Christian Brückner may be linked to disappearance of a five-year-old girl in Germany and six-year-old boy in Portugal
German prosecutors are investigating whether the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was involved in a similar case of a five-year-old girl who went missing in Germany in 2015.
Reports on Friday night also said authorities were looking into connections with the disappearance of a six-year-old German boy in Portugal in 1996.
Continue reading...Police in UK, Portugal and German launch joint appeal for information about Christian Brückner
Detectives in three countries have appealed for evidence in relation to the strongest suspect they have had in 13 years to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, as German authorities said they believe she is dead.
Circumstantial evidence has convinced detectives that a 43-year-old German child sexual offender and rapist, identified by Portuguese sources on Thursday as Christian Brückner, is their prime suspect as it emerged he has been known to police for years.
Continue reading...With its €130bn stimulus package, Germany is showing others how to do the recovery
And in one bound she was transformed. For Angela Merkel, the days of being lampooned as the archetypal Swabian housewife keeping tight control over the purse strings are over. Now, courtesy of a €130bn (£116bn) stimulus package, she is the spend, spend, spend chancellor.
Make no mistake, much of the past criticism of Germany’s frugal approach to government spending and budget deficits was justified. Saving some money for a rainy day is one thing but running surpluses worth 8% of national output was unnecessary and harmful to the global economy.
Continue reading...Michael Clauss says talks will be a focus from September and UK needs more realistic approach
Britain must give away some sovereignty to secure free trade with the EU but Europe’s leaders will intervene in the negotiations in the autumn with the aim of sealing a compromise deal at a summit on 15 October, Germany’s ambassador in Brussels has said.
Michael Clauss, whose country will take over the rolling presidency of the EU for the second half of the year, said there had been “no real progress” in the talks so far but predicted they would become the EU’s main political focus in September and October.
Continue reading...Spokesman says it is first time in 13 years he can recall police fixing sights on one individual
The parents of Madeleine McCann believe the identification of a convicted German sex offender as the key suspect in their daughter’s disappearance is “potentially very significant”, their spokesman has said.
An international appeal for information is under way after police in Britain and Germany revealed that a serving prisoner is the new prime suspect in the disappearance of the three-year-old on 3 May 2007.
Continue reading...Since Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016, 31,600 Britons have acquired German citizenship
The number of Britons applying for a German citizenship last year was up by approximately 2,300% compared to the year before the Brexit referendum, driving up the number of naturalisations in the country to a 16-year high.
According to data released by the Federal Statistical office on Wednesday, the total number of citizenship applications granted in 2019 increased by 15% year on year to 128,900, with 14,600 granted applications from British citizens accounting for almost half the increase.
Continue reading...Podemos leader enlists Portugal and Italy to lobby for policy as depression looms for coronavirus-ravaged southern Europe
It’s been proposed, probed and pushed to the margins of the European Union for more than two decades. Now, as Europe reels from tens of thousands of coronavirus deaths and millions of lost jobs in the worst recession for generations, ministers from Spain, Italy and Portugal say the time has come to revive a radical idea: a pan-EU minimum income.
“This is the moment for debates about social protection,” Pablo Iglesias, Spain’s deputy prime minister for social rights and leader of Podemos, told the Guardian. “Anyone who finds themselves in a vulnerable situation should have access to protection mechanisms that allow them to fill their fridge and care for their family.”
Continue reading...Elsewhere, Italy’s president warns Covid-19 ‘is not over’, and former UK PMs join calls for a coordinated global response
Germany lifted its blanket European travel ban as coronavirus lockdowns across the EU continued to ease, with officials saying new cases in western Europe were now in steady decline.
Parisians reclaimed their cafe terraces and Berliners took back their bars as normal life inched closer to returning in many parts of the continent.
Continue reading...From Spain to Denmark, even those who have coped with coronavirus are aware the world has changed dramatically
Her customers may be back and there are, miraculously, more of them. Spring is here; the sun is out. No one wants to dwell on what happened; everyone wants to pick up their lives again, same as before.
“But still,” says Sophie Fornairon, “things have changed.”
Continue reading...From Berlin to Madrid the movies are back, albeit with hygiene and distancing restrictions
As Madrid’s spring evenings warm into summer nights, cinema-goers are parking up to watch Grease. In Munich, they are taking al fresco seats to follow the adventures of a communist kangaroo with a penchant for boozy chocolates, and in Prague they are witnessing a croaky vigilante work out some profound childhood traumas.
As Europe begins to stir from its Covid-19 lockdown, people bloated by two-month boxset binges have a new way to feed their entertainment needs as they emerge, blinking, into the daylight. Or, rather, the twilight.
Continue reading...Campaign groups warn women across Europe risk being pushed back into traditional roles
Life during the coronavirus lockdown has reinforced gender inequality across Europe with research emphasising that the economic and social consequences of the crisis are far greater for women and threaten to push them back into traditional roles in the home which they will struggle to shake off once it is over.
Throughout the continent, campaign groups are warning that the burdens of the home office and home schooling together with additional household duties and extra cooking, has been unequally carried by women and that improvements made in their lives by the growth in equality over the past decades are in danger of being rolled back by the health crisis.
Continue reading...France defends tracking app amid privacy concerns and Hungary aims to lift state of emergency
Denmark has made it easier for cross-border couples separated from their partners by lockdown to meet again, while Germany is expected to allow travel to 31 European countries from mid-June, as EU countries continued to lift coronavirus restrictions.
People living in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany can now visit partners in Denmark by signing a simple declaration rather than having to provide photos, phone records and other proof of a relationship, the Danish justice minister, Nick Hækkerup, said.
Continue reading...Carmaker must pay compensation to motorist who bought minivan fitted with emissions-cheating software
Volkswagen has lost a landmark legal battle in Germany’s highest civil court over compensation for the buyer of a secondhand minivan fitted with emissions-cheating software.
The world’s largest carmaker must take back the plantiff’s manipulated car and pay him €28,257.74 (£25,325), in a case that will lead to the company paying compensation to 60,000 German VW owners.
Continue reading...Ban on use of subcontractors and fines of €30,000 for slaughterhouses breaching new labour regulations a ‘historic moment’, say campaigners
The German government has announced a series of reforms of the meat industry, including a ban on the use of subcontractors and fines of €30,000 (£26,000) for companies breaching labour regulations, as slaughterhouses have emerged as coronavirus hotspots.
A number of meat plants across the country have temporarily closed after hundreds of workers tested positive for Covid-19 in recent weeks.
Continue reading...Pledge of ‘world-beating’ system will have to look to likes of South Korea and Germany
Boris Johnson’s insistence that the UK will be able to roll out a “world-beating” coronavirus test, track and trace regime by 1 June has inevitably drawn comparisons with countries around the world that have already set up effective Covid-19 tracing programmes.
It has also raised questions about timing, as some experts insist a system would have been more useful at the beginning of the pandemic.
Continue reading...Car maker says it is ‘horrified’ by the ad that featured a large white hand ‘flicking’ a black man
Volkswagen has withdrawn a Golf car advertisement posted on its official Instagram page that the company admitted was racist and insulting, saying it would investigate how it came about.
The car company, which has already seen its reputation tarnished in the past five years after it admitted cheating diesel emissions tests, said it did not tolerate any form of racism.
Continue reading...Row over Andreas Kalbitz splits leadership and sets eastern against western members
With support for Angela Merkel’s governing coalition surging during the coronavirus pandemic, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, the largest opposition party in the Bundestag, has opted for a vicious bout of public infighting that could split the party in two.
The national board of the anti-immigration AfD narrowly voted last Friday to strip party membership from Andreas Kalbitz, a key networker on the rabidly nationalist fringes of the party’s eastern German branches.
Continue reading...As Germany’s Bundesliga becomes the world’s first major football league to resume during the coronavirus pandemic, Mika Volkmann’s drone photographs suggest the amateur game in Cologne still has some way to go
Continue reading...Thousands of works will disappear from galleries as rent rises and a stand-off with city government take their toll
Home to some 400 galleries and an estimated 8,000 artists, Berlin has long aspired to be what its politicians call the cultural capital of Europe.
Yet in the coming year, thousands of works by artists including Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Nauman and Gerhard Richter are set to vanish from its galleries, as the city debates what lengths it should go to to protect art collectors from the sharp edge of a property boom.
Continue reading...As countries around the world adjust to life with Covid-19, people are finding new ways to enjoy themselves responsibly. From the restaurant using plush pandas to help with social distancing, to a drive-in rave in Germany, these are the week’s most cheering clips
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