opportunity to urge the German government to take a tougher stance on Iran. "Germany should take a more aggressive stance against the Iranian regime," Minister Erdan said. "It was only yesterday that President Rouhani called Israel metastatic cancer. History has taught us that anti-Semitic threats from fanatical leaders, and exporters of terror who have hegemonic aspirations, must be taken seriously."

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a leading left-wing German think tank, has called off its plans to honor the Woman's March USA over allegations of antisemitism. Two leaders of the group, Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory, have not shied away from displaying their affection for notorious anti-Semite and racist Louis Farrakhan. The foundation, affiliated to Germany's ruling Social Democratic party, rescinded the award after weeks of protests from academics and researchers associated with the state-funded organisation, German newspapers report. "After careful consideration, the executive board has decided to cancel the award ceremony and the let the issue be examined by an independent entity," the foundation declared on its website.