Jarosław Kaczyński’s remarks in far-right newspaper are latest episode in Poland’s lengthy standoff with EU
The head of Poland’s ruling party, Jarosław Kaczyński, has said Germany is trying to turn the EU into a federal “German fourth reich”.
Speaking to the far-right Polish newspaper GPC, the head of the Law and Justice party (PiS) said some countries “are not enthusiastic at the prospect of a German fourth reich being built on the basis of the EU”.
Continue reading...Gazprom’s $11bn project to deliver gas from Russia to Germany seems impossible to abandon and impossible to carry forward
The saga of Nord Stream 2, the gas pipeline between Russia and Germany running along the Baltic seabed, has been stuck so long it has been likened to a suitcase at an airport without a handle – impossible to abandon, and impossible to carry forward. Most of the original cast of characters – Jean-Claude Juncker, Angela Merkel, Matteo Renzi, David Cameron, Petro Poroshenko – have left the political stage. Only one politician has survived the entire story: Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, and the master of divide and rule.
First announced in 2015, the $11bn (£8.3bn) pipeline owned by Russia’s state-backed energy giant Gazprom has been built to carry gas from western Siberia, doubling the existing capacity of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and keeping 26m German homes warm at an affordable price.
Continue reading...Latest updates: German health minister says ‘offensive booster campaign’ needed to fight variant; French health minister says Omicron will be dominant in early January
Researchers in Melbourne, Australia, have turned one of the world’s most-used blood-thinning drugs into a nasal spray which they hope could prevent Covid-19 transmission.
Northern Health medical divisional director Don Campbell and researchers at Melbourne, Monash and Oxford Universities found that heparin can block the transmission of Covid-19 and prevent infection.
It won’t matter if a new variant comes along, this drug will block that protein from infecting the cells.
I’m very confident that we can demonstrate that it will work, and people will be using this before they go to the shops and before they go to school.”
Due to large-scale flooding near the Port of Vancouver … and the global supply chain crunch caused by the coronavirus pandemic, there are delays in the supply of potatoes.”
Continue reading...Restaurants have had a rush of visitors since lockdown was imposed in the Netherlands on Sunday
People hopping over the border to Belgium and Germany to avoid the Dutch lockdown are filling the neighbouring countries’ restaurants and shops despite calls for them to “stay away”.
Since Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, announced the closure of hospitality and non-essential shops from Sunday, border regions have experienced a rush of visitors.
Continue reading...Latest UK daily cases show a 72% jump on the 48,071 new infections recorded last Sunday; Irish officials say 52% of cases estimated to be new variant
The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has been talking about the potential for serious acts of political violence coming from the country’s anti-vaccine movement, in which organised far right activists are increasingly involved in some regions.
Thomas Haldenwang, the president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, said in an interview with journalists from the Funke media group: “It is true that there is a difference between talking about violence and committing it,”
Continue reading...Rock star wins case against German woman who says her late husband bought the disc at a popular department store in the 80s
Eric Clapton has won a legal case against a 55-year-old German woman selling a bootleg live CD for €9.95 (£8.45), Deutsche Welle reports.
The woman, known as Gabriele P, claimed she was unaware that she was committing copyright infringement by listing the CD titled Eric Clapton – Live USA, which contains recordings of performances from the 1980s, on eBay. She told the court that the listing was removed after one day.
Continue reading...Olaf Scholz faces calls from some EU leaders to threaten Moscow with termination of Nord Stream 2
Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, faced pressure from fellow leaders at his first EU summit to include the future of Nord Stream 2 as part of the “massive price” to be paid in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Arriving in Brussels, Scholz, who replaced Angela Merkel last week, said his government was committed to protecting Europe’s borders, as Nato warned that the number of Russian troops being mobilised by the Kremlin was continuing to grow.
Continue reading...Decision follows court ruling that Russia was behind 2019 murder of Chechen dissident in German capital
Germany has expelled two Russian diplomats and accused the Kremlin of infringing on its sovereignty after a German court ruled on Wednesday that the 2019 murder of a Chechen dissident in Berlin took place at the behest of the Russian authorities.
Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, 40, a Georgian citizen who fought against Russia during the second Chechen war in the early 2000s, was shot twice in the head at close range in the Kleiner Tiergarten, a park in central Berlin, in August 2019.
Continue reading...Germany says escalating tensions over Ukraine are one factor in Nord Stream 2 not getting green light
• Gazprom profits as Russia prospers from Europe’s gas crisis
Gas prices across the UK and Europe are on course to return to record highs after Germany said a controversial pipeline from Russia could not be approved amid deepening tensions on the Ukrainian border.
The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said the Nord Stream 2 pipeline could not be given the green light in its current form because it did not meet the requirements of EU energy law.
Continue reading...The new government headed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz has a plan – and it is already being put to the test
The Lufthansa stewardess on the flight from London to Munich handed me one very small, yellow-wrapped bar of chocolate: the usual ration. When she saw that I was working my way through a long German document she gave me one more, exclaimingm Sie sind so fleissig! (”You’re so hard-working!”) I explained that this was actually the 177-page coalition agreement between the three parties forming her new government. Excitedly, she showered me with a whole handful of the miniature chocolate bars, followed by yet another handful. Most of them I offered to my neighbour, who had young children, but I slipped a couple into my pocket. A few days later, I presented one to a key minister in the “traffic light” government of Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats that formally took office in Berlin on Wednesday. He accepted it with appropriate ceremonial gravity.
Some chocolate is called for. Given the difficulty of reaching common ground between three parties, the coalition agreement is remarkably coherent, substantial and ambitious. Parts of it are even well-written, with echoes of the inspirational rhetoric of the great chancellor of West German Ostpolitik, Willy Brandt. As befits a democracy now more widely respected than that of the US, it proposes a mixture of continuity and change. Yet the government headed by chancellor Olaf Scholz faces huge challenges from its very first day. As often before in German history, many of these lie in the east. They are Germany’s new Eastern Questions.
Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Annalena Baerbock has sympathy with US demands, but there is considerable Social Democrat support for Russia’s pipeline
Germany’s new foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has been caught a diplomatic vice days into the job, as US puts pressure on the coalition government in Berlin to vow to block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the event of Russia invading Ukraine.
The controversial pipeline project, which runs from Ust-Luga in Russia to Lubmin in north-east Germany, is also likely to be the first test of the new German government’s unity of approach.
Continue reading...While Merkel has said she has no particular plans, doing nothing doesn’t seem a realistic prospect for the outgoing chancellor
After 16 years of gruelling European summits, late-light coalition negotiations and back-to-back conference calls with heads of state, Angela Merkel has vowed to spend the foreseeable future kicking back her flat black shoes and reading a few good books.
But newly emerged details of a new office in central Berlin and veiled hints in interviews suggests the world may not have seen the last of Germany’s outgoing chancellor yet.
Continue reading...The asylum seekers on the Poland-Belarus border are not aggressors: they are desperate pawns in a disgusting political struggle
One thought is a constant in my head: “I have kids at home, I cannot go to jail, I cannot go to jail.” The politics are beyond my reach or that of the victims on the Poland-Belarus border. It involves outgoing German chancellor, Angela Merkel, getting through to Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus. It’s ironic that this border has more than 50 media crews gathered, yet Poland is the only place in the EU where journalists cannot freely report.
Meanwhile, the harsh north European winter is closing in and my fingers are freezing in the dark snowy nights.
Continue reading...Scholz to lead coalition government after agreement was signed by party leaders on Tuesday
Olaf Scholz is to be voted in as chancellor by the Bundestag on Wednesday, opening a new chapter in German and European politics as the Merkel era comes to an end.
Scholz, the outgoing deputy chancellor and finance minister, will lead a government composed of his Social Democrat party, the business-friendly Free Democrats and the Greens, a coalition of parties never tried before at the federal level in Germany.
Continue reading...Man, 67, convicted of assault for removing testicles of several people and causing one person to die
A German court convicted a 67-year-old electrician of aggravated, dangerous and simple assault for removing the testicles of several men at their request, causing one person to die, the dpa news agency has reported.
A Munich regional court sentenced the man to eight years and six months in prison. The defendant, whose name was not released for privacy reasons, had initially also been charged with murder by omission but prosecutors later dropped that charge.
Continue reading...High commissioner says Omicron is mild variant and travel ban not necessary; fully vaccinated traveller to Argentina had tested negative on departure and arrival
The Johnson & Johnson booster shot may work well for those who originally had a Pfizer vaccine, a recent study has found.
Researchers at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston studied 65 people who had received two shots of the Pfizer vaccine. Six months after the second dose, the researchers gave 24 of the volunteers a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine and gave 41 the Johnson & Johnson shot.
Continue reading...People give their views on compulsory jabs and restrictions on those have not been vaccinated
The German government has announced a lockdown for the unvaccinated and is considering making Covid vaccines mandatory, after weeks of record infections in the country and much of German-speaking Europe.
In Austria, thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest against a string of measures: from February, the government will be introducing compulsory vaccines for all, with exemption for those unable to receive a jab on medical grounds.
Continue reading...More than 100 cases of new variant have now been found in England; Strict social distancing will be required in Ireland’s bars and restaurants with mandatory table service and a maximum of six people per table
California is reporting its second confirmed case of the Omicron variant in as many days.
The Los Angeles County public health department says a full vaccinated county resident is self-isolating after apparently contracting the infection during a trip to South Africa last month.
Continue reading...Outgoing chancellor also announces lockdown measures for unvaccinated and says ‘act of national solidarity’ required
Vaccination could become mandatory in Germany from February, Angela Merkel has said, as she announced what her successor as chancellor, Olaf Scholz, described as “a lockdown of the unvaccinated”.
As more EU countries confirmed cases of the Omicron variant, which the bloc’s health agency said could make up more than half of all infections on the continent within months, Merkel described the situation as “very serious”.
Continue reading...With Final Account, the late director Luke Holland set out to obtain testimonies from those who participated in the Nazi atrocities – before their voices were lost. The result is a powerful mix of shame, denial and ghastly pride
One day in 2018, the prolific documentary producer John Battsek received a call from Diane Weyermann of Participant Media, asking him if he would travel to the East Sussex village of Ditchling to meet a 69-year-old director named Luke Holland. Weyermann said that Holland had spent several years interviewing hundreds of Germans who were in some way complicit in the Holocaust, from those whose homes neighboured the concentration camps to former members of the Waffen SS. The responses he captured ran the gamut from shame to denial to a ghastly kind of pride. Now he wanted to introduce these testimonies to a mainstream audience, and he needed help.
“Luke wasn’t consciously making a film,” Battsek says. “He was amassing an archive that he hoped would have a role to play for generations to come. We had to turn it into something that has a beginning, a middle and an end.” As soon as he saw Holland’s footage, he knew it was important: “It presented an audience with a new way into this.”
Continue reading...