German tennis player agrees deal after Brenda Patea alleged he pushed and strangled her, which he denied
The German tennis player Alexander Zverev has settled an assault case against him for allegedly pushing and strangling his then girlfriend, a charge he denied.
The deal reached between the world No 4 and his former partner Brenda Patea marks the end of a lengthy legal battle, with the Berlin court hearing the case officially declaring no verdict.
Continue reading...Heinrich Koch reportedly stabbed in altercation over election posters days after police officer died in attack in same German city
Politicians in Germany have pleaded for calm on the campaign trail after a candidate for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party was stabbed in the south-west German city of Mannheim, less than a week after a police officer was killed in a knife attack in the city.
The attack, which took place on Tuesday evening but was confirmed by police on Wednesday, left the politician with non-life threatening injuries for which he is being treated in hospital.
Continue reading...Thousands have evacuated their homes, as more frequent severe weather in the country raises fears over climate change
Two people have died, others are missing and thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes in southern Germany after torrential rain caused widespread flooding.
A 22-year-old firefighter died when the inflatable boat his rescue crew was in capsized on the river near Pfaffenbach an der Ilm, 30 miles (50km) from Munich. The body of a woman who had gone missing on Saturday was found by rescue workers in the cellar of her house in Upper Bavaria.
Continue reading...The Germany head coach, Julian Nagelsmann, has said he is shocked that a public broadcaster asked survey participants if they would prefer more white players in the national football team.
Nagelsmann has agreed with midfielder Joshua Kimmich, who said on Saturday that the survey for German state broadcaster ARD was “absolutely racist” and that it was “madness for a public broadcaster to ask such a question”.
Continue reading...Heavy rain that trapped people in their homes and reportedly caused a train derailment is forecast to continue
A volunteer firefighter died during a rescue operation during heavy rain and flooding in the south of Germany, local police said on Sunday.
Four emergency workers were attempting to reach people trapped by the flood waters near Pfaffenhofen in the region of Bavaria when their boat capsized.
Continue reading...Suspect wounded and officer injured after stabbing of far-right activist at rally in Mannheim
German police have shot and wounded a man who injured six people in a knife attack on a rightwing demonstration in the south-western city of Mannheim.
Footage showed a bearded man wearing glasses attacking people in the city’s central Marktplatz. One person appeared to be stabbed in the leg and a police officer who tried to intervene appeared to be cut in the neck. Another officer then shot the attacker.
Continue reading...A parliamentary employee’s home and offices raided amid accusations they were ‘paid to promote Russian propaganda’
Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office has said that police carried out searches at the residence of an employee of the European parliament and at his office in the parliament’s building in Brussels over possible Russian interference. Prosecutors said in statement that the suspect’s office in Strasbourg, where the EU parliament’s headquarters are located in France, was also searched, AP reported.
The Swedish government has said it will donate military aid to Ukraine worth 13 billion kronor (£962 million) in the largest help package Sweden has so far donated. “It consists of equipment that is at the top of Ukraine’s priority list,” deputy prime minister Ebba Busch said. It includes air defence, artillery ammunition and armoured vehicles, AP reported.
Russia’s human rights commissioner said on Wednesday that prisoner of war exchanges between Russia and Ukraine had been suspended for several months, the state TASS news agency said on Wednesday. TASS cited Tatyana Moskalova as blaming what she called Kyiv’s “false demands.” There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Antony Blinken, is set to arrive in the Moldovan capital Chisinau on Wednesday. It the first stop of a brief Europe tour during which he will aim to solidify the western support for Ukraine across Nato allies and neighbouring countries. The US top diplomat’s trip comes as Ukraine is trying to fend off intensifying Russian attacks in the east and as President Vladimir Putin warns that allowing Kyiv use western weapons to hit inside Russia would trigger a global conflict.
Western countries should let Ukraine strike military bases inside Russia with the sophisticated long-range weapons they are providing to Kyiv, French president Emmanuel Macron said, pressuring his allies in the most recent sign of a potentially significant policy shift that could help change the complexion of the war. The question of whether to allow Ukraine to hit targets on Russian soil with Western-supplied weaponry has been a delicate issue since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022, AP reported.
Ukrainian military shot down 13 drones out of 14 launched by Russia in an overnight attack on three regions, the country’s air force said on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday. Drone debris fell on energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s northwestern region of Rivne, governor Oleksandr Koval said on Telegram. The attack triggered a defence mechanism that cut power to some localities, although it has since been restored, Reuters reported.
The Russian capital Moscow has been successfully protected from Ukrainian drones, a high-ranking Russian air force official said on Wednesday, according to the TASS state news agency. The official was quoted as saying that Ukrainian drones could cover a distance of up to 2,500 kilometres (1,553 miles).
Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk has said its forces will further fortify the border with Belarus and can use “all available means” to defend the Nato nation’s frontier, after a soldier was seriously wounded with a knife by a migrant. Tusk said that a buffer zone some 200 metres (660ft) wide would be set up along the border, which is also the European Union’s eastern frontier, in addition to a 190-kilometre (118-mile) long metal barrier already in place to prevent an influx of migrants crossing from Belarus.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that planes from its Black Sea Fleet had destroyed two Ukrainian Crimea-bound sea drones in the north-western part of the Black Sea.
Western countries should let Ukraine strike military bases inside Russia with the sophisticated long-range weapons they are providing to Kyiv, French president Emmanuel Macron said, pressuring his allies in the most recent sign of a potentially significant policy shift that could help change the complexion of the war.
Continue reading...Manfred Goldberg, 94, urges authorities to preserve fragments of thousands of shoes left to rot at Stutthof concentration camp site
One of the last remaining survivors of the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp has appealed to authorities to salvage fragments of tens of thousands of shoes belonging to murdered Holocaust victims that were recently discovered in a forest at the site.
Manfred Goldberg, who was imprisoned as a teenager at Stutthof, 24 miles (38km) east of Gdańsk, said he was “shocked and dismayed” to hear of the existence of the remnants, eight decades after the shoes’ owners were forced to remove them before being gassed and cremated.
Continue reading...Managers say no place at beer festival for song adapted with Nazi slogan ‘Germany for the Germans, foreigners out’
The managers of Munich’s Oktoberfest have said they will seek to ban an Italian disco hit from being played at the world’s most famous beer festival after its hijacking by far-right revellers.
In recent months the schmaltzy love lyrics of L’amour Toujours, a catchy 2001 hit by Italian DJ Gigi D’Agostino, have repeatedly been drowned out at public gatherings by a Nazi slogan: “Germany for the Germans, foreigners out”.
Continue reading...Foreign ministers confident of agreement to use bank assets as security for Ukraine reconstruction loan
Hopes of a multi-country deal to use $300bn of Russian state assets frozen in the European banking system to support Ukraine have grown after it emerged that G7 ministers were confident of overcoming technical and political obstacles at a meeting in northern Italy on Saturday.
The Canadian finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, said she was optimistic that G7 leaders would reach an agreement, as support coalesced around a plan to use frozen Russian central bank assets as security for a $50bn (£39bn) loan.
Continue reading...Frontrunner to be European Commission president was questioned over alliances with Meloni and others in face-off with rival candidates
Sandro Gozi, representing Renew Europe Now, has walked on stage.
Walter Baier, representing the Party of the European Left, has entered the stage.
Continue reading...ID group of populist parties cuts off Alternative für Deutschland after its candidate’s comments that SS were ‘not all criminals’
The far-right German party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has been expelled from its pan-European parliamentary group after a string of recent controversies over its policy choices and the conduct of some of its leaders.
“The bureau of the Identity and Democracy group in the European parliament has decided today to exclude the German delegation, AfD, with immediate effect,” the ID group of populist far-right parties said in a statement on Thursday.
Continue reading...Maximilian Krah’s SS remark highlights growing divisions within European far-right and nationalist groups
The lead candidate for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the European parliamentary election has resigned from the German far-right party’s leadership, as growing divisions between Europe’s nationalist parties threaten to undermine their expected gains in next month’s ballot.
Maximilian Krah, who last weekend told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the SS, the Nazis’ main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”, said in a statement on Wednesday that his comments were “being misused as a pretext to damage our party”.
Continue reading...Self-styled aristocrat, a former judge and retired military officers among suspected Reichsbürger members appear in court
A group including a self-styled aristocrat, a former far-right politician and retired military officers sought the approval of the Russian state as it plotted a violent “seizure of power” in covert meetings at motorway service stations and a hunting lodge, a court in Germany has heard.
On the first day of their trial, nine defendants appeared in court in Frankfurt charged with high treason, facing allegations they plotted over a period of about 18 months to overthrow the state.
Continue reading...About 60 flights cancelled after members of Letzte Generation glue themselves to ground at Munich
Eight climate activists have been arrested after causing Munich airport to close, leading to about 60 flight cancellations.
Six activists broke through a security fence and glued themselves to access routes leading to runways, officials and local media reported.
Continue reading...Hazel Behan, who says main suspect in Madeleine McCann case raped her in Portugal in 2004, tells court she will never forget his eyes
A woman who alleges she was raped at knifepoint by the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has told a court she would never forget the eyes of her attacker, which “bored into my skull”.
Giving evidence in the trial of Christian Brückner, who stands accused of five sexual assaults in Portugal of women aged between 10 and 80 between 2000 and 2017, Hazel Behan, 40, who was raped in June 2004, told the court: “I believe that this man was my attacker.”
Continue reading...Main suspect in Madeleine McCann case in court in Germany charged with three rapes and two indecent assaults
A woman who was raped at knifepoint by a masked man in Portugal 20 years ago has told a German court how the trauma of the ordeal had left her suffering from frequent panic attacks.
Hazel Behan, 40, broke down as she recalled how a man dressed in black had entered her apartment in the resort of Praia da Rocha in the Algarve at 3am on 16 June 2004. She told how he stood over her bed and woke her by calling her name before proceeding to rape her repeatedly over several hours.
Continue reading...Björn Höcke, party’s candidate to lead Thuringia state, found to have deliberately used SA slogan in 2021 speech
A German court has fined a leading member of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party for using a banned Nazi phrase at a political rally, in a high-profile trial just months before an election in which he aims to become a state leader.
The state court in Halle convicted Björn Höcke, the firebrand chief of the AfD in the eastern region of Thuringia, of deliberately using a slogan associated with the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing, the SA, in a speech at a campaign event in May 2021.
Continue reading...Freedom: Memories 1954-2021 will cover Merkel’s childhood, political rise and 16 years as German chancellor
Angela Merkel will release her long-awaited memoirs in November under the title Freedom: Memories 1954-2021, sketching her journey from life behind the Berlin Wall to the top echelons of power “more intimately than ever before”.
Merkel, whose image in Germany and abroad has been tarnished by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, will turn 70 in July. She notes that her life can be neatly cleaved into experiences in “two German states – 35 years in the German Democratic Republic, 35 years in reunited Germany”, according to the book’s English publisher, Pan Macmillan.
Continue reading...Far-right party’s poll numbers have fallen but analysts say negative headlines unlikely to sway its supporters
Scandals buffeting Germany’s far-right AfD are unlikely to do enough damage to blow the party off course before pivotal elections this year, analysts say, but the votes will offer crucial insights into whether the centre can hold against an anti-democratic onslaught.
Embarrassing allegations of spying for China and collusion with Russia, after the bombshell revelation in January of a mass “remigration masterplan” for foreigners and German nationals alike backed by several party members, have sent the AfD’s poll numbers plunging to as low as 15% nationwide. That is its worst score since April 2023.
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