Category Archives: Germany

Helping refugees starving in Poland’s icy border forests is illegal – but it’s not the real crime | Anna Alboth

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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.

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Olaf Scholz to be voted in as German chancellor as Merkel era ends

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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.

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Electrician jailed after castrating men at their request in Germany

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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.

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Covid news live: Nigeria likens Omicron border closures to ‘travel apartheid’; Russia and Argentina report first cases

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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.

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‘I don’t like mandates’: Germans and Austrians on new Covid measures

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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.

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Covid news: 75 more cases of Omicron variant found in England; Ireland announces new restrictions – as it happened

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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.

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Germany could make Covid vaccination mandatory, says Merkel

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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”.

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‘It became crystal clear they were lying’: the man who made Germans admit complicity in the Holocaust

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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.”

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‘Long reigns often leave long shadows’: Europeans on Angela Merkel

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People across Europe share their views on German chancellor and role she has played in the EU

After 16 years in office, Angela Merkel is stepping down on Thursday as chancellor of Germany. The former UK prime minister Tony Blair said she had “often defined modern Germany” and Romano Prodi, Italian prime minister between 2006 and 2008, said a new European strategy and the next-generation EU would be part of the “great legacy” she leaves.

People across Europe share their views on her leadership in Germany and the role she has played in the European Union.

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The world is watching: TV hits around the globe

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A Spanish trans woman’s memoirs, a Mumbai gangster drama, Israeli sisters in trouble… the Covid era is a rich moment for TV drama. Critics from Spain to South Korea tell us about the biggest shows in their countries

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A new German era dawns, but collisions lie in wait for coalition

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The ‘traffic light’ parties all want progress but have different ideas about what that means on business and green issues

In Unterleuten, a bestselling novel by the German novelist Juli Zeh, the inhabitants of a village outside Berlin are shocked to find out that a plot of land on their doorstep has been earmarked for a gigantic wind farm.

One of the characters, a birdwatcher called Gerhard Fliess, knows what to do: he calls an old friend at the local environment ministry to remind him that the countryside around Unterleuten is the habitat of an endangered species of sandpiper. Surely that will halt the bulldozers.

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Germany ‘at crossroads’ as Covid cases surge across Europe

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Urgent measures needed to avoid ‘chaos’, warns expert, as Spain, Portugal and Netherlands tighten rules

Germany’s top health officials have raised the prospect of a national lockdown, warning that a rapidly rising number of coronavirus cases and a dramatic increase in the number of patients in intensive care meant contact reduction was the only way of tackling the crisis and avoiding “the road to chaos”.

“We need a massive contact reduction immediately,” said Prof Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s federal disease control agency.

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Covid live: France announces boosters for all adults and stricter mask rules; EU approves Pfizer jab for children aged five to 11

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French health minister holds press conference to announce new measures; EU regulator approves vaccine for younger children

Alberto Nardelli (formerly of this parish) and John Follain have a story leading the Bloomberg site at the moment, claiming that the EU is to propose a nine-month limit on Covid vaccine validity for travel. They write:

The European Union will recommend a nine-month time limit for the validity of Covid-19 vaccinations for travel into the bloc and also propose prioritising vaccinated travellers.

The European Commission will propose that member states should continue welcoming all travelers inoculated with shots approved by the bloc, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. It also calls for countries to reopen as of 10 January to all those who have used vaccines approved by the World Health Organization.

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From environment to economy: what to expect from new German government

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Analysis: coalition wants Germany to remain Europe’s ‘anchor of stability’ but there will be some changes

Led by a party that has acted as Angela Merkel’s junior coalition partner for 12 of the last 16 years, and two parties with an energy to do things differently, Germany’s next government represents an odd mix of status quo thinking and reformist instincts.

The coalition agreement presented by the Social Democratic party (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democratic party (FDP) on Wednesday gives a hint of how German could change – and how it could stay the same.

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German parties agree coalition deal to make Olaf Scholz chancellor

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Social Democrat, Green and liberal parties agree to form government after two months of talks

Germany’s new three-way coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens and liberals has addressed the public for the first time, pledging to put climate protection at the top of its agenda but stressing its first priority was to control the coronavirus pandemic.

Replacing Angela Merkel as chancellor after 16 years, Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats used his opening speech to deliver a dramatic appeal to Germans to get vaccinated, announcing a seven-point plan to tackle the health emergency, which he called “very serious”, stressing that hospitals were close to capacity, and that his government would be considering the introduction of a vaccine mandate.

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Covid live news: cases increase in 75% of UK local authorities; France reports sharp rise in cases

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Latest updates: Torridge in Devon had the highest rate in UK followed by Mid Ulster in Northern Ireland; France reports over 30,000 cases

Here’s the latest from Reuters on the situation in Germany, where the acting health minister called on Tuesday for further restrictions to contain a “dramatic” surge in coronavirus cases as the country’s infection rate hit a record high and the United States advised against travel there.

The seven-day incidence rate - the number of people per 100,000 to be infected over the last week - hit 399.8 on Tuesday, up from 386.5 on Monday, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.

Access to healthcare is expensive and, in an emergency, villagers are forced to walk for hours to the nearest health facility. For women, the lack of facilities, combined with patriarchal attitudes, means they have had no control over their reproductive health. But Communities Health Africa Trust (Chat) organises mobile healthcare outreach to poorly served communities such as Lekiji. Chat identifies vulnerable communities with limited access to health facilities and significant family planning needs, and brings health provision and education to their door.

Lack of roads is no barrier to their work. If they cannot reach the communities by car, they switch to an older form of transport: camel. In the past three years Chat has reached more than 100,000 people with behaviour-changing messages that focus on family planning but include TB, HIV and Covid prevention services across 14 counties in Kenya.

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Pandemic hits mental health of women and young people hardest, survey finds

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Survey also finds adults aged 18-24 and women more concerned about personal finances than other groups

Young people and women have taken the hardest psychological and financial hit from the pandemic, a YouGov survey has found – but few people anywhere are considering changing their lives as a result of it.

The annual YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project found that in many of the 27 countries surveyed, young people were consistently more likely than their elders to feel the Covid crisis had made their financial and mental health concerns worse.

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Germany and Netherlands face fresh Covid rules as Austria enters lockdown

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Reintroduction of restrictions has led to violent protests in European cities

Germany and the Netherlands have been told they should face still tougher Covid restrictions as the German health minister, Jens Spahn, made the startling prediction that most of his compatriots would be “vaccinated, cured or dead” by the end of winter.

With Europe again the centre of the pandemic, ushering in tighter controls mainly on the unvaccinated across the continent, on Monday Austria became the first west European country to re-enter lockdown since vaccination began earlier this year.

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