Several more injured in separate incidents despite Germany introducing ban this year on sale of fireworks for personal use
Exploding fireworks killed two men on New Year’s Eve, one in Germany and the other in Austria, according to local media.
A 37-year-old man died in Hennef, near Germany’s western city of Bonn. A 39-year-old was severely injured in the same incident and taken to hospital.
Continue reading...Covid expert hopeful for ‘relatively normal’ winter 2022 but prevalence limits celebrations across continent
Germany’s leading coronavirus expert has expressed optimism that his country could expect a “relatively normal” winter in 2022 as Europe prepared to ring in the new year in muted fashion, with many countries limiting celebrations.
As the highly transmissible Omicron variant fuels a record-breaking surge in Covid infections across the continent, many governments have curtailed mass public gatherings and either closed or imposed curfews on nightclubs.
Continue reading...Germany and UK are big exporters of plastic, much of which lies rotting in ports in Turkey, Vietnam and other countries
One hundred and 41 containers filled with rotting plastic waste have been on a journey for more than a year. Scattered between Turkey, Greece and Vietnam, far from their origins in Germany, the containers’ voyage sheds light on the hidden global trade in plastic waste.
Arriving in Turkey in late 2020, shortly before a ban on mixed plastic waste imports came into force, the containers quickly became the centre of a battle between traders, a shipping line, multiple governments and environmental campaigners demanding their return.
Continue reading...Firework sales prohibited in Germany for second year in a row owing to Covid, resulting in growing stockpile
Germans seeking to defy a government ban on the domestic selling of fireworks before new year celebrations are heading in their droves across the border to Polish shops and factories.
A ban was announced this month for a second year in a row in an attempt to prevent large gatherings during the pandemic and to ease the burden on hospitals, which regularly have to treat serious injuries such as burns and lacerated limbs resulting from pyrotechnic accidents.
Continue reading...France sets European record, as Italy tightens measures against the unvaccinated
France has registered a national and European record for new coronavirus infections as the Omicron variant fuels a surge in cases across the continent, with multiple countries hitting new highs.
France on Wednesday reported 208,000 cases in the previous 24 hours, up from its previous record of almost 180,000 set the day before.
Continue reading...Country’s highest court calls for legally binding guidelines if hospitals are forced to choose which patients need treatment
Germany’s highest court has ruled that disabled people must be protected by legally binding guidelines in case hospitals are forced to introduce a triage system as the country braces itself for a new, more infectious wave of coronavirus.
The constitutional court announced its decision on Tuesday, ordering legislators to create a legal framework that would prevent disabled people from being unfairly treated.
Continue reading...Indoor and outdoor gatherings restricted in size with leisure facilities closing in several states
Germans across large parts of the country face a tightening of rules governing both private and public spaces in an effort to slow down a wave of coronavirus infections triggered by the Omicron variant.
Gatherings both indoors and outdoors are to be restricted in size from Monday, with leisure facilities – from gyms to swimming pools and nightclubs to cinemas – shutting in several states and restaurants facing earlier closing times.
Continue reading...German city where early Covid vaccine was developed uses its new-found wealth to slash debt and attract other biotech firms
The Pfizer/BioNTech jab is having an unexpected side-effect on the German municipality where scientists first developed it: for the first time in three decades the city of Mainz expects to become debt-free thanks to the tax revenues generated by the company’s global success.
Mainz’s decision to use its financial windfall to also slash corporate tax rates in the hope of attracting industry, especially biotech companies, however, is drawing criticism from neighbouring cities and economists.
Continue reading...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...