Category Archives: Germany

Thousands protest against G7 in Munich as leaders gather for summit

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Demands include end to fossil fuels, preservation of biodiversity and greater social justice

About 3,500 protesters have gathered in Munich as the G7 group of leading economic powers prepare to hold their annual gathering in the Bavarian Alps in Germany, which holds the rotating presidency this year.

Police said earlier that they were expecting a crowd of about 20,000, but initially fewer people showed up for the main protest, which started at midday on Saturday, the German news agency dpa reported.

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Russia ‘turning wave of food crises into tsunami’ by blocking grain exports

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Germany’s foreign minister says preventing movement of 25m tonnes of supply is ‘using hunger as a weapon of war’

Russia has transformed an existing life-threatening wave of food crises into a tsunami by blocking the export of 25m tonnes of grain from Ukraine’s ports, the Germany’s foreign minister has said.

Speaking at the start of an inter-ministerial food conference in Berlin, a precursor to the G7 meeting in Germany starting this weekend where aid groups will demand a big financial commitment to help Africa, Annalena Baerbock said 345 million people worldwide were currently threatened by food shortages.

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German gas prices could triple as Russia reduces supply, expert says

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Fears consumers may have to pay up to three times as much after Nord Stream 1 pipeline flow cut by 40%

German consumers could face a tripling of gas prices in the coming months after Russia’s throttling of deliveries to Europe, a senior energy official has said.

Moscow reduced the flow of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline by 40% last week, citing technical reasons that Berlin dismisses as a pretext, prompting a four to six-fold rise in market prices, said the head of Germany’s federal network agency, Klaus Müller.

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Covid surges across Europe as experts warn not let guard down

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Calls grow for greater measures against wave of BA.4 and BA.5 cases in countries from Spain to Denmark

Multiple European countries are experiencing a significant surge in new Covid-19 infections, as experts warn that with almost all restrictions lifted and booster take-up often low, cases could soar throughout the summer leading to more deaths.

According to the Our World in Data scientific aggregator, the rolling seven-day average of confirmed new cases per million inhabitants is on the rise in countries including Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark.

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Scholz, Macron and Draghi vow support for Ukraine’s EU bid on Kyiv visit

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Symbolic visit of German, French and Italian leaders comes as Russia continues attacks across country

The leaders of France, Germany and Italy have vowed to support Ukraine’s bid to join the European Union on a visit to Kyiv intended as a show of unity in the face of Russian advances and complaints from the Ukrainians about the pace of weapons supplies.

“My colleagues and I came here to Kyiv today with a clear message: ‘Ukraine belongs to the European family,’” the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said at a joint press conference with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis.

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European leaders expected to visit Kyiv to show support for Ukraine

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy to push leaders of Germany, France and Italy to send more weapons to help army withstand Russian invasion

The leaders of the European Union’s three biggest countries, Germany, France and Italy, are expected in Kyiv on Thursday to show their backing for Ukraine as it struggles to withstand a relentless Russian assault.

The visit by the German chancellor Olaf Scholz, the French president Emmanuel Macron and the Italian prime minister Mario Draghi has taken weeks to organise with the three men looking to overcome criticism within Ukraine over their response to the war.

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‘Germany was 10 years behind’: how Brexit helped Europe’s galleries

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Curators who left the UK after the referendum took with them experience that is reshaping their cities’ art scenes

One of the things Stephanie Rosenthal acquired during her 10-year stint in London’s gallery world is an appreciation of the British art of queueing with a smile on your face.

After the German art historian quit her job as chief curator at the Hayward Gallery in the wake of Britain’s referendum on leaving the European Union, she exported her specialist skills back to her country of birth.

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Ex-soldiers ‘inspired by psychic to fight in Yemen’ go on trial in Germany

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Achim Allweyer, 52, and Arend-Adolf Gräss, 60, allegedly tried to form paramilitary unit to join civil war

Two former German soldiers have gone on trial accused of attempting to form a paramilitary group to fight in Yemen’s civil war after being inspired by a psychic.

Achim Allweyer, 52, and Arend-Adolf Gräss, 60, took steps to set up what prosecutors say amounted to a “terrorist organisation” after receiving “messages from a fortune teller that they understood as binding instructions for action”, according to the indictment read out at Stuttgart’s higher regional court on Thursday.

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Berlin crash driver had history of paranoid schizophrenia, authorities say

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Mayor says incident where teacher died and 14 children were injured was probably deliberate

A 29-year-old man who killed a teacher and injured 14 children after driving his car into a crowd in Berlin on Wednesday had a history of suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and was probably intending to kill or injure, German authorities say.

“There are no clues pointing to a terrorist motivation behind this deed, and we can also rule out that it was an accident”, said the spokesperson for the Berlin public prosecutor’s office, Sebastian Büchner. “It was probably a deliberate act.”

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Man detained after driving car into Berlin crowd, killing teacher

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Police say 14 children on school trip injured on road adjacent to 2016 fatal attack

A man has been detained after driving his car into a crowd of people in western Berlin, killing a teacher and injuring 14 children who were on a school trip, police have said.

The man drove into people on a street corner before getting the car back on the road and crashing into a shop window further on.

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No regrets over handling of Vladimir Putin, says Angela Merkel

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Former German chancellor claims her opposition to Ukraine’s Nato membership helped country

Angela Merkel has said she feels no regrets for her handling of Vladimir Putin during her time in power, arguing that Russia’s president would have perceived a 2008 Nato membership plan for Ukraine that was blocked by her government as a “declaration of war”.

The former German chancellor also claimed that an oligarch-run and democratically immature Ukraine would have been less prepared for an invasion then than it is now.

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Briton given 15 years in Iraqi jail for smuggling antiquities to appeal verdict

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Jim Fitton, 66, hoped for short suspended sentence after collecting fragments during archaeology tour

Lawyers for a British geologist handed a 15-year sentence by an Iraqi judge after being convicted of smuggling antiquities will immediately appeal against the shock verdict, which has left his family “stunned”.

Jim Fitton, 66, arrived at court in Baghdad hoping for a short suspended sentence after being charged with collecting fragments from a site in southern Iraq during an organised archaeology tour. Instead, he was found guilty under a Saddam-era law that legal experts should not have applied to the case.

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Newly released doctor’s letters show Adolf Hitler’s fear of illness

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Carl Otto von Eicken, an ear, nose and throat specialist, treated Nazi dictator for 10 years from 1935

The Swiss descendent of one of Adolf Hitler’s doctors has released details of letters that show how he treated the Nazi dictator for voice problems, the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag reported on Sunday.

The letters show Hitler’s fear of serious illness. “If there is something bad, I absolutely have to know,” Hitler told the doctor after their first consultation in May 1935, according to the letters.

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Mercedes-Benz issues global recall of one million older cars

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German carmaker says move due to a potential problem with the braking system

Mercedes-Benz has announced it is immediately recalling nearly one million older vehicles worldwide due to a potential problem with the braking system.

Germany’s federal transport authority (KBA) said that the recall affected cars built between 2004 and 2015 of the SUV series ML and GL, and the R-Class luxury minivan.

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At least three dead as train derails in Alps in southern Germany

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Authorities say a number of others injured in crash near resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen

A train has derailed in the Alps in southern Germany, leaving at least three people dead and a number of others injured, authorities said.

The train heading for Munich derailed at about 12.15pm on Friday in Burgrain, near the resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, according to federal police. Some carriages apparently ended up on their side. The cause was not immediately clear.

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Omicron subvariant drives spike in cases and deaths in Portgual

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Europe faces prospect of further Covid measures later in the year as share of Omicron BA.5 cases rise in Portugal and Germany

A spike of Covid-19 cases and deaths in Portugal driven by the Omicron BA.5 subvariant in spite of warm temperatures is causing capitals across Europe to once again consider measures against a pandemic that has started to fade into public memory.

Portugal confirmed 26,848 new cases and recorded 47 Covid deaths on Wednesday – the highest daily death toll since 17 February, when 51 deaths from the disease were reported.

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Vietnamese man extradited to Germany over oil executive kidnapping

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Fugitive Vietnamese state company official Trinh Xuan Thanh was abducted from Berlin park in July 2017

A Vietnamese man has been extradited to Germany to face charges of taking part in a brazen cold war-style kidnapping of an oil executive ordered by Hanoi, prosecutors have said.

The suspect, identified only as Anh TL, was sent to Germany from the Czech Republic after he was detained in Prague last month on the basis of German and European arrest warrants.

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14th-century samurai sword found in car at Swiss border

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Officers say 700-year-old artefact worth €650,000 was transported from Stuttgart on behalf of driver’s employer

Swiss customs authorities have discovered an antique Japanese samurai sword made nearly 700 years ago, after it was smuggled into the country.

The Federal Office for Customs and Border Security said the katana sword, dated to 1353 and valued at €650,000 (£550,000), was found in a car with Swiss plates during a routine search near Zurich. Several other objects were also found in the car, including an antique book, a contract and the sales invoice.

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Scorpions say they changed Wind of Change lyrics as song ‘romanticised Russia’

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German rockers’ most famous song now includes lyrics: ‘Now listen to my heart / It says Ukrainia’

The lead singer of German hard rockers Scorpions has revealed he changed the lyrics of Wind of Change because he no longer wanted to “romanticise Russia” with his chart-topping perestroika power ballad, after Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

“To sing Wind of Changeas we have always sung it, that’s not something I could imagine any more,” Klaus Meine told Die Zeit. “It simply isn’t right to romanticise Russia with lyrics like: ‘I follow the Moskva / Down to Gorky Park … Let your balalaika sing’”.

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G7 countries to stop funding fossil fuel development overseas

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Ministers from world’s biggest economies reach agreement that could shift estimated $33bn a year to clean energy sources

The world’s biggest economies are to stop funding any overseas fossil fuel development from the end of this year, in a move likely to choke off some of the investment in “carbon bombs” that are imperilling efforts to meet the world’s climate targets.

The agreement could shift about $33bn (£26bn) a year from fossil fuels to clean energy sources, according to analysts’ estimates.

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