Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Only sawdust remains at site of Bavarian mystery statue that has gained celebrity status among alpine hikers
German police have opened an investigation into the disappearance of a large wooden sculpture of a phallus from a mountainside where it appeared without explanation several years ago.
The two-metre-tall (7ft) sculpture appeared to have been chopped down over the weekend, local newspaper Allgaeuer Zeitung reported on Monday, leaving behind only a pile of sawdust on the 1,738m-high (5,702ft) Grünten mountain, in southern Bavaria, 140km south-west of Munich.
British tourists, chalet owners and resort staff wait for winter season decisions across Europe
British holidaymakers, chalet owners and resort staff are in limbo as countries across Europe decide whether or not this winter’s ski season will go ahead.
This week, Britain’s biggest ski operator Crystal Ski Holidays was forced to cancel all its French ski trips in December after President Macron ordered the nation’s resorts to stay shut until the new year.
Governments are at odds over a Europe-wide plan to bar ski holidays over Christmas and new year, with Germany, Italy and France in favour but Austria and Switzerland reluctant to damage a sector worth billions to their economies.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, on Thursday joined Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in calling for a Europe-wide shutdown of winter sports until 10 January to avert a fresh coronavirus wave.
Foreign ministers hope US will lift sanctions in effort to revive 2015 agreement with Tehran
European foreign ministers from Germany, France and the UK have met to discuss a joint approach with the incoming Joe Biden administration on reviving the Iranian nuclear deal.
The three nations, whose ministers met in Berlin, are hoping Tehran can reach an agreement under which the US would lift its crippling sanctions in return for Iran ending its non-compliance with the 2015 agreement constraining its nuclear activities.
The film about the Stasi spying on East German lovers was seen as too dark, with one funder even wanting it remade as a comedy. But it went on to win an Oscar
In winter 1997, during my first year at film school in Munich, I was lying on the floor listening to music. I started thinking about how Lenin once told his best friend that he couldn’t listen to his favourite piano sonata as often as he would like, because it made him soft, and might stop him from wanting to hurt the people he needed to hurt. Suddenly, an image came to my mind: a man with headphones, in a bleak and depressing attic, secretly listening to his enemies, but thereby involuntarily hearing the kind of music he has been avoiding his entire life. I opened my laptop, started typing and within about an hour had written the outline of the movie.
AstraZeneca will have 200m doses of its candidate vaccine developed by the University of Oxford by the end of 2020, with 700m ready globally by the end of the first quarter of 2021, operations executive Pam Cheng has said.
Cheng told a briefing that there would be 20m doses in the UK by the end of the year, with 70m more for the UK by the end of March that year.
Pope Francis can relate to people in intensive care units who fear dying from coronavirus because of his own experience when part of his lung was removed 63 years ago, he has been quoted as saying.
The comments are included in excerpts of a new book “Let Us Dream: The Path to A Better Future”, which are carried in Italian newspapers on Monday ahead of publication of the full work next month.
I know from experience the feeling of those who are sick with coronavirus, struggling to breathe as they are attached to a ventilator.
They took about a litre and a half of water out of one lung and I was hanging between life and death.
[The experience] changed my bearings. For months, I didn’t know who I was, if I would live or die, even the doctors didn’t know. I remember hugging my mother one day and asking her if I was about to die.
Thanks to her regular contact with sick people, she knew what patients needed better than the doctor and had the courage to put that experience to work.
German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, on Sunday lashed out at anti-mask protesters comparing themselves to Nazi victims, accusing them of trivialising the Holocaust and “making a mockery” of the courage shown by resistance fighters.
The harsh words came after a young woman took to the stage at a protest against coronavirus restrictions in Hanover on Saturday saying she felt “just like Sophie Scholl”, the German student executed by the Nazis in 1943 for her role in the resistance.
On the anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg trials, 90-year-old Colette Marin-Catherine confronts her past by visiting the Nazi concentration camp in Germany where her brother was killed. As a young girl, she had been a member of the French resistance and had always refused to set foot in Germany. That changes when a young history student named Lucie enters her life. Prepared to reopen old wounds and revisit the terrors of that time, Marin-Catherine offers important lessons
Filmmaker Anthony Giacchino and producer Alice Doyard explain how a young history student persuaded Colette, 90, to visit the German concentration camp where her brother died
The new Guardian documentary, Colette, follows the remarkable story of a former member of the French resistance, as she travels to Germany for the first time to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp where her brother died 75 years ago. Persuaded to go on the journey by history student Lucie, 17, the pair support one another through an emotional journey into the past. “When I cross into Germany I’ll never be the same again,” says Colette, 90.
Suspect, who is serving time for drug conviction, sustains two broken ribs in incident
A suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the British toddler who vanished from a Portuguese resort 13 years ago, sustained two broken ribs in an incident in a German court, authorities have said.
The incident occurred after Christian Brückner, who is serving time for a drug conviction, was taken to Braunschweig state court on Monday for a routine hearing on that case.
More than 1,600 officers involved in raids in Berlin following museum robbery last November
Police have raided apartments across Berlin and detained three people suspected of involvement in a jewel heist at a museum housing one of Europe’s greatest collections of treasures.
Thieves forced their way into the Grünes Gewölbe or Green Vault Museum in Dresden in November last year and got away with at least three sets of early 18th-century jewellery, including diamonds and rubies.
Angela Merkel has said she does not have backing among state leaders for new restrictions to give Germany’s “soft” lockdown a harder bite, postponing any decision until a further meeting between the chancellor and 16 state premiers next week.
The chancellor had been in favour of people limiting social interactions in private to only one set second household, and forgo any kind of party until Christmas Eve, according to a draft proposal cited by several news outlets including Der Spiegel.
Strict measures – including curfews and states of emergencies – are in force once more across the continent as Covid cases surge
The country announced a second lockdown from 30 October after daily Covid-related deaths reached their highest levels since April. Due to last at least a month, it is having a limited effect: new infections and hospital admissions dropped sharply at first only to increase sharply at the end of last week. , health ministry data showed
Germany’s partial lockdown could be extended beyond the end of the month and hospitals in parts of Italy are near breaking point as Covid-19 cases continued to surge in both countries, despite positive signs elsewhere in Europe.
New daily coronavirus cases in Germany hit a record of 23,542 on Friday, the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases reported, prompting government spokesman Stefan Seibert to say measures “were not expected to be relaxed” by next week.
Reference to Islam removed from EU governments’ declaration after disagreements
The rise of violent extremism in Europe has been linked to the failure of migrants to integrate, in a hard-debated joint declaration by EU governments on the recent terror attacks.
The statement by EU home affairs ministers was described by Horst Seehofer, Germany’s interior minister, as a “great sign of solidarity” when delivered on Friday but it had been heavily watered down from a controversial initial draft.
German health authorities say they plan to speak to the studio where the latest Matrix film was shot after a party allegedly attended by the Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves was held to mark the end of filming, despite coronavirus restrictions.
About 200 people were at the party disguised as a film shoot, with the guests invited to come as extras in an apparent attempt to bypass health regulations, according to the German tabloid Bild.
The scientist behind the first Covid-19 vaccine to clear interim clinical trials says he is confident his product can “bash the virus over the head” and put an end to the pandemic that has held the world hostage in 2020.
The German company BioNTech and the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced via a press release on Monday that their jointly developed vaccine candidate had outperformed expectations in the crucial phase 3 trials, proving 90% effective in stopping people from falling ill.
It is not yet the end of the pandemic, but the announcement by Pfizer/BioNTech that their vaccine has been 90% successful in the vital large-scale trials has got even the soberest of scientists excited.
These are interim results and the trial will continue into December to collect more data. The two companies – a tiny German biotech with the big idea and the giant pharma company Pfizer with the means to develop it – have not yet published their detailed data, so it is all on trust. And yet, nobody is suggesting the results have been over-egged. It looks as though the vaccine not only works, but works better than anyone hoped.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stay silent while Iran waits to see how US will compensate for Trump sanctions
Most world leaders rushed to congratulate Joe Biden on his election, but Russia and China, two likely losers from the defeat of Donald Trump, remained silent, perhaps waiting for the outgoing president to concede defeat.
The president of the Maldives, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, is thought to be the first to have congratulated Biden, tweeting his welcome within 24 minutes of the US networks declaring Biden victorious. By contrast, Vladimir Putin, accused of collusion in Trump’s 2016 victory, and Xi Jinping kept their counsel.
The head of the World Health Organization has gone into self-quarantine after someone he had been in contact with tested positive for Covid-19.
With the virus again spreading rapidly across Europe and elsewhere, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is based in Geneva, made the announcement by Twitter late on Sunday night, but stressed he had no symptoms.