Arrests in Germany, Brazil and US relate to sale of drugs, stolen data and malicious software
German police have shut down one of the world’s largest illegal online markets in the so-called dark web and arrested the three men allegedly running it, prosecutors said on Friday.
The “Wall Street Market” (WSM) site enabled trade in cocaine, heroin, cannabis and amphetamines as well as stolen data, fake documents and malicious software.
Continue reading...Porsches and Lamborghinis spotted doing high speeds on unrestricted part of autobahn
German police have seized 120 sports cars that were taking part in a suspected road race across Europe.
Cars including Porsches, Lamborghinis and Audis were stopped on Thursday on the A20 east of Wismar, in north-east Germany, on a stretch of the autobahn without speed restrictions.
Continue reading...Worst violence occurs in Paris but trouble also flares in Berlin, Gothenburg and St Petersburg
Police and protesters have clashed, sometimes violently, in cities across Europe as tens of thousands of trade unionists, anti-capitalists and other demonstrators marched in traditional May Day rallies.
The worst confrontations were in Paris, where riot police fired teargas and stingball grenades as a 40,000-strong crowd, included gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protesters and an estimated 2,000 masked and hooded “black bloc” activists, marched from Montparnasse station to Place d’Italie.
Continue reading...One shop sells nothing but buttons, another sells only liquorice, and another is ‘the world’s first textile butcher shop’. In the age of Amazon, it seems the way to thrive is to specialise
On the first floor of a nondescript 1,000 sq metre industrial unit in Berlin’s Steglitz district, four workers are cautiously placing pregnant queen ants into test tubes in order to dispatch them across Europe. This is Antstore, the world’s first specialist ant shop, a business with around two dozen employees, a glass-cutting workshop, plastic and plaster modelling studios and a full-time social media manager.
It is just one of the surprisingly large number of shops in Berlin that sell only one thing, be it crawly insects, salty sweets, sticky tape or miniature string instruments. With online retail sales changing the face of high streets in cities around the world, many wonder if this hyper-specialisation could be more than an accidental side effect of the German capital’s tumultuous history, and also a blueprint for the high street of the future.
Continue reading...Veggie 2.0 hopes to cater for growing appetite for plant-based food in Germany’s capital
Berlin’s first vegan canteen for students has opened its doors, reflecting a growing interest in eating only plant-based food in Germany
Veggie 2.0 is an experimental initiative of the Studierendenwerk Berlin, the state-run organisation governing student affairs. Its backers say they are responding to a growing trend towards veganism.
Continue reading...Measure on sexual violence in conflict passes after Trump administration threatened to veto document over references to reproductive health
The UN has backed a resolution on combatting rape in conflict but excluded references in the text to sexual and reproductive health, after vehement opposition from the US.
The resolution passed by the security council on Tuesday after a three-hour debate and a weekend of fierce negotiations on the language among member states that threatened to derail the process.
Continue reading...German MEP begins campaign in Athens after Alexis Tsipras claims he is ‘anti-Greek’
Manfred Weber has launched his campaign to become president of the European commission in Athens, but faced excoriating criticism from the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, before he had even arrived in the Greek capital.
In a tweet intended to cause maximum embarrassment for the German leader of the conservative European People’s party group in the European parliament, Tsipras insinuated that Weber harboured racist and authoritarian tendencies. He said that at the height of Athens’ debt crisis, Weber had pushed for “Grexit” and thus proved himself to be “anti-Greek”.
Continue reading...UN says arrest and detention of Moncef Kartas violates diplomatic immunity
A UN-appointed expert on breaches of the Libyan arms embargo has been arrested and kept in a Tunisian jail for nearly a month.
Moncef Kartas, a Tunisian-German dual national, was arrested on 26 March. He is one of six UN experts appointed to investigate breaches of the UN-imposed embargo on arms to Libya first introduced in 2011. The UN says his detention is a violation of his diplomatic immunity.
Continue reading...Exclusive: in confidential internal report seen by the Guardian, bank says scandal has hurt global brand
Germany’s troubled Deutsche Bank faces fines, legal action and the possible prosecution of “senior management” because of its role in a $20bn Russian money-laundering scheme, a confidential internal report seen by the Guardian says.
The bank admits there is a high risk that regulators in the US and UK will take “significant disciplinary action” against it. Deutsche concedes that the scandal has hurt its “global brand” – and is likely to cause “client attrition”, loss of investor confidence and a decline in its market value.
Continue reading...For most people, reaching 100 would be reason enough to put one’s feet up and take things easy, but Lisel Heise has other ideas.
The German centenarian, a former sports teacher, has started a new chapter in her life by standing for election to the council in her home town of Kirchheimbolanden.
Continue reading...Follow all the latest as the prime minister awaits the EU’s decision on a delay to Brexit
This is from the Telegraph’s James Crisp.
Theresa May has left the summit building for dinner. She is expected to return later.
France and Germany are understood to be at loggerheads over both the length of the extension and the conditions that the EU should put on a delay to Brexit.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is arguing that a short extension to 30 June is unlikely to provide enough time for the impasse in Westminster to be broken, and Berlin is seeking an extension until 31 December.
Continue reading...Alleged target is Inferno Cottbus ’99 group, suspected of criminal activity and neo-Nazism
Police have carried out extensive raids in four German states on premises linked to suspected far-right extremists.
Thirty properties including flats, offices and commercial premises in the states of Brandenburg, Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony were searched in the operations which began at dawn and continued into Wednesday afternoon.
Continue reading...Vessel barred from entering Italy or Malta since picking up dozens of refugees on 3 April
Concerns are rising for the wellbeing of 64 people stranded on a migrant rescue vessel in the Mediterranean for a week because neither Italy nor Malta will allow the boat to dock.
The migrants and refugees were rescued from a dinghy off Libya on 3 April by a rescue boat operated by the German NGO Sea-Eye and named Alan Kurdi after the Syrian boy who drowned in 2015.
Continue reading...Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Theresa May’s talks with Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, and MPs debating how long the article 50 extension should be
These are from my colleague Angelique Chrisafis in Paris.
Before Macron meets May, Elysee official insists any long extension would need ‘very strict guarantees’ that UK as an exiting state wouldn’t fully take part in or disrupt key decisions on future of EU eg commission head, budget. Would mean regular checks that UK abiding by this
Elysee source on length of possible Brexit extension: ‘we think one year would be too long’
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EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier fails to convince bloc May has plan to break deadlock
Britain is likely to be offered a final long extension ending on 31 December after the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, failed to convince the bloc’s capitals that Theresa May has a plan to break the Brexit impasse.
A number of member states, most prominently France, along with Slovenia, Greece, Austria and Spain, remain sceptical about a lengthy extension, citing the risks to the EU of Britain behaving badly.
Continue reading...Britain’s membership could be extended to March 2020 after PM fails to sell her plan in dash to Paris and Berlin
Theresa May’s request for a short Brexit delay has been torn up, putting the EU on track to instead extend Britain’s membership until 2020.
Despite the prime minister’s desperate dash to Paris and Berlin to convince leaders of her plan to break the Brexit impasse, the European council president, Donald Tusk, signalled EU politicians’ lack of faith in her cross-party talks.
Continue reading...Jody Williams and Mary Wareham were leading lights in the campaign to ban landmines. Now they have autonomous weapons in their sights
It sounds like something from the outer reaches of science fiction: battlefield robots waging constant war, algorithms that determine who to kill, face-recognition fighting machines that can ID a target and take it out before you have time to say “Geneva conventions”.
This is no film script, however, but an ominous picture of future warfare that is moving ever closer. “Killer robots” is shorthand for a range of tech that has generals salivating and peace campaigners terrified at the ethical ramifications of warfare waged via digital proxies.
Continue reading...Art collective likened to ‘terrorist organisation’ by far-right politician Björn Hocke
When a group of performance artists erected a replica of Berlin’s Holocaust memorial next to the home of a far-right politician, they were hoping to draw attention to the revisionist views of a rising figure on Germany’s nationalist right.
But as the collective finds itself targeted by the first criminal investigation of its kind against a group of artists in modern German history, their stunt is instead putting the spotlight on the proximity between far-right politics and the public servants in formerly Communist east German states.
Continue reading...EU gives car manufacturers 10 weeks to respond to findings from antitrust investigation
The European commission has charged BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen with colluding to limit the introduction of clean emissions technology, in the preliminary findings of an antitrust investigation.
The car manufacturers have 10 weeks to respond and could face fines of billions of euros – up to 10% of their global annual turnover – if their explanations are rejected.
Continue reading...Charity Commission to assess whether money sent abroad was subject to due diligence as German MPs urge funding halt
Britain’s charity regulator has launched a formal investigation into the World Wide Fund for Nature, following allegations the conservation group is implicated in human rights abuses against people in Africa and Asia.
The inquiry by the Charity Commission will assess whether WWF’s UK arm followed “due diligence” in ensuring that money sent abroad did not contribute to abuse.
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