Category Archives: Germany

German jets scrambled after Russian military plane flies over Baltic Sea

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Russian Il-20M reconnaissance plane ignored requests to make contact, in latest of what are seen as provocative acts by Kremlin

Two German Eurofighter jets were scrambled on Sunday to intercept a Russian military aircraft above the Baltic Sea, as Estonia said it would call an emergency meeting of the UN security council after Russian planes violated its airspace.

Germany’s air force said the Russian Il-20M reconnaissance plane had switched off its transponders and ignored requests to make contact. The Eurofighters took off from the Rostock-Laage airbase to head off the aircraft as it flew in international airspace.

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Disruption continues at Heathrow, Brussels and Berlin airports after cyber-attack

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Zaventem asks airlines to cancel half of Monday departures, while most of Heathrow flights expected to operate

Hundreds of thousands of passengers at Heathrow and Berlin airports faced flight delays on Sunday after a cyber-attack hit check-in desk software, while cancellations at Brussels airport suggested that disruption of Europe’s air travel would continue into Monday.

Airlines were forced to revert to slower manual check-ins from Friday night after the attack hit Collins Aerospace, which provides check-in desk technology to various airlines.

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UK to explore extraditing Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brückner

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Met chief Mark Rowley says many questions remain and detectives are liaising with German and Portuguese police

Mark Rowley has said the British police investigation into Madeleine McCann will explore extraditing the German national Christian Brückner to the UK to stand trial over the three-year-old’s disappearance.

Brückner was released from a German prison on Wednesday after serving a seven-year jail term for the rape of an elderly woman in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2005, two years before Madeleine disappeared while on holiday with her family in the same town.

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Main suspect in Madeleine McCann case due to be released from German prison

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Authorities say they no longer have legal justification to hold Christian Brückner in jail after serving rape sentence

The main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is expected to be freed on Wednesday as German authorities admit they no longer have legal justification to hold him in jail.

Christian Brückner, 49, is due to be released from prison in Sehnde, northern Germany, after serving a sentence for the rape of an American woman, then 72 years old, in Portugal in 2005.

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Prime Madeleine McCann suspect refuses Met interview before German prison release

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Scotland Yard made formal request to interview Christian Brückner, due for release from seven-year rape sentence

The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has refused to be interviewed by the Metropolitan police before his pending release from prison in Germany, the force has said.

The Met confirmed it had submitted a formal international request to question Christian Brückner, the 49-year-old German national who has long been under investigation in connection with Madeleine’s disappearance, but the suspect declined.

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Far-right AfD’s vote triples in elections in German bellwether state

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Party takes 16.5% of the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, behind governing CDU and Social Democrats

Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has more than tripled its support in local elections in the country’s most populous state, a poll seen as Friedrich Merz’s first significant electoral test since he took office as chancellor four months ago.

According to exit poll results from North Rhine-Westphalia, Merz’s Christian Democrats won with 34% – about the equivalent of its historically worst result in the same poll in 2020 – while the AfD secured 16.5%.

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Festival axes German orchestra over concerns about Israeli conductor

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Belgian organisers are accused of ‘naked antisemitism’ after cancelling performance by Lahav Shani

A Belgian classical music festival has axed a leading German orchestra from its programme over concerns about its Israeli conductor, drawing accusations of antisemitism from Berlin.

Flanders Festival Ghent announced it had cancelled a concert by the Munich Philharmonic scheduled for 18 September, citing insufficient clarity over Lahav Shani’s attitude to the Israeli government.

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Politicians in at least 51 countries used anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric during elections, NGO finds

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Rights group also finds rise in openly gay, bisexual and transgender people running for office in 36 countries

Politicians in at least 51 countries used homophobic or transphobic rhetoric during elections last year, from depicting LGBTQ+ identity as a foreign threat to condemning “gender ideology”, according to a new study of 60 countries and the EU.

However, there were also gains for LGBTQ+ representation in some countries. Openly gay, bisexual and transgender people ran for office in at least 36 countries, including for the first time in Botswana, Namibia and Romania – albeit unsuccessfully – according to the report by Outright International. The number of LGBTQ+ elected officials doubled to at least 233 in Brazil.

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Almost all German pilots admit to napping during flights in union survey

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Pilots’ union says the issue has become a ‘worrying reality’ as a result of staff shortages and operation pressure

A German pilots’ union has said that napping during flights has become a “worrying reality” for its members, as it sounded the alarm over “increasing fatigue” in the sector.

The Vereinigung Cockpit union said it had carried out a survey of more than 900 pilots in recent weeks, which found that 93% of them admitted to napping during a flight in the past few months.

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Doorbell prankster that tormented residents of German apartments turns out to be a slug

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People suspected teenagers playing ding dong ditch and called police, who found animal crawling on the door panel

Inhabitants of an apartment block in Bavaria, southern Germany, who called police to investigate the relentless buzzing of their doorbells late at night were surprised to find the culprit was not a teenage prankster as they had suspected, but a slug.

The slug had been sliding up and down the bell plate, creating havoc in the building and tearing angry residents out of their beds long after midnight when they could not sleep for the noise.

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UK, Germany and France say they have triggered UN sanctions on Iran

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Move by trio of European powers gives Tehran 30 days to improve access for inspection of its nuclear sites

The UK, France and Germany have formally notified the UN that they have triggered the restoration of sweeping UN sanctions against Iran, giving Tehran 30 days to make concessions on access to its nuclear sites or face deeper worldwide economic isolation.

UK officials said the decision had not been taken lightly and there had been intensive diplomacy to try to avert this step. The officials emphasised there was still room for last-ditch diplomacy before the sanctions “snapback” comes into force in 30 days’ time. The annual high-level UN general assembly in September is likely to involve more intensive diplomacy over the situation with Iran.

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‘I can’t sleep, I can’t get on with my life’: how Europe’s tougher rules are keeping families apart

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Tighter family reunification laws are causing long separations, traumatising children, and can push people towards traffickers, campaigners say

Standing outside Germany’s parliament in June, Ahmad Shikh Ali fought back tears as he held up a blurry photo of his three-year-old son. Since fleeing Aleppo more than two years ago, Shikh Ali had done all he could to secure his son a safe future: moving to Hanover, getting full-time employment and wading through endless paperwork so that his wife and son could join him.

He was close to reuniting with his family, with just two cases in front of his in the queue. That was, until Germany’s lower house of parliament passed a bill in June to suspend family reunifications for migrants like him for at least two years.

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German contest to live in depopulated Soviet-era city proves global hit

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Eisenhüttenstadt offered spacious central flats rent-free for two weeks in effort to attract valuable professionals

An innovative contest by a city in formerly communist east Germany to curb depopulation by offering a fortnight of free housing has stunned local officials with its success.

The competition drew more than 1,700 applications from around the world to try living in Eisenhüttenstadt, a Soviet-style planned city on the Polish border, near Berlin, which was built around a steel plant in the aftermath of the second world war.

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Italian police arrest Ukrainian man over Nord Stream pipelines blast

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Serhiy K is believed to have been onboard boat from where 2022 attack on gas pipelines was carried out

A Ukrainian man alleged to have been involved in the 2022 detonation of the Nord Stream pipelines carrying gas from Russia to Germanyhas been arrested in Italy, according to German authorities.

The man, identified only as Serhiy K, is believed to have been onboard the sailing boat from where the attack was allegedly carried out.

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Buchenwald can refuse entry to people wearing Palestinian keffiyeh, German court rules

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Court in Thuringia rejected woman’s request to enter concentration camp memorial while wearing the scarf

A German court has ruled that a Nazi concentration camp memorial has the right to refuse entry to those wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh scarf.

The higher administrative court in the eastern state of Thuringia on Wednesday rejected a request from a woman to be allowed entry to the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial while wearing a keffiyeh.

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Zelenskyy’s European ‘bodyguards’: which leaders joined Trump talks in Washington?

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Presidents, PMs and heads of Nato and European Commission accompany Ukraine’s leader at White House

European leaders gathered in Washington on Monday for Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, in a show of support for the Ukrainian president. Their presence came amid expectations that Trump would try to bully Zelenskyy into accepting a pro-Russia “peace plan” that would include Kyiv handing territory to Moscow. The Europeans have been described as Zelenskyy’s “bodyguards”, with memories fresh of the mauling he received in February during his last Oval Office visit. So, who are they?

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Mould, vermin and ceiling leaks: German police say they work in ‘embarrassing’ conditions

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Union calls for increased spending to revamp vehicles and station houses that it says are an insult to officers’ dignity

Germany’s biggest police union has complained about the dilapidated state of hundreds of police stations across the country and a fleet of aged vehicles, saying conditions are a threat to officers’ health and an insult to their dignity.

“Decades-old toilet bowls, mould in the offices, vermin, broken heating units and holes in the ceiling that let the rain in,” said Hagen Husgen of the GdP union, citing just a few of the complaints his organisation had received from members.

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Europe’s leaders raise pressure on Trump to involve Ukraine in Putin talks

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Move comes as Germany warns White House against any deal hatched ‘over heads of Europeans and Ukrainians’

Europe’s leaders have raised the pressure on Donald Trump to involve Ukraine in a planned summit with Vladimir Putin, as Germany warned the White House against any deal hatched “over the heads of Europeans and Ukrainians”.

Speaking before a bilateral meeting expected to take place between the US and Russian leaders on Friday in Alaska, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said he hoped and assumed that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would also be involved.

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Women call out ‘creepy’ experiences on Vinted as trolls and image thieves target site

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Scrutiny of selling platforms grows as female users warning of harassment on sites after photos stolen and sexualised

Users of secondhand clothing websites such as Vinted are warning about the danger their images will be used against their will on pornography sites, and sounding the alarm about the spread of sexually charged harassment under their posts.

The potential for hijacking photos posted on the internet for real or faked erotic content has long been known, but victims and their advocates say culprits appear to have zeroed in on Vinted with targeted campaigns.

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Pension age debate threatens to splinter Germany’s fragile coalition

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Merz walks fine line as ‘lazy Germans’ debate sparks protest and economy minister calls to raise retirement age to 70

The fact that ageing Germany’s generous pension system is unsustainable is political Berlin’s worst-kept secret, but a controversial call to save it by hiking the retirement age to 70 has sparked howls of protest and threatened to destabilise the fractious government.

The chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has largely sidestepped the ticking timebomb of the greying population since taking office in May, preferring instead to announce sweeteners such as tax breaks for older Germans to continue working past the retirement age.

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