Category Archives: Germany

Munich airport reopens after halting flights because of drone sightings

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Travel was disrupted for thousands on eve of national holiday in latest drone incident to hit European aviation

Munich airport has reopened after drone sightings over the facility on Thursday evening forced air traffic control to suspend operations, leading to the cancellation of 17 flights and disrupting travel for nearly 3,000 passengers in the German city on the eve of a national holiday.

Another 15 arriving flights were diverted to Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Vienna and Frankfurt, the airport said in a statement, marking the latest drone disruption to European aviation after sightings temporarily shut airports in Denmark and Norway last week.

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Russia persistently targeting British satellites, UK Space Command chief says

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Maj Gen Paul Tedman says Moscow trying to disrupt UK’s military activities on ‘weekly’ basis and closely monitoring space assets

Russia is attempting to jam UK military satellites on a regular basis, according to the head of the UK Space Command.

Speaking to the BBC, Maj Gen Paul Tedman said Russian forces were actively trying to disrupt UK-based military activities “weekly” and were closely monitoring the country’s space assets.

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Munich Oktoberfest reopens after man’s deadly arson attack and bomb threat

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Beer festival had closed after 57-year-old man shot parents, set house on fire, and left note mentioning event

A German man went on a deadly gun, explosives and arson rampage against his family and then killed himself on Wednesday, prompting security fears in Munich that closed the world-famous Oktoberfest for seven hours.

Authorities decided to close the event temporarily after finding a note the man had dropped in a nearby letterbox that included a vague threat to the Bavarian city’s beer festival.

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AfD politician’s former aide convicted of spying for China

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Jian Guo jailed for five years after acting as agent for Chinese intelligence while working for Maximilian Krah

A former aide to a member of parliament for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party has been sentenced to almost five years in prison for spying on behalf of China.

Jian Guo was convicted on Tuesday of acting as an agent for the Chinese intelligence service while working for Maximilian Krah, a former member of the European parliament who now sits for the AfD in Germany’s Bundestag.

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Germany seeks to extradite Ukrainian over 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline attack

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Man held in Poland on suspicion of causing explosions that damaged undersea pipelines between Russia and Germany

Germany is seeking to extradite a Ukrainian man arrested in Poland on suspicion of diving down to the Baltic sea bed to plant explosives in the 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline attack.

The man, identified in Polish media reports as Volodymyr Z and by Germany as Vladimir Z, is described as a trained diver and is sought by investigators in Germany, who believe he was part of a group that sabotaged the pipeline, consisting of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.

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Eleven arrested for placing pigs’ heads near French mosques and other hate crimes

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Serbian nationals also accused by Serbian police of defacing Jewish sites, as French officials investigate foreign interference

Serbian police have arrested 11 people, accusing them of “inciting hatred” in France and Germany, and linking them to acts that include placing pigs’ heads near mosques and defacing Jewish sites.

The arrests came days after French prosecutors said foreign interference was probably to blame for a spate of provocative acts that had targeted Jewish and Muslim sites in France in recent years, as tensions run high over the war in Gaza. French officials have previously said they were investigating Russia’s role in destabilising operations that have stoked social tensions and sown division in France.

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It’s goodnight Vienna as Paris sleeper train to Austria and Berlin hit by cuts

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Some Nightjet services suspended from mid-December after French withdrawal amid public budget crisis

Night train services linking Paris, Berlin and Vienna are to end from mid-December because of the French government’s withdrawal of funding, the Austrian national rail operator has said, in a blow to sleeper travel on important European routes.

ÖBB, the largest provider of such trains in Europe, has led a drive to revive a once popular form of low-emission transport as an alternative to flying.

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‘Raring to go:’ the German remote-driving firm that hopes to make private car ownership redundant

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Europe has been slow to embrace robotaxis but Germany will allow remote-controlled rental cars from December

Having been summoned by a few clicks in an app, the electric car slows to a halt outside the former cargo hall of Berlin’s now defunct Tegel airport. No one is at the wheel, but upon a passenger stepping inside, a voice announces: “This is Bartek, I am your driver today. Please buckle up and we can be on our way.”

The car emits a friendly jingle, then makes its way to the former runway, where it performs a fault-free manoeuvre around a route marked by traffic cones.

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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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