Category Archives: Germany

Far-left activists claim responsibility for Tesla factory site fire in Germany

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Investigators examining letter from group claiming to be behind fire at Grünheide ‘Gigafactory’ site

German police are investigating whether a fire that broke out overnight at the construction site of Tesla’s first European Gigafactory had a political motive, after far-left activists claimed responsibility.

The fire at the site in Grünheide in the eastern state of Brandenburg early on Wednesday morning damaged several power cables, said a spokesperson for the LKA state criminal investigation office.

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France to impose Covid quarantine on visitors from UK

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France joins Germany in restricting travellers from Britain amid fears over spread of variant

France will impose a compulsory quarantine on travellers arriving from the UK amid mounting concern over the rapid spread of the coronavirus variant first found in India, the government’s spokesperson has said.

Gabriel Attal told reporters after a weekly ministerial meeting on Wednesday that the government would announce “in the coming hours” exactly when the decision, which was widely expected, would come into effect.

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German election poll tracker: who will be the next chancellor?

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Find out who is leading the polling to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor of Germany

Germans will vote on Sunday 26 September to elect a new Bundestag, or federal parliament. The result – after coalition negotiations likely to involve two or three parties – will decide who will succeed Angela Merkel, who is standing down after 16 years as chancellor.

Some recent polls have put Germany’s Green party in the lead, as Merkel’s successor at the conservative CDU, Armin Laschet, struggles to inherit her appeal. German federal elections are proportional, so the share of vote given by polling companies should be read as translating fairly directly into share of seats in the resulting parliament. Only parties with less than 5% of the national vote, or one directly elected constituency seat, are not awarded parliamentary seats.

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EU imposes new economic sanctions on Belarus over ‘hijacked’ flight

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EU’s 27 heads of state call for the immediate release of opposition blogger Roman Protasevich

EU leaders triggered new economic sanctions against Belarus and punitive measures against its national airline as a dissident taken from a “hijacked” Ryanair flight was paraded on the country’s television news apparently confessing to crimes against the state.

In a summit communique swiftly agreed in Brussels on Monday night, the EU’s 27 heads of state and government condemned the forced landing of flight FR4978 in Minsk and called for the immediate release of opposition blogger Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega.

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‘Parents risk children’s lives – the alternative is worse’: on board a migrant rescue ship

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More than 700 people have died in the Mediterranean this year. But Sea-Eye, a German charity, is fighting hard to save lives

Amani clutches her son, Mohammed, as she is pulled from an unstable wooden boat in the Mediterranean. “Please help. My baby is soaked in water and freezing,” says the 23-year-old Syrian refugee.

It’s shortly before 2am, last Monday and about 80 miles (130km) from the Libyan coast a group of maritime emergency responders from the Sea-Eye 4 are on patrol.

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Germany rules out financial reparations for Namibia genocide

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Berlin wary of setting legal precedent as talks near completion on reconciliation deal for atrocities against Herero and Nama tribes

Germany has categorically ruled out financial reparations forming part of a planned formal apology to Namibia for colonial atrocities at the start of the 20th century, amid fears such payments could set a legal precedent for further claims.

Angela Merkel’s government has since 2014 negotiated with Namibia to “heal the wounds” of what historians call the first genocide of the 20th century, when between 1904 and 1908 tens of thousands of indigenous people were shot, starved, and tortured to death by German troops as they put down the rebellious Herero and Nama tribes in what is now Namibia.

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Thousands of breast implant victims will get payouts after court ruling

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Case in Paris was brought by 2,700 women over implants made by French company and certified as safe by German firm

Thousands of victims of the PIP breast implant scandal, including 540 British women, will receive compensation after a Paris appeals court ruling.

The case in Paris was brought by 2,700 women who said they had suffered long-term health effects after receiving implants manufactured by a French firm which were filled with cheap, industrial-grade silicone not cleared for human use.

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First-hand stories shed new light on Nazi death marches

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Wiener Holocaust Library in London has gathered testimonies and photographs of forced evacuations at end of second world war

First-hand accounts from survivors of Nazi death marches, which formed a last ruthless chapter of the genocide, are to go on display with testimonies translated into English for the first time.

During the death marches, tens of thousands of people died on roadsides of exhaustion, shot for failing to keep up, or murdered in seemingly random massacres as the Nazis moved people from concentration camps before liberation by the allies, leaving a trail of blood across Europe.

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Suspected Russia-led cyber campaign targets Germany’s Green party leader

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Annalena Baerbock faces social media onslaught after voicing opposition to Nord Stream 2 project

Fears are growing in Berlin of a Russian-led cyber campaign against the leader of Germany’s Green party after she pledged to block a gas pipeline project between Russia and Europe.

Annalena Baerbock, who is running to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor in September’s election, has been targeted in recent days by an increasingly vicious campaign across social media.

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Helmut Jahn obituary

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Architect known for his flamboyant, postmodernist buildings in Chicago, Berlin and other cities around the world

Standing on a corner of downtown Chicago as a dazzling rocket ship of mirrored glass and salmon pink steel, the James R Thompson Center, more than any other building, encapsulates the flamboyant oeuvre of the German-American architect Helmut Jahn, who has died aged 81 in a cycling accident.

The glitzy government building, originally known as the State of Illinois Center, is a fitting monument to the larger than life architect, as exuberant as it is divisive.

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‘More than a job’: the meal delivery co-ops making the gig economy fairer

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Across Europe, worker-led delivery collectives are springing up to reclaim control from corporate platforms

Cristina González did a lot of waiting in 2018. Back then, the 29-year-old was a courier for the Spanish food delivery platform Glovo in her Basque home town, Vitoria-Gasteiz. She talks about feeling as if she was on standby the whole time: “You’re effectively having to be working constantly.”

While Glovo serves restaurants, customers can also order from supermarkets. This, Gonzalez says, was “a complete shitshow: supermarket orders are really easy to screw up”. If the supermarket did not have an item in stock and González completed the order, she might get a poor rating from the customer because of the missing item. If she turned down the order, González worried that it might affect her score on the platform. “It was very, very stressful.”

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German Greens vote to expel city mayor over online racial slur

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Boris Palmer posted comment online about former footballer Dennis Aogo

The leadership of Germany’s high-flying Green party is facing the first test of its authority ahead of national elections in September, after a prominent Green mayor posted a racial slur about a German national footballer on social media.

Regional leaders of the party voted at the weekend to expel Boris Palmer, the provocative mayor of Tübingen, over a Facebook post in which he referred to the former Germany international Dennis Aogo as an “awful racist”, in reference to an unsubstantiated anecdote on social media that the footballer, who has a Nigerian father and a German mother, had once bragged about the size of his penis, using the n-word.

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US-Germany rift as Berlin opposes plan to ditch Covid vaccine patents

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  • Germany says waiver would inhibit private sector research
  • Opposition to Biden plan threatens to deadlock WTO talks

The US and Germany are at odds on the issue of waivers for patents on Covid-19 vaccines, as Berlin argued that a waiver would not increase production and would inhibit future private sector research.

The disagreement is the first major rift between the two economic powers since Joe Biden took office, and threatens to deadlock discussions at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and sour relations within the G7 group of major industrialised democracies.

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German society ‘brutalised’ as far-right crimes hit record levels

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Police recorded almost 24,000 far-right crimes last year – the highest level since records began

Germany’s interior minister has said that a dramatic rise in rightwing extremist crime demonstrates a “brutalisation” of society and poses the biggest threat to the country’s stability.

Horst Seehofer said politically motivated crime in general was a growing problem, pledging more police surveillance of protest groups as a result.

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German police shut one of world’s biggest darknet child abuse images sites

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Boystown platform had membership of more than 400,000 international subscribers

An online platform said to be one of the largest websites for child sexual abuse images in the world has been closed down by German police after a lengthy investigation.

The Boystown platform, which had a membership of more than 400,000 international subscribers and was active for almost two years, was accessible only via the darknet, a component of the wider internet for which special software is needed. It was used for the swapping and sharing of images and films, mainly of boys, according to investigators from Germany’s federal investigative police force (BKA).

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Thousands mark May Day with rallies in France, Spain and Germany

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Police in Paris fire teargas as protesters in trade union-led march smash windows of bank branches

Thousands rallied on Saturday across France and Spain to hold May Day rallies in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic as police scuffled with protesters in Paris and fired teargas.

A police source told AFP that far-left “black bloc” protesters had repeatedly tried to block the trade union-led march in the French capital, with 34 people detained.

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How continental Europe is emerging from Covid lockdown

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Countries across Europe are starting to relax coronavirus restrictions as case numbers fall

Counting on an accelerating vaccination campaign to keep new infections in check, much of continental Europe has announced plans for a gradual exit from lockdown over the coming weeks as case numbers begin to fall. Here is where things stand:

Belgium (at least one vaccine dose administered to 25% of whole population) aims to permit outside dining in restaurants and bars again on 8 May, with a mandatory 10pm closing time and tables limited to groups of four. Non-essential shops and hairdressers reopened on Monday.

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Germany first to hand back Benin bronzes looted by British

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Culture minister says country is facing up to ‘historic and moral responsibility’ by returning artefacts to Nigeria

Germany is to become the first country to hand back the Benin bronzes looted by British soldiers in the late 19th century, after the culture minister, Monika Grütters, announced it would start returning a “substantial” part of the artefacts held in its museums to Nigeria from next year.

“We face up to our historic and moral responsibility to shine a light and work on Germany’s historic past,” Grütters said after museum experts and political leaders struck an agreement at a summit on Thursday.

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German actors face backlash over ‘cynical’ Covid lockdown videos

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Dozens of high-profile actors feature on website making fun of Germany’s coronavirus restrictions

For half a century, the police procedural Tatort (“Crime Scene”) has provided a rallying point for Germany’s culturally diverse regions, gathering viewers around their television sets every Sunday night to watch detectives from across the country solve gruesome murders over the course of 90 minutes.

But 13 months into living with a virus that can’t be put behind bars, Tatort has become the scene of a different kind of crime: a series of satirical videos making fun of coronavirus restrictions, recorded by TV actors associated with the crime drama, has plunged lockdown-fatigued Germany into a bitter culture war.

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‘Let children play’: the educational message from across Europe

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While approaches may differ, the importance of free time to play is increasingly being recognised

Every morning, Arja Salonen drops her five-year-old son, Onni, off at a daycare centre in Espoo, west of Helsinki, where he will spend the next eight hours doing what Finnish educators believe all children his age should do: playing.

School, and formal learning, does not start in Finland until age seven. Before then, children’s preoccupations are not reading, writing or arithmetic, but, said Salonen, herself a secondary-school teacher in the capital, “learning more important things”.

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