Humboldt-Forum – A restoration of a former royal palace, the Humboldt Forum museum and event building on Berlin’s Museum Island is the city’s newest and most hotly debated tourist landmark. – Jens Kalaene/dpa It’s been a disputed and changing site in Berlin for almost three decades. Today a buzzing tourist centre, Berlin’s island of museums […]
Floods in Germany – Half of the federal road 20 is being swept away after the flooding of the Ramsauer Ache river, shortly before the village of Berchtesgaden. – Peter Kneffel/dpa The devastating floods that struck parts of western Germany did around 2 billion euros (2.3 billion dollars) worth of damage to the region’s road […]
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Flash floods hit southern Germany on Sunday, killing at least one person and adding to the devastation after flooding in the country this week that killed more than 150 people. The Berchtesgadener Land district in Bavaria, which borders Austria, became the latest region to be hit by record rainfall and ensuing floods. […]
President Bashar al-Assad was sworn in Saturday for seven more years after a controversial May election dismissed by Europe and the US as “neither free nor fair”. His new term extends the Assad family’s rule to almost six decades; Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad led Syria for some 30 years. President Bashar al-Assad took the oath […]
Climate scientists on Friday were stunned by the intensity of flooding in Germany and Belgium that killed at least 120 people and damaged tens of thousands of homes, with experts saying they did not expect such extreme weather to result from the human-caused climate crisis as rapidly as it has. More than a dozen records […]
By Wolfgang Rattay and David Sahl SCHULD, Germany (Reuters) – At least 42 people have died in Germany and dozens were missing on Thursday as swollen rivers caused by record rainfall across western Europe swept through towns and villages, leaving cars upended, houses destroyed and people stranded on rooftops. As the water started to recede, […]
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Companies may ban Muslim employees from wearing a headscarf under certain conditions, the European Union’s top court said on Thursday, in two cases brought by Muslim women in Germany who were suspended from their jobs after they started wearing the Islamic garment. “A prohibition on wearing any visible form of expression of […]
Floods in Rhineland-Palatinate – A general view of a flooded street as bad weather conditions floods the city. – Harald Tittel/dpa Six houses collapsed in western Germany due to flooding and ongoing rain overnight, leaving about 30 people missing Thursday morning, police said. The catastrophe was unfolding in the rural Eifel region of Rhineland-Palatinate state, […]
By Andrea Shalal and Jeff Mason WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The clock is ticking as President Joe Biden welcomes German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House on Thursday with both hoping to rebuild ties badly frayed under former President Donald Trump. The United States and Germany are key NATO allies but are at odds over […]
Ahead of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to the U.S. later this week, public health campaigners on Tuesday floated a large banner in front of the White House calling on the European leader to “stop blocking global Covid vaccines,” a reference to her continued opposition to suspending Big Pharma-friendly patent protections. “The Merkel-Biden summit will […]
Auschwitz survivor Esther Bejarano dies at the age of 96 – Holocaust survivor Esther Bejarano takes part in a reading campaign against the right. Esther Bejarano, a Jewish woman who survived Auschwitz concentration camp by playing in the girls’ orchestra, has died at the age of 96 in Hamburg, her adopted home. – Axel Heimken/dpa […]
Esther Bejarano, one of the last survivors of the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz, has died at the age of 96, the head of the Anne Frank Education Centre said on Twitter on Saturday. Bejarano, who played the accordion in the Auschwitz orchestra, died in the night from Friday to Saturday, Meron Mendel, head of the […]
Knife attack in Wuerzburg city centre in Germany – A young man lights a candle in front of a closed and cordoned off shop in the city centre, where three people have been killed and five injured in a knife attack in downtown Wuerzburg on Friday. The alleged attacker was caught and detained, police said. […]
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said the United States had “no better friend” than Germany as the two nations pledged a common front on Russia and China following a still raw row over the Nord Stream pipeline. Meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel on his first visit to Berlin since taking office, Blinken hailed the […]
Pope Francis on Thursday rejected an offer by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, a top German bishop, to resign over the mishandling of sexual abuse and cover-up scandals. “Continue as you propose (in your pastoral work) but as Archbishop of Munich and Freising,” the pope wrote to Marx, referring to the position he was offering to vacate. […]
Franco-German Council of Ministers from Berlin – German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a press conference via video with French President Emmanuel Macron after a plenary session of the Franco-German Council of Ministers, held via video conference. – Michael Sohn/POOL AP/dpa Berlin and Paris on Monday called for an explanation from Copenhagen after a report that […]
Pro-Palestine demonstration in Berlin – Protesters wave Palestinian flags during a pro-Palestine demonstration, amid the escalating flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence. – Manar Shahin/APA Images via ZUMA Wire/dpa After several German cities saw anti-Israel rallies in the wake of resurging conflict between Israel and Gaza in recent days, the government has strongly condemned anti-Semitic protests and […]
Blessing of homosexual couples in Munich – Rainbow flags are raised in St. Benedict’s Church during a Catholic service to bless homosexual couples at the church of St. Benedikt. Churches across Germany are planning services to bless homosexual couples this week, in defiance of a Vatican decree clarifying that such blessings are banned in the […]
German police said Monday they had shut down “one of the biggest darknet child pornography platforms in the world” and arrested four of its members in a series of raids in mid-April. The platform, named as “Boystown”, had existed since 2019, counted over 400,000 members and was “set up for the worldwide exchange of child […]
Mysterious wooden penis sculpture goes up again in Germany – A general view of a wooden phallus sculpture that suddenly appeared in the middle of a roundabout in the town of Heimenkirch. – Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa A wooden phallus sculpture erected in the middle of a traffic roundabout in the southern German state of Bavaria last […]
Russian prosecutors on Monday suspended the activities of Alexei Navalny’s regional offices, in a move his team said would essentially shut down the jailed opposition figure’s movement. The move comes after Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic, ended a hunger strike last week that he had launched to demand proper medical treatment in prison. […]
Germany’s far-right AfD to name chancellor candidates in May – The logo of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is projected onto a curtain at the federal party conference. The prospective chancellor candidates for Germany’s far-right AfD will be decided next month, dpa learned from party sources on Saturday. – Sina Schuldt/dpa The prospective chancellor […]
More than 1,700 people were detained by police at rallies in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in dozens of cities across Russia, an independent monitor reported on Thursday. Thousands of people took to the streets Wednesday evening to demanded freedom and proper medical attention for Navalny, who has been hunger strike for three […]
Protest against coronavirus rules remains banned in Dresden – Police officers block off the Bruehl Terraces during a major operation against Coronavirus demonstrations. A German court has confirmed the ban of a rally by the Querdenken (Lateral Thinking) movement in the eastern city of Dresden, planned for Saturday – Sebastian Willnow/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa German courts have confirmed […]
Britain’s Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, has died at the age of 99 after seven decades at the heart of public life as consort to Queen Elizabeth II. A charismatic figure famed for his deep sense of public duty, Prince Philip was the longest-serving consort of any British monarch after his marriage to Her […]
Hamburg’s Reeperbahn – The legendary Herbertstrasse in Hamburg’s red-light district on the Reeperbahn in St. Pauli – once bright and busling, now empty and dark. – Christian Charisius/dpa The bar owners of Hamburg’s Reeperbahn district have had enough. “That’s an employment ban for us,” Odin says. His bar, the 99 Cent Bar, has been shut […]
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny announced Wednesday that he has gone on hunger strike until he receives proper medical treatment for severe back pain and numbness in his legs. Last week the 44-year-old opposition politician, who is serving a 2.5-year prison sentence in one of Russia’s most notorious penal colonies, said he was suffering from […]
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny asked for help from a public commission to get access to painkiller injections for severe pain in his leg, the head of the commission said in a statement, published on Saturday night. Navalny was jailed last month for two and a half years on charges he called […]
The Louvre museum in Paris said Friday it has put nearly half a million items from its collection online for the public to visit free of charge. As part of a major revamp of its online presence, the world’s most-visited museum has created a new database of 482,000 items at collections.louvre.fr with more than three-quarters […]
A United States health agency raised concerns Tuesday that AstraZeneca may have included out-of-date information during trials of its Covid-19 vaccine, the day after the company said its drug was highly effective in preventing the disease. The news comes as Europe continues to wrangle over supplies of the jab, and after weeks of uncertainty centred […]