Category Archives: Germany

German university rescinds Jewish American’s job offer over pro-Palestinian letter

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Nancy Fraser, professor of philosophy at the New School, condemned killings in Gaza carried out by the Israeli military

A leading Jewish American philosopher has been disinvited from taking up a prestigious professorship at the University of Cologne after signing a letter expressing solidarity with Palestinians and condemning the killings in Gaza carried out by Israeli forces.

Nancy Fraser, professor of philosophy and politics at the New School for Social Research in New York, said she had been cancelled by the university, which has withdrawn its invitation to the Albertus Magnus Professorship 2024, a visiting position, which she had been awarded in 2022. The letter was written in November 2023 following the 7 October attacks on Israel by Hamas, prompting Israel’s attack on Gaza.

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Israel’s security at core of German foreign policy due to Holocaust, ICJ hears

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Nicaragua asks UN’s highest court to halt German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is breaching obligation to prevent genocide

Germany has said Israel’s security is at “the core” of its foreign policy because of the history of the Holocaust, but denied accusations at the UN’s highest court that is aiding genocide in Gaza by arming Israel.

Nicaragua has brought a case against Germany at the international court of justice (ICJ) urging judges to order a halt to German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is in breach of its obligation to prevent genocide and ensure respect of international humanitarian law.

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German art museum fires worker for hanging his own painting in gallery

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Staff member put work on display at Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne ‘in hope of achieving his breakthrough’

According to a quote commonly – if wrongly – attributed to the artist Andy Warhol, everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame. At Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne museum earlier this year, one technician and aspiring artist got to bask in the limelight for a whole eight hours.

The museum in southern Germany on Tuesday confirmed that it had fired a member of its technical services team after he was found to have hung one of his own paintings in a part of the gallery dedicated to modern and contemporary art, allowing him to share a space with works by pop art pioneer Warhol for an entire day.

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‘I will not dance’: Olaf Scholz joins TikTok with a promise

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German chancellor follows in the footsteps of Joe Biden and other leaders on social media platform

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has opened a TikTok account, promising he will not be seen dancing on the social media platform popular with young people.

The newest official government channel “increases the information offer to citizens, who increasingly inform themselves and discuss politics on TikTok”, Scholz’s spokesperson, Steffen Hebestreit, said in a statement.

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Weather tracker: Storm Kathleen brings high winds and warm air to Europe

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Gusts of more than 70mph recorded on Irish Sea coast, as temperatures rose above 30C in mainland Europe

Storm Kathleen brought strong winds to Ireland and the UK at the weekend, causing travel and power disruption. The storm, named by Met Éireann, developed in the Atlantic on Thursday, deepening explosively as it pushed northwards to the west of Ireland.

Peak wind gusts of 40-60mph (65-95km/h) were recorded quite widely across Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and western parts of England and Wales on Saturday, with some Irish Sea coastal regions experiencing gusts above 70mph. A gust of 72mph was recorded at Drumalbin, Lanarkshire.

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Von der Leyen’s re-election chances hit by €17k-a-month job for ally

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European Commission defends appointing adviser Markus Pieper after selection process is questioned

Ursula von der Leyen’s run for a second term as president of the European Commission has been dented after accusations of favouritism in the selection of a fellow party member for a lucrative new job.

Some of the highest-ranking people in Brussels, including the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, and the French commissioner Thierry Breton, have written to von der Leyen to complain that the appointment of the German MEP Markus Pieper as a special adviser “has triggered questions about the transparency and impartiality of the nomination process”.

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Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in trophy hunting row

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President Mokgweetsi Masisi voices anger over Berlin’s opposition to the import of trophies over poaching concerns

Botswana’s president has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany amid a dispute over the import of hunting trophies.

Earlier this year Germany’s environment ministry raised the possibility of stricter limits on the import of hunting trophies over poaching concerns. But a ban on the import of hunting trophies would only impoverish Botswanans, Mokgweetsi Masisi told German daily Bild.

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Several killed in coach crash near Leipzig, say German police

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Five reported killed and numerous others injured after FlixBus carrying 55 people overturned on A9 motorway

Multiple people were killed and more injured in a coach crash on a motorway near the eastern German city of Leipzig on Wednesday, police said.

“Several people were fatally injured in the serious accident on the A9 motorway. There are numerous casualties,” said Saxony police in a statement on X.

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‘We are dealing with fundamentalist rightwingers’: Berlin statues are latest battleground in Germany’s culture wars

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Monuments erected on the Stadtschloss are an ‘infiltration’ of the city and its skyline by nationalists, say critics

Silently towering into the grey Berlin sky, the latest addition to the German capital’s skyline is easily missed by passengers passing along the Unter den Linden boulevard below. Eight statues of Old Testament prophets, each more than 3 metres tall and weighing 3 tonnes, were installed last week in a circular formation around the cupola of the palace in the centre of the metropolis.

Whether these wise men made of sandstone are mere innocent bystanders overlooking the ebb and flow of German history or warriors in a culture war over the country’s future, however, has been the subject of heated debate. Critics say the erection of Isaiah, Ezekiel and co is emblematic of the silent manipulation of a prestige architecture project by a shady group of donors with nationalist leanings.

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Populist parties’ divisions jeopardise chances of setting European agenda

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Survey shows supporters of nationalist parties hold widely differing views on EU membership, migration and support for Ukraine

Populist and nationalist parties fighting the European elections in June are deeply divided on almost all key issues, according to a survey, in a finding that questions their chances of defining the bloc’s agenda even in the event of a predicted far-right surge.

However, the report, by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), also said pro-EU parties risked mobilising the Eurosceptic vote if they continued to ape hard-right policies rather than coming up with persuasive alternatives.

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Far-right Austrian nationalist banned from Germany after neo-Nazi meeting

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Martin Sellner, leader of ethno-nationalist Identitarian Movement, had addressed controversial event in Potsdam in November

A far-right Austrian nationalist has been banned from entering Germany after addressing a meeting about mass deportations that provoked mass protests across the country.

Days after he was deported from Switzerland, Martin Sellner, a leader of Austria’s ethno-nationalist Identitarian Movement, posted a video of himself on X reading out a letter to his lawyer that he said was from authorities in the city of Potsdam.

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Climate activists across Europe block access to North Sea oil infrastructure

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Blockades at facilities in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, with protests in Scotland and action expected in Denmark

Climate activists in four countries are blocking access to North Sea oil infrastructure as part of a coordinated pan-European civil disobedience protest.

Blockades have been taking place at oil and gas terminals, refineries and ports in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, in protest at the continued exploitation of North Sea fossil fuel deposits.

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German, French and Polish leaders hold emergency meeting on Ukraine

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European military powers try to dampen tensions between them over Russian war and US aid for Kyiv

The three leading military powers in mainland Europe – France, Germany and Poland – are holding an emergency session in Berlin to try to dampen tensions over their different responses to the twin spectres of Russian military advances in Ukraine and US Congress’s refusal to approve substantial further military aid for Kyiv.

The clash in approach – predominantly between the newly hawkish French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the perennially cautious German chancellor, Olaf Scholz – was laid bare in a dramatic French TV interview on Thursday night in which Macron said Europe’s security, even its existence, was at risk.

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New EU gig economy laws saved from oblivion by Belgian compromise

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Directive aims to give taxi and delivery drivers such as those working for Uber and Deliveroo rights similar to those enjoyed by full employees

New laws designed to improve the rights of gig economy workers in the EU contracted to companies such as Uber have been saved from oblivion after they won the majority backing of member states.

The legislation had been blocked by a group of countries last month, when France said it could not support the text on the table and Germany abstained.

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Deutsche Bahn files legal action over German rail strike

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GDL union has announced its sixth strike in a dispute over wages and hours

The German rail operator Deutsche Bahn has taken urgent legal action in an effort to stop a strike by a train drivers’ union.

The GDL trade union, which has about 40,000 members and represents train drivers and other rail workers, announced a strike this week – its sixth in a months-long dispute over wages and hours.

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UK politics: Sunak refuses to say how abolition of national insurance would be funded – as it happened

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PM says ‘people trust me on these things’ and refuses to be drawn on whether government would forgo entire £46bn raised from measure

Keir Starmer has accused Jeremy Hunt of repeating the budget mistakes made by Liz Truss during her disastrous premiership.

In comments on the budget during a visit to a building site this morning, Starmer focused on Hunt’s proposal to abolish employees’ national insurance over time, saying that this was a bigger unfunded tax promise than those in Truss’s mini-budget. (See 9.28am.)

How humiliating was that for the government yesterday?

We’ve argued for years that they should get rid of the non-dom tax status, they’ve resisted that. And now, completely out of ideas, the only decent policy they’ve got is the one that they’ve lifted from us.

Nothing that Jeremy Hunt did yesterday, nor anything the OBR said, changes anything very significantly. Which is a shame. Because that means we are still:

-heading for a parliament in which people will on average be worse off at the end than at the start,

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Daniela Klette of Baader-Meinhof gang remanded in custody

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Klette, 65, allegedly took part in three violent Red Army Faction attacks in the 1990s

A former member of the radical anti-capitalist Baader-Meinhof gang arrested in Berlin last week after 30 years on the run has been remanded in custody over three violent attacks in the 1990s.

Police swooped on Daniela Klette, 65, at an apartment in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district on 26 February. They called it a “milestone” as Klette was one of the most wanted people in Europe.

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‘Hypervaccinated’ man reportedly received 217 Covid jabs without side effects

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German man, who said he had vaccines for ‘private reasons’, suspected of selling certificates to people who didn’t want jab

A German man who voluntarily received 217 coronavirus jabs over 29 months showed “no signs” of having been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 and had not suffered from any vaccine-related side effects, according to a study published in the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The 62-year-old, from Magdeburg, Germany, whom doctors described as “hypervaccinated”, said he had had the large number of vaccines for “private reasons”, according to the researchers from University of Erlangen-Nuremberg who examined him.

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UK urges Germany to give long-range missiles to Kyiv despite Luftwaffe leak

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Chancellor Olaf Scholz says he will not give missiles that could strike at strategic Crimea bridge, as Russia seeks to exploit leak

Britain has urged a reluctant Berlin to supply long-range Taurus missiles to Kyiv despite an embarrassing leak to Russian television of a top-secret call involving German air force officers who said UK troops were “on the ground” in Ukraine.

The Kremlin sought to exploit what it saw as a propaganda coup and pressure the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who in turn insisted on Monday he would not donate missiles that could strike at the strategic Kerch bridge linking Russia and occupied Crimea.

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German prosecutors urge Red Army Faction suspects to surrender

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Officials say ‘pressure is rising’ on two fugitives after arrest of a third last week and raids at weekend

Authorities in Germany have called on two suspected leftwing terrorists to turn themselves in and said they were close on their tails.

After the arrest a week ago of Daniela Klette, the last remaining female member of the Red Army Faction at large, officials said the net was closing in on her two alleged accomplices, Burkhard Garweg, 55, and Ernst-Volker Staub, 69.

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