This blog is now closed. You can read our story on the attack below:
Hamburg’s mayor, Peter Tschentscher, has responded to the attack, calling it “shocking”.
“The emergency services are working flat out to track down the perpetrator (s) and to clarify the background,” he said.
Continue reading...Alternative für Deutschland leaders were among those lauding Sunak’s bill, while other EU figures raised doubts about its legality
European far-right leaders have praised Rishi Sunak’s illegal immigration bill, after a senior EU official repeated her doubts about the legality of the plans.
“Bravo,” wrote the Alternative für Deutschland party on social media. “Way to go! The current [British] government plans now to deny asylum to illegal immigrants and fly them out to Rwanda,” the party wrote on Facebook, saying Germany should follow this approach. “When will we finally have it?”
Continue reading...Lafrenz was arrested twice by the Gestapo and eventually liberated in April 1945 and settled in the US
The last surviving member of the White Rose resistance movement, which urged Germans to stand up against Nazi tyranny during the second world war, has died, according to the group’s historical foundation.
Traute Lafrenz died at her home in South Carolina on Monday at the age of 103, the group said in a statement on Thursday, paying tribute to her “courageous resistance and lasting testimony”.
Continue reading...Kremlin dismisses tentative intelligence from European and US agencies as a bid by the perpetrators to divert attention
European and US intelligence officials have obtained tentative intelligence to suggest a pro-Ukrainian saboteur group may have been behind the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, according to reports in the New York Times and German newspaper Die Zeit.
German investigators believe the attack on the pipelines was carried out by a team of six people, using a yacht that had been hired by a company registered in Poland and owned by two Ukrainian citizens, according to Die Zeit.
Continue reading...Monarch will become first UK sovereign to address French senate and Bundestag on six-day trip
The king will make his first state visits to France and Germany, Buckingham Palace has confirmed.
King Charles and Camilla, the queen consort, will travel to Paris and continue to Berlin during a six-day visit which begins on 26 March.
Continue reading...Stormy meeting in Delhi breaks up without joint statement as west and Moscow spar over Ukraine
Russia has accused the west of blackmail and threats and claimed it had China’s support for its position at a stormy meeting of G20 foreign ministers in India, dominated by the war in Ukraine.
The event broke up with no joint communique, only a summary of the meeting prepared by the host, India, the group’s current chair.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak lauded for making ‘adult relationship’ possible between UK and EU after post-Brexit dispute
Continental media have welcomed the deal settling the EU’s bitter post-Brexit dispute with the UK over Northern Ireland, hoping it may herald a new “adult relationship” that had been unthinkable while the “untrustworthy” Boris Johnson was in Downing Street.
In France, where the president, Emmanuel Macron, hailed “an important decision” that would “preserve the Good Friday agreement and protect our European internal market”, Le Monde called the Windsor framework a significant breakthrough.
Continue reading...Nancy Faeser says Ukraine war has exacerbated German cybersecurity concerns
Germany’s interior minister has warned of a “massive danger” facing Germany from Russian sabotage, disinformation and spying attacks.
Nancy Faeser said Vladimir Putin was putting huge resources into cyber-attacks as a key part of his war of aggression. “The cybersecurity concerns have been exacerbated by the war. The attacks of pro-Russia hackers have increased,” she said in an interview with the news network Funke Mediengruppe published on Sunday.
Continue reading...Tests carried out on remains of young communist who confessed to arson attack that proved a gift to Hitler
When flames enveloped Germany’s parliament on the evening of 27 November 1933, six days before national elections, it was a political gift to Adolf Hitler, the recently appointed chancellor. The arson attack on the Reichstag by an “enemy within” secured his re-election and gave him the pretext to grab the dictatorial powers he craved.
Whether that gift fell into the Nazi leader’s lap by chance or was placed there via a covert false-flag operation has been the subject of bitter historical disputes ever since. Now, 90 years later, the body of the young communist whom historians have traditionally regarded as the sole perpetrator of the attack has been exhumed in the hope of finding a definitive answer.
Continue reading...About 13,000 people gather at Brandenburg Gate, as demonstrations also take place in other German cities
Thousands of people have taken part in a demonstration in central Berlin to protest against giving more weapons to Ukraine, urging the German government to deescalate the crisis by paving the way for negotiations with Vladimir Putin instead.
Police estimated there were 13,000 people at the Uprising for Peace, at the Brandenburg Gate, organised by Sahra Wagenknecht, a renegade member of the Links party, and veteran feminist campaigner Alice Schwarzer.
Continue reading...Chemicals company says disruption from Ukraine war, rising costs and inflation will continue this year
The German chemicals company BASF has said it will cut 2,600 jobs as Europe’s largest economy braces for recession triggered by the energy crisis that intensified after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year ago.
The year was “dominated by the consequences of the war in Ukraine and in particular by increased raw material and energy prices”, BASF said in a statement on Friday. It paid additional energy costs of €3.2bn (£2.8bn) globally during 2022.
Continue reading...Moscow accused of attempting to source weapons parts through front companies in neighbouring states
A group of 10 EU member states have called for a crackdown on Russia’s attempts to source military parts through front companies in neighbouring countries, thereby evading western sanctions.
The 10 countries, which include France, Germany, Italy and the Baltic states, write that “2023 must be the year of success in countering circumvention”, warning that public support and international legitimacy of sanctions could wane if they are deemed ineffective.
Continue reading...Outage causes flight delays and cancellations after cables damaged during construction work
Thousands of passengers worldwide have been stranded after an IT fault at Germany’s flagship carrier Lufthansa caused flight delays and disruption at airlines across the group.
The company said the problem was caused by damage to several of Deutsche Telekom’s glass-fibre cables during construction work in Frankfurt. Repairs would take until Wednesday afternoon, Lufthansa said.
Continue reading...Marco Goecke says he acted in heat of the moment after years of ‘annihilatory' criticism’
An award-winning German ballet company director who smeared his dog’s faeces on the face of a dance critic has failed to apologise, saying he was responding to decades of “annihilatory criticism”.
Marco Goecke admitted in an interview with the broadcaster NDR that his “means of attack” was “certainly not super” but said he had acted on impulse on seeing the journalist, Wiebke Hüster.
Continue reading...US carmaker blames losses on rising costs and need to switch to electric vehicle production
The British car industry faces the prospect of further steep job cuts without urgent government support for electric vehicle investment, a union leader has warned, after Ford revealed 1,300 UK redundancies in its internal combustion operations.
The US carmaker said it planned to eliminate 3,800 product development and administration jobs across Europe, citing rising costs and the need to speed up its switch from petrol and diesel engines to electric vehicles.
Continue reading...Marco Goecke allegedly confronted Wiebke Hüster at Hanover State Opera, furious at her verdict on a previous show
The director of a leading German ballet company has been suspended from his post and is being investigated by police after allegedly smearing a critic’s face with his dog’s excrement at the premiere of his new show after she described one of his productions as “boring” and “disjointed”.
Marco Goecke, the head of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, has also been barred from the opera house, a spokesperson confirmed on Monday afternoon, after he confronted Wiebke Hüster, the ballet critic of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), in the interval of his latest show on Sunday night.
Continue reading...Economic growth forecast to be 0.8% in 2023 but households still face cost of living pressures
The EU is predicted to narrowly avoid recession as a result of a milder-than-expected energy shock, although households face difficult times ahead as cost of living pressures ease only gradually, the European Commission has said.
Economic growth for the 27 countries of the EU is forecast to be 0.8% in 2023, compared with a 0.3% projection last autumn, when fears of winter power outages and the rising cost of living ran high. In the 20-country eurozone, the economy will expand by 0.9% in 2023, boosted by a better-than-expected performance in Germany and Italy, as well as relatively stronger growth in Spain.
Continue reading...Package of 29 older tanks could be sent to help fight Russia as soon as refurbishments done, reports say
Germany has approved the export of older Leopard 1 battle tanks, which would add to the raft of fighting vehicles Berlin promised last week it would send to Ukraine.
A spokesperson said on Friday that Olaf Scholz’s government had granted an export licence for the German-made tanks first produced in the 1960s and replaced within Germany’s own military by Leopard 2 tanks in 2003. Further details would be provided in the coming days and weeks, they said.
Continue reading...Herero and Nama people demand direct talks and take Namibian government to court for accepting reparations on their behalf for 1904-1908 killings
Descendants of victims of genocide in Namibia have called on Germany to “stop hiding” and discuss reparations with them directly, as they take their own government to court for making a deal without their approval.
The Herero and Nama people have gone to Namibia’s high court, rejecting an apology made in 2021 after years of talks between Namibia and Germany, which they say falls short of atoning for the 1904 to 1908 genocide, the first of the 20th century.
Continue reading...Ingolstadt body identified by family as 23-year-old German-Iraqi woman was later found to be Algerian blogger
A 23-year-old German-Iraqi woman sought out a lookalike on Instagram and murdered her with a friend in order to fake her own death, prosecutors in Bavaria believe.
When the blood-covered body of a young woman was found last August in a parked Mercedes in Ingolstadt, southern Germany, reports initially identified the victim as Sharaban K, a Munich-based 23-year-old beautician with Iraqi roots.
Continue reading...