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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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’”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Analysis: high temperatures affect southern Europe, while in US state mercury rapidly drops more than 30C
Extremely hot and mostly sunny conditions have been experienced across southern Europe this week. Parts of Spain have had record-breaking temperatures for the month of May, with the southern city of Jaén in Andalucia recording 40.3C (104.5F) on Friday 20 May, according to the Spanish weather agency Aemet. Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Andújar, temperatures exceeded 42C two days in a row.
Intense heat also affected northern Africa, with Sidi Slimane city in Morocco recording its hottest day in recorded history, reaching a scorching 45.7C. Although one particular weather event cannot be directly attributed to the climate crisis, scientists believe the severity and duration of heatwaves are expected to increase in the future in response to a warmer global climate.
Continue reading...Process to be eased to exempt applicants with special expertise from case-by-case assessment
Germany is to relax visa requirements for skilled workers from Russia, just as the country’s domestic intelligence agency warned of a heightened risk that Russian nationals working for German firms could be recruited for industrial espionage.
The chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government is streamlining the visa application process by exempting Russian workers with specialised expertise in areas such as IT and communication technology from case-by-case assessments through the federal employment department.
Continue reading...Islanders fear government’s €9-a-month travel pass will encourage a stampede of visitors
Anti-capitalist protesters have called on Germans to take advantage of a heavily discounted public transport pass to “storm” a holiday island frequented by the rich and famous.
Sylt, an island off Germany’s North Sea coast, is seen as one of the more sought-after destinations for buyers of the €9-a-month ticket being introduced from 1 June.
Continue reading...The German capital’s liberal reputation has been derailed by clashes between subcontracted ticket inspectors and black people
A Berlin metro ticket controller squeezes through a throng of old-school punks, mariachi band members and burly men in leather chaps, all while jauntily humming Is’ mir egal, “It’s all the same to me”.
The 2015 viral ad, featuring Turkish-German Neukölln rapper Kazim Akboga, was a great marketing success for the German capital’s public transport company, BVG: if you ride on our metros, trams and buses, it said, you can be whoever you want to be – as long as you remember to buy a ticket.
Continue reading...Investigation also suggests president’s youngest daughter is in a relationship with ballet dancer Igor Zelensky
Since the start of his military campaign against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has railed aggressively against pro-western Russians, whose appetite for European cuisine and climates meant “their mentality is there, not here, with our people”.
Yet his own daughter’s enthusiasm for sojourns to western Europe at least matches that of the oligarch “scum and traitors” he has decried, a joint investigation by independent Russian media outlet iStories and German magazine Der Spiegel suggests.
Continue reading...Statement to mark 77th anniversary of end of second world war condemns ‘an attack on feeding the world’
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has brought shame on Russia and the sacrifices its people made to defeat Nazi Germany in the second world war, leaders of the G7 group of leading western economies have said in a statement marking the 77th anniversary of the end of the global conflict.
The statement, made on Sunday after a video conference between the G7 leaders and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was intended as a rallying call by liberal democracies in advance of Russia’s 9 May Victory Day parade in Moscow.
Continue reading...German chancellor will draw parallel with second world war defeat of Nazi dictatorship in TV address
Ukraine will prevail over Russia as freedom prevailed over the Nazi dictatorship in 1945, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will say in a TV address to mark the 77th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, in which he will accuse Vladimir Putin of falsifying history.
In the speech, which will be aired on German TV at 8.20pm CET (7.20pm BST) on Sunday, Scholz says the “legacy of 8 May” for his country must be to help to ensure that there will never again be genocide or tyranny in Europe.
Continue reading...Museum on site where Nazis agreed to surrender in 1945 will be renamed Museum Berlin-Karlshorst
A Berlin museum dedicated to German-Russian relations on the site where the Nazis agreed to unconditionally surrender in 1945 is to drop the word “Russian” from its name before anniversary events to mark the end of the second world war in Europe.
With tensions already high in the lead-up to the 77th anniversary on 8 and 9 May of Nazi Germany signing the surrender agreement, the German-Russian museum’s director, Jörg Morré, said he would be renaming it Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.
Continue reading...Traces in shirts and T-shirts appear to contradict German firms’ promises to revise supply chains
Researchers say they have found traces of Xinjiang cotton in shirts and T-shirts made by Adidas, Puma and Hugo Boss, appearing to contradict the German clothing companies’ promises to revise their supply chains after allegations of widespread forced labour in the Chinese region.
Recent reports have suggested more than half a million people from minority ethnic groups such as the Uyghurs have been coerced into picking cotton in Xinjiang, which provides more than 80% of China’s and a fifth of the global production of cotton.
Continue reading...German prosecutor says investigators are sure Christian Brückner killed three-year-old and have ‘new facts’
Fresh evidence has been found against the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a German prosecutor has revealed.
Hans Christian Wolters said in an interview on Portuguese television that investigators believed they had found “some facts, some new evidence, not forensic evidence.”
Continue reading...Pivot by Germany bolsters support for phased-in import ban as Charles Michel says goal is to ‘break Russian war machine’
The aim of EU sanctions is to “break the Russian war machine”, with measures on Kremlin oil now imminent, the president of the European Council has said, as Germany pivoted to back the move.
A proposal to phase in a prohibition on Russian oil imports will be discussed by member state ambassadors in Brussels on Wednesday, with the most dependent, such as Slovakia and Hungary, seeking exemptions.
Continue reading...Brussels commissioner says energy ministers accept bowing to Moscow’s demands would breach sanctions, as payment date looms
Europe is facing a crunch point in mid-May when EU member states will have to reject Moscow’s demands for fuel payments to be made in roubles – despite being without alternative gas supply, Brussels has warned.
Kadri Simson, the European commissioner for energy, said on Monday that the Kremlin’s demands had to be rebuffed despite the risks of an interruption to supply at a time that the shortfall cannot be made good.
Continue reading...Ease of finding accommodation and work lures 10 times the number who have made it to Britain
When it became clear to Liliia Fomina that the war raging outside her hometown of Zaporizhzhia would continue not just for days, but months or even years, she decided that she wanted to flee to the UK. A sponsor in Windsor was found, and on 18 March the 29-year-old applied for a British visa for herself and her five-year-old son Lev.
The pair sheltered with friends of friends in a village near Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine, and waited: one week, two weeks, three weeks. By the time her visa finally came through, after almost a month of uncertainty, the lawyer had changed her mind.
Continue reading...Energy suppliers in Germany and Austria confirm they are looking at sanctions-compliant methods
Energy companies in Europe are considering opening Russian accounts to pay for gas from Gazprom after Vladimir Putin’s regime cut off supplies to Poland and Bulgaria and insisted other countries must pay in roubles.
Big gas distributors in Germany and Austria confirmed they were seeking ways to continue to make payments after Putin signed a decree at the end of March calling for a “special procedure for foreign buyers’ fulfilment of obligations to Russian suppliers of natural gas”.
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