Return to home2017 Jan 5,
Namibian plaintiffs, including some from New York, sued Germany over
a genocide carried out by German colonial troops in the early 1900s,
in which more than 100,000 people were killed. They sued under the
Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 US law often invoked in human rights
cases.
(AP, 1/6/17)
2017 Jan 8, The US military
vowed to increase the scope and complexity of its European training
exercises to deter Russian aggression, as more US tanks, trucks and
other equipment arrived in Germany for a big buildup on NATO's
eastern flank.
(Reuters, 1/8/17)
2017 Jan 10, Former German
President Roman Herzog (82) died. He served as chief justice of
Germany's highest court before winning the presidency in 1994.
(AP, 1/24/17)
2017 Jan 11, In Germany the
spectacular new Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, begun in
2007, hosted its first concert, several years behind schedule and
far over the original budget. The cost to taxpayers climbed from an
initially planned 77 million euros to 789 million euros ($835
million).
(AP, 1/11/17)
2017 Jan 11, Volkswagen
agreed to pay a criminal fine of $4.3 billion for selling around
500,000 cars in America fitted with so-called “defeat devices”
designed to reduce NOx emissions under test conditions.
(Econ, 1/21/17, p.52)
2017 Jan 19, German lawmakers
legalized cannabis use for medical purposes for people with serious
diseases such as certain cancers and multiple sclerosis.
(AFP, 1/19/17)
2017 Jan 20, Germany said its
diplomats have helped broker a ceasefire between the Syrian
government and rebel forces in a mountainous valley near Damascus, a
deal designed to restore water supplies to the capital.
(Reuters, 1/20/17)
2017 Jan 22, In Germany the
agriculture ministers of the G20 leading economies said greater
global efforts should be taken to safeguard precious world water
supplies to secure food production.
(Reuters, 1/22/17)
2017 Jan 25, German police
carried out dawn raids against far-right suspects accused of
plotting attacks on refugees, Jews and police officers, and detained
two suspects.
(AFP, 1/25/17)
2017 Jan 26, Germany's
Parliament extended the country's training mission in northern Iraq
for another year.
(AP, 1/26/17)
2017 Jan 26, In Germany more
than 15,000 turkeys were being culled after the new bird flu subtype
H5N5 was confirmed on a north German farm.
(Reuters, 1/26/17)
2017 Jan 28, Germany confirmed
that high-ranking Turkish soldiers, who worked at NATO facilities in
Germany but were suspended after the failed coup in Turkey in July,
have requested asylum. Der Spiegel and broadcaster ARD reported that
about 40, mostly high-ranking Turkish soldiers, have requested
asylum.
(Reuters, 1/28/17)
2017 Jan 28, France and Germany
expressed mounting alarm at key decisions by US Pres. Donald Trump
in his first week in office, saying they raised many issues of
concern.
(AFP, 1/28/17)
2017 Jan 29, In Germany the
bodies of six teenagers were found dead in a garden house following
a Saturday night party near the southern city of Wuerzburg.
Investigators later said they all died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
(AP, 1/29/17)(AP, 1/31/17)
2017 Jan 31, Germany began
sending tanks and other equipment to Lithuania as part of a NATO
mission to beef up the defense of eastern Europe and send a signal
of resolve to Russia, which has denounced the build-up as an act of
aggression.
(Reuters, 1/31/17)
2017 Feb 1, Germany's
government approved the use of ankle bracelets to monitor extremists
considered potentially dangerous as it moves to get tough on
suspected jihadists after the Berlin truck attack.
(AFP, 2/1/17)
2017 Feb 1, Germany arrested
Tunisian asylum-seeker Haikel S. (36) on suspicion of planning an
Islamist attack. He was also wanted in his homeland over a deadly
2015 assault on a Tunis museum favored by Western tourists.
(Reuters, 2/1/17)
2017 Feb 1, A German court
ordered German-Turkish author Akif Pirincci to pay a fine of 11,700
euros ($12,490) for incitement over a speech he gave at an
anti-Islam rally. Pirincci was a speaker at a rally staged in
Dresden in October 2015 by a group called the Patriotic Europeans
against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA. He described
asylum-seekers as "invaders" and lamented that the Nazi's
concentration camps had been closed.
(AP, 2/7/17)
2017 Feb 1, It was reported
that Volkswagen has agreed to pay at least $1.22 billion to fix or
buy back nearly 80,000 polluting diesel cars in the United States,
the latest move in its attempt to draw a line under its diesel
emissions scandal.
(Reuters, 2/1/17)
2017 Feb 2, In Turkey German
Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Turkey to uphold democracy as the
country heads toward a critical referendum on boosting the powers of
the presidency, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took
offense at her reference to "Islamist terror," saying the words
cannot be placed together.
(AP, 2/2/17)
2017 Feb 4, German weekly
magazine Der Spiegel sparked controversy at home and abroad with a
front cover illustration of US President Donald Trump beheading the
Statue of Liberty.
(Reuters, 2/4/17)
2017 Feb 8, Ljubisa Beara (77),
a Bosnian Serb commander convicted of war crimes over the 1995
Srebrenica massacre, died in a German prison.
(AP, 2/10/17)
2017 Feb 9, Germany reported
the world’s largest current-account surplus of about €270 billion
($300 billion).
(Econ, 2/11/17, p.40)
2017 Feb 9, Some 450 German
special commandos made 12 coordinated raids and arrested two men
suspected of planning an imminent Islamist attack in Goettingen.
(Reuters, 2/9/17)
2017 Feb 9, German neo-Nazi
Maik Schneider (29) was sentenced to eight years jail for the August
2015 arson in the high school sports hall in Nauen that had been
designated to house refugees. He received an additional term of one
year and six months for other xenophobic crimes.
(AFP, 2/9/17)
2017 Feb 12, Germany’s
parliamentary assembly elected former foreign minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier (61) as the new head of state. He vowed to stand up to
simplistic populist rhetoric.
(AFP, 2/12/17)(SSFC, 2/12/17, p.A4)
2017 Feb 15, German airline
Lufthansa said it has struck a deal to solve a bitter labor dispute
with pilots that over five years has cost it an estimated half a
billion dollars and more than a dozen strikes.
(AP, 2/15/17)
2017 Feb 16, In Germany foreign
ministers from 20 of the world's leading nations (G20) met in Bonn
to discuss current conflicts and ways to prevent future crises
against a backdrop of uncertainty among allies and adversaries over
the direction of US foreign policy.
(AP, 2/16/17)
2017 Feb 16, In Germany a union
representing ground staff has called on its members to go on strike
at Berlin's two airports, leading to the cancelation of some 210
flights.
(AP, 2/16/17)
2017 Feb 21, Authorities in
southwest Germany authorized a ban on older diesel cars from driving
in the city of Stuttgart starting next year.
(AP, 2/21/17)
2017 Feb 22, France and Germany
won backing from the European Union's executive for proposals to
tighten security across Europe, which include giving more powers to
governments to monitor frontiers with other EU states.
(Reuters, 2/22/17)
2017 Feb 25, In Germany a
student (35) rammed his car into a group of pedestrians, killing one
person and injuring two others in Heidelberg. The accused was shot
and wounded by police after fleeing the scene on foot while wielding
a knife.
(AFP, 2/26/17)
2017 Feb 26, In Germany the
bodies of a woman (76) and a man (81) were discovered dead at a
house in Koenigsdorf, about 30 km (19 miles) south of Munich. On
March 120 police said they have arrested a Polish national woman
(49) and were seeking her brother, Robert Pludowsk (43), in
connection with the killing.
(AP, 3/10/17)
2017 Feb 27, Germany's Interior
Ministry said a new report showing more than 3,500 attacks in 2016
on migrants and their homes is "alarmingly high and cause for
concern." Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth said
authorities are prosecuting the crimes aggressively and the numbers
are now falling.
(AP, 2/27/17)
2017 Feb 27, A German court
convicted two illegal street racers who caused a deadly high-speed
car crash of murder and handed them life prison terms in a landmark
ruling. Hamdi H. and Marvin N. were each sentenced to maximum jail
terms for the Feb 1 tragedy near Berlin's landmark KaDeWe shopping
center.
(AFP, 2/27/17)
2017 Feb 28, In Germany a man
(24) killed his grandmother in Muellrose, then ran over and killed
two police officers as he fled from them in Brandenburg state. The
man was arrested short time later.
(AP, 2/28/17)
2017 Feb, Turkish authorities
arrested Deniz Yucel, a journalist for Germany’s Die Welt newspaper,
on charges of propaganda in support of a terrorist organization and
inciting the public to violence. Yucel, a dual Turkish and German
national, was initially detained after he reported on emails that a
leftist hacker collective had purportedly obtained from the private
account of Berat Albayrak, Turkey's energy minister and Erdogan's
son-in-law.
(Reuters, 3/19/17)
2017 Mar 2, Germany arrested
two Syrians suspected of being members of the Al-Nusra Front.
Federal prosecutors said Abdalfatah H.A. (35) is suspected of war
crimes over the killing of 36 Syrian government employees by his
unit in 2013. Abdulrahman A.A. (26) belong to the same combat unit.
(SFC, 3/3/17, p.A2)
2017 Mar 2, In Egypt German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi held
talks on ways of slowing migration to Europe, including tightening
control over borders.
(AP, 3/2/17)
2017 Mar 3, Chancellor Angela
Merkel said Tunisia had agreed to take back 1,500 rejected Tunisian
migrants from Germany, after an attack by a Tunisian on a Christmas
market in Berlin which killed 12 people.
(Reuters, 3/3/17)
2017 Mar 3, German carmaker
Mercedes said it is recalling about 1 million cars and SUVs
worldwide because a starter part can overheat and cause fires.
(AP, 3/3/17)
2017 Mar 3, Turkey accused
Germany of scandalous behavior in cancelling rallies of Turkish
citizens in two German towns due to be addressed by Turkish
ministers and said Berlin provided a "shelter" for people committing
crimes against his country.
(Reuters, 3/3/17)
2017 Mar 8, Bavaria's state
office of criminal investigation said Germany’s police have raided
over 120 apartments and business premises across the country in an
investigation into a suspected online crime ring.
(Reuters, 3/8/17)
2017 Mar 9, In Germany an
axe-wielding attacker, Fatmir H. (37), wounded nine people in a
bloody rampage at a railway station. The Kosovan national had been
diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with a history of high anxiety
and self-harm. In September he was committed to a psychiatric ward.
(AFP, 3/10/17)(AFP, 9/22/17)
2017 Mar 9, In Germany Marcel
Hesse (19) gave himself up to police late today in Herne. He
admitted to killing a child (9) and a 22-year-old acquaintance,
citing frustration over a rejected bid to join the German army and
the recent loss of his internet connection. Hesse had stabbed the
boy 52 times with a folding knife and allegedly boasted about the
murder in a video clip he published on the darknet.
(AP, 3/10/17)(AP, 9/8/17)
2017 Mar 10, In Detroit, Mi.,
Volkswagen pleaded guilty in federal court to criminal felony
charges over the diesel emissions scandal. The plea was part of a
settlement for VW to pay $4.3 billion in fines and penalties.
(SFC, 3/11/17, p.D1)
2017 Mar 14, The small western
German state of Saarland said it is banning political campaigning by
foreign politicians saying internal Turkish conflicts have no place
in Germany.
(Reuters, 3/14/17)
2017 Mar 14, German authorities
banned the German-speaking Islam Group Hildesheim, known by its
German acronym DIK. It had long been on authorities' radar as a
magnet for radicals.
(AP, 3/14/17)
2017 Mar 14, Berlin's airports
remained paralyzed after ground staff extended a strike, stepping up
pressure in a dispute over pay that has already caused the
cancellation of more than 1,000 flights since March 10.
(Reuters, 3/14/17)
2017 Mar 14, Hundreds of
Twitter accounts were hijacked amid the ongoing diplomatic feud
between Turkey and two European nations, Germany and the
Netherlands. Most if not all high-profile accounts soon returned to
normal.
(AP, 3/15/17)
2017 Mar 15, In Germany three
men and a woman were sentenced to prison terms between three and
five years for forming the so-called Oldschool Society in August
2014, a far-right terrorist group with a plan to bomb refugee homes
as a tactic to scare migrants into leaving the country.
(AP, 3/15/17)
2017 Mar 16, The militant Greek
group Conspiracy of Fire Cells claimed responsibility for a parcel
bomb mailed to German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. The
parcel had been intercepted by the German finance ministry's mail
department. On March 20 Greek counterterrorism officers uncovered
eight more similar parcel bombs.
(Reuters, 3/16/17)(SFC, 3/22/17, p.A2)
2017 Mar 17, In Germany a G20
official said opposition from the United States, Saudi Arabia and
others has forced Germany to drop a reference to financing programs
to combat climate change from the draft communique at a G20 finance
and central bankers meeting.
(AP, 3/17/17)
2017 Mar 18, In Germany finance
chiefs of the world's top 20 economies (G20) pledged to finalize new
banking regulations, easing concerns that the new US administration
would pull out of a long-delayed global accord known as Basel III.
The G20 dropped a pledge to fully oppose trade protectionism, amid
pushback from the government of US President Donald Trump.
(Reuters, 3/18/17)(AP, 3/18/17)
2017 Mar 18, In Germany around
9,000 Kurdish supporters demonstrated in Frankfurt against Turkish
President Tayyip Erdogan and an April referendum that would give him
sweeping new powers.
(Reuters, 3/18/17)
2017 Mar 21, A German court
convicted three 17-year-olds of participating last April 16 in a
bomb attack on a Sikh temple that was motivated by hatred of other
religions. They were given prison sentences ranging between six and
seven years.
(AP, 3/21/17)
2017 Mar 21, In Germany the
G20's outreach organizations for business (B20), think tanks (T20)
and civil society groups (C20) urged the Group of 20 leading
economies in a joint statement to take fast and fundamental action
to counter rising temperatures.
(Reuters, 3/21/17)
2017 Mar 22, In Germany
thousands of gay men prosecuted and jailed under an arcane 19th
century law were due to get compensation after the government passed
a draft bill to quash their convictions. Germany decriminalized
homosexuality in 1969.
(Reuters, 3/22/17)
2017 Mar 23, German authorities
detained Afghan migrant Abdullah P. in the southern state of
Bavaria. He was believed to have taken part in an attack on a
military convoy about a decade ago in which at least 16 US and
Afghan soldiers were killed.
(Reuters, 3/28/17)
2017 Mar 27, In Germany thieves
broke into Berlin’s Bode Museum before dawn and made off with a
massive 100-kilogram (221-pound) gold coin worth millions of
dollars. In 2018 prosecutors indicted four young men for the theft
of the "Big Maple Leaf" coin.
(AP, 3/27/17)(SFC, 10/18/18, p.A2)
2017 Mar 27, Lufthansa
announced a code-sharing deal with Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific
under which the German airline and its Swiss and Austrian Airlines
units will offer new connections to Australia and New Zealand.
(AP, 3/27/17)
2017 Mar 28, German prosecutors
announced an investigation into claims that Turkish agents are
spying on alleged followers of exiled preacher Fethullah Gulen in
Germany.
(AFP, 3/28/17)
2017 Mar 30, Volkswagen AG said
it has agreed to pay $157.45 million to settle environmental claims
from 10 US states over its excess diesel emissions, as the world's
largest automaker looks to move past the scandal.
(Reuters, 3/30/17)
2017 Mar 31, A German court
convicted a Moroccan-born man, identified only as Souhayl M. (19),
of raping a 90-year-old woman and sentenced him to 5 ½ years in
prison. The victim was attacked last October just after she visited
a church.
(AP, 3/31/17)
2017 Apr 2, In Germany a
Ghanaian man (31) reportedly raped a camper at knife-point in front
of her boyfriend days after being denied asylum, while the couple
was camping near Bonn. He was arrested five days later after DNA
evidence linked him to the crime.
(AP, 9/25/17)
2017 Apr 3, A German court
handed lengthy prison sentences to four Islamic extremists over
plots to bomb a train station in December 2012 and kill a far-right
politician in March 2013.
(AP, 4/3/17)
2017 Apr 5, German conglomerate
JAB, owner of Krispy Cream and other food brands, announced that it
was taking over the St. Louis-based Panera Bread bakery chain for
$7.5 billion.
(Econ, 4/15/17, p.26)
2017 Apr 7, The German
government announced steps to choke off state campaign finance for
the far-right NPD party, after a failed court bid to outlaw the
xenophobic fringe group. The group numbered around 6,000 members.
(AFP, 4/7/17)
2017 Apr 8, In Germany police
found 384 kg (847 pounds) of cocaine in hundreds of one-kilogram
packages hidden in 26 cases of bananas shipped from Ecuador.
(AP, 4/9/17)
2017 Apr 8, In Germany police
officers found human remains believed to be those of the 58-year-old
woman at her home in the eastern village of Borkheide, southwest of
Berlin. Her son (17) was detained at the scene.
(AP, 4/9/17)
2017 Apr 8, In Greece Documenta
14, one of the world's premier art events opened in Athens, bringing
a much-needed spotlight, artistic inspiration and visitor boost to
crisis-hit Greece's run-down capital. The contemporary art
exhibition is held every five years in Kassel, Germany.
(AFP, 4/8/17)
2017 Apr 11, German prosecutors
said an unidentified suspect had been emptying parking machines in
Hildesheim for more than two years. The 48-year-old was caught last
week loading 1,000 euros ($1,060) in ill-gotten coins into his car.
Damage to the city in this year's first three months alone totaled
21,000 euros.
(AP, 4/11/17)
2017 Apr 11, In Germany
roadside blasts left Dortmund's Spanish international Marc Bartra
and a policeman injured. The bombs "containing metal pieces"
detonated minutes after the team bus set off to a planned Champions
League game against Monaco.
(AFP, 4/12/17)
2017 Apr 12, German
investigators detained an Islamist suspect over three explosions
that rocked Borussia Dortmund's team bus a day earlier, confirming
the probe was examining a possible "terrorist link".
(AFP, 4/12/17)
2017 Apr 19, German utility
E.ON said it has launched a combined solar panel and battery storage
product for British customers which could cut rising electricity
bills by 50 percent.
(Reuters, 4/19/17)
2017 Apr 20, Lilium, a German
startup, completed a successful test over Bavaria of a small
electric plane capable of flying up to 300 km per hr.
(Econ, 4/29/17, p.51)
2017 Apr 21, German police
arrested a man suspected of detonating three bombs that targeted the
Borussia Dortmund soccer team bus on April 11. The dual German and
Russian national identified as Sergei V., had bought options on
Borussia Dortmund's stock before the attack.
(Reuters, 4/21/17)
2017 Apr 21, A federal judge in
Detroit sentenced Volkswagen AG to three years' probation over the
German automaker's diesel emissions scandal as part of a $4.3
billion settlement announced in January. US District Judge Sean Cox
ordered Volkswagen to pay a $2.8 billion criminal penalty for
cheating on diesel emissions tests.
(Reuters, 4/21/17)(SFC, 4/22/17, p.D1)
2017 Apr 22, In Germany two
police officers were injured and a police car was set ablaze during
protests in Cologne, as some 600 delegates of the deeply divided
anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party met to discuss
policy for September's national elections.
(Reuters, 4/22/17)
2017 Apr 27, Former German
Chancellor Helmut Kohl was awarded 1 million euros ($1.1 million) in
damages after the Cologne state court found his one-time ghostwriter
had violated his privacy rights.
(AP, 4/27/17)
2017 Apr 28, German authorities
arrested a 54-year-old Swiss citizen on suspicion of spying.
Prosecutors said Daniel M. is "suspected of working for the
intelligence agency of a foreign power since the start of 2012.” The
next day the Welt newspaper reported that man had been sent to
Germany by Switzerland's NDB intelligence agency to identify German
tax investigators involved in the purchase of confidential Swiss
bank client data.
(AP, 4/28/17)(AP, 4/30/17)
2017 Apr 29, In Germany a
gold-and-platinum tiara adorned with 367 diamonds was discovered
missing from the Badisches Landesmuesum in Karlsruhe. It was valued
at $1.31 million and once belonged to Grand Duchess Hilda von Baden
(1864-1952).
(AP, 5/8/17)
2017 Apr 30, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel arrived in Saudi Arabia to press royals on a number of
sensitive issues, including taking in refugees, while also boosting
important business ties in her first visit to the country in seven
years.
(AP, 4/30/17)
2017 May 1, Germany’s
Chancellor Angela Merkel offered diplomatic help to try to end the
war in Yemen, as she ended a two-nation Gulf tour taking in the Arab
world's largest economies with a stop in the United Arab Emirates.
(AP, 5/1/17)
2017 May 2, Heinz Kessler (97),
former East German defense minister, died in Berlin. As the
country's last defense minister (1985 to 1989) he was responsible
for a shoot-to-kill policy aimed at stopping people escaping to the
West. He was sentenced to prison in 1991 for his role in the killing
of people trying to flee the Communist state.
(Reuters, 5/4/17)
2017 May 3, In Germany the
state legislature of Baden-Wuerttemberg approved plans to introduce
tuition fees for students from outside the European Union, starting
with this year's winter semester.
(AP, 5/3/17)
2017 May 4, The head of
Germany's domestic intelligence agency accused Russian rivals of
gathering large amounts of political data in cyber-attacks and said
it was up to the Kremlin to decide whether it wanted to put it to
use ahead of Germany's September elections.
(Reuters, 5/4/17)
2017 May 11, German industrial
conglomerate Siemens AG said it is cutting or outsourcing 2,700 jobs
as part of efforts to modernize its IT operations and increase
efficiency elsewhere.
(AP, 5/11/17)
2017 May 15, Hungarian police
arrested Horst Mahler, a notorious German neo-Nazi, in the
northwestern city of Sopron. He had been seeking asylum after
fleeing to avoid serving a prison sentence for Holocaust denial and
anti-Semitic incitement.
(AP, 5/15/17)
2017 May 16, Germany’s dpa news
agency said a German court has convicted an Iraqi man (32) of raping
two Chinese college students in the western city of Bochum. He was
sentenced to 11 years in prison.
(AP, 5/16/17)
2017 May 19, In Germany the
Munich state court convicted Gabriele P. (32) of killing her
boyfriend and severing his head with a circular saw in December
2008. In 2016 police found the body, which she and two friends had
allegedly buried several years earlier, in the garden of her Munich
home.
(AP, 5/19/17)
2017 May 19, German authorities
arrested an Afghan man, identified as Omaid N. (20). He was accused
of being a member of the Taliban and participating in the killing of
an Afghan police officer in 2013.
(AP, 5/23/17)
2017 May 19, In Germany a man
(54) died after setting fire to himself in a central square in
Munich. The man had scrawled slogans on his car along the lines of
"Never again war on German soil" and "Amri is only the tip of the
iceberg" — a reference to Anis Amri, the Tunisian who attacked a
Christmas market in Berlin.
(AP, 5/19/17)
2017 May 24, US-based Praxair
and Germany-based Linde, two industrial gas firms, agreed to terms
of a merger of equals worth $70 billion.
(Econ 5/27/17, p.61)
2017 May 25, US President
Donald Trump told fellow NATO leaders in Brussels that the United
States would never stop fighting terrorism, calling the May 22
Manchester attacks "savage" and "barbaric," but made no explicit
mention of NATO's mutual defense pact. Trump vowed to crack down on
leaks that prompted Manchester police to withhold information from
the United States about the investigation into this week's bombing.
He also chastised NATO leaders for not paying their fair share to
protect the long-standing alliance. Trump also criticized Germany as
"very bad" on trade at a meeting with EU officials.
(Reuters, 5/25/17)(AP, 5/25/17)(Reuters, 5/26/17)
2017 May 25, An Italian court
opened the way for a class action lawsuit against automaker
Volkswagen over its emissions scandal.
(AP, 5/25/17)
2017 May 26, Germany-based BMW
said it is recalling more than 45,000 older 7-Series cars in the US
because the doors can open unexpectedly while they're being driven.
(AP, 5/26/17)
2017 May 31, In Germany
Nurettin B. (39), whose last name was not released in line with
privacy laws, was sentenced in Hannover state court to 14 years in
prison for tying up his ex-partner and dragging her behind his car
last November.
(AP, 5/31/17)
2017 Jun 1, Germany and China
vowed to expand their partnership and pledged to continue fighting
climate change as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Berlin, sending
a signal to Washington hours before US President Donald Trump
announces if he will quit a global climate deal.
(Reuters, 6/1/17)
2017 Jun 2, German police
arrested a Romanian truck driver (40) suspected of raping and
killing a woman in southwestern Germany last year and another woman
in Austria in 2014. Both women were killed with an iron bar.
(AP, 6/3/17)
2017 Jun 7, Chancellor Angela
Merkel's Cabinet decided to pull German troops and reconnaissance
aircraft out of Turkey's Incirlik air base after Turkish officials
refused to let lawmakers visit them. The 270 troops and 7 planes
participating in the international coalition against the Islamic
State group will redeploy to Jordan.
(AP, 6/7/17)
2017 Jun 7, Germany's highest
court said an extra tax on nuclear fuel is unconstitutional, paving
the way for power companies to claim back more than 6 billion euros
($6.75 billion) paid between 2011 through 2016.
(AP, 6/7/17)
2017 Jun 7, In Germany a Syrian
man stabbed a Red Cross psychologist (30) to death at a counseling
center for refugees in the western state of Saarland. The suspect
(27) was arrested shortly after the attack.
(AP, 6/7/17)
2017 Jun 8, In Germany the
Hannover state court sentenced a German citizen, identified only as
Saleh S. (18) in line with privacy rules, to eight years in prison
for throwing homemade firebombs into the mall in Hannover in
February 2016. He is the brother of a 16-year-old girl, Safia S.,
who was convicted in January of stabbing and wounding a police
officer at the behest of the Islamic State group.
(AP, 6/8/17)
2017 Jun 9, In Germany Felix R.
(21) was arrested over the killing of two foreign women in
Nuremberg. A woman (22) with Romanian and Hungarian citizenship was
killed in Nuremberg on May 24. The second victim, a Chinese woman
(44), was killed in the city June 5. DNA from the crime scene also
corresponded to that of the suspect.
(AP, 6/12/17)
2017 Jun 13, A German court
convicted six young Syrian and Libyan refugees who tried to set fire
to a sleeping homeless man last Christmas in a crime that sparked
public outrage.
(AFP, 6/13/17)
2017 Jun 13, In Germany a man
(37) shot a police officer in the head and wounded two bystanders at
the Unterfoehring subway station in Munich. The suspect was
apprehended after being wounded in an exchange of fire with police.
(SFC, 6/14/17, p.A2)
2017 Jun 15, Austria and
Germany voiced sharp criticism of the latest US sanctions against
Moscow, saying they could affect European businesses involved in
piping in Russian natural gas.
(AP, 6/15/17)
2017 Jun 15, In Germany a man
stabbed two of his children to death and seriously injured another
in the eastern state of Thuringia. The suspect (27) was arrested and
hospitalized for treatment of self-inflicted wounds.
(AP, 6/15/17)
2017 Jun 15, Lidl, a German
discount chain, opened nine stores in Virginia, South Carolina
and North Carolina. It planned up to 90 more stores US within a
year.
(Econ 6/17/17, p.59)
2017 Jun 16, Former German
chancellor Helmut Kohl (87) died at his home in Ludwigshafen. The
physically imposing chancellor (1982-1998), whose reunification of a
nation divided by the Cold War, put Germany at the heart of a united
Europe.
(AP, 6/17/17)(Econ 6/24/17, p.82)
2017 Jun 19, The European Union
approved 377 million euros ($420 million) in state aid from France
and Germany for the development of a new Airbus helicopter.
(AP, 6/19/17)
2017 Jun 22, Germany's
parliament voted 502-57 to cut off parties with anti-constitutional
aims from public funding, a move aimed at a far-right party that
authorities tried unsuccessfully to ban.
(AP, 6/22/17)
2017 Jun 25, In Belgium
thousands of protesters demanded that Belgium immediately shut down
two nuclear reactors because of safety concerns. People from
Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands formed a human chain across the
border triangle of the three countries over the safety of the
pressure vessels at the Tihange 2 and Doel 3 reactors in Belgium.
(AP, 6/25/17)
2017 Jun 27, A major ransomware
attack hit computers at Russia's biggest oil company, the country's
banks, Ukraine's international airport as well as Danish global
shipping firm A.P. Moller-Maersk. Germany's Metro said its wholesale
stores in the Ukraine have been hit by a cyber-attack and the
retailer was assessing the impact.
(Reuters, 6/27/17)
2017 Jun 30, Germany's
parliament backed the legalization of same-sex marriage in a
historic vote hailed by gay activists and leftist parties but
criticized by some in Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling conservative
bloc and by the Catholic Church.
(Reuters, 6/30/17)
2017 Jul 1, In Germany the
104th edition of the Tour de France got underway in rainy conditions
in Duesseldorf. The three-week Tour concludes in Paris on July 23.
(AP, 7/1/17)
2017 Jul 2, In Germany some
4,000 people took part in the first major protest in Hamburg before
the July 7-8 Group of 20 meeting.
(AP, 7/2/17)
2017 Jul 3, In Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives promised more police, more
homes and full employment within eight years when they presented
their program for an election in which she will seek a fourth term
in office.
(Reuters, 7/3/17)
2017 Jul 3, In Germany eighteen
people were killed when a tour bus carrying mostly pensioners
smashed into a trailer truck and burst into flames on the A9
motorway near the small Bavarian town of Stammbach.
(AFP, 7/3/17)
2017 Jul 3, France, Germany and
the European Union pledged more money for Libya's coast guard and
more support for Italy to cope with a surge of migrant arrivals from
Africa.
(AP, 7/3/17)
2017 Jul 4, German car giant
Volkswagen said it was returning to the Iranian market for the first
time in 17 years due to the lifting of economic sanctions.
(AFP, 7/4/17)
2017 Jul 5, In Germany China’s
President Xi Jinping and Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to work
together more closely on a range of issues, two days ahead of the
G20 summit in Hamburg.
(Reuters, 7/5/17)
2017 Jul 5, Airbus said it has
won a major order from China of 140 planes for $22.8 billion, during
a visit by President Xi Jinping to Berlin.
(AP, 7/5/17)
2017 Jul 6, In Germany
thousands of protesters from around Europe poured into the port city
of Hamburg to join anti-capitalist demonstrations for the July 7-8
G20 summit. Hamburg reminded residents and visitors over Twitter
that during the Group of 20 summit all recreational aircraft will be
banned from flying.
(Reuters, 7/6/17)(AP, 7/6/17)
2017 Jul 6, US authorities
accused Giovanni Pamio (60), a former Audi executive, of giving the
orders to program diesel engines to cheat on emissions tests. He
became the eighth former Volkswagen employee charged in the case
that is being investigated by the FBI and the Environmental
Protection Agency's criminal unit.
(AP, 7/7/17)
2017 Jul 7, In Germany far-left
protesters wrought chaos in Hamburg ahead of US President Donald
Trump's first face-to-face talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin
at a G20 summit facing divisions among Western nations and tensions
over North Korea.
(AFP, 7/7/17)
2017 Jul 7, German prosecutors
said they have arrested a former employee of the Volkswagen unit
Audi in connection with the company's diesel scandal.
(AP, 7/7/17)
2017 Jul 7, President Donald
Trump, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, said the
United States is making very good progress on trade issues with
Mexico, after a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto,
but he also repeated a pledge to make the southern neighbor pay for
a border wall.
(Reuters, 7/7/17)
2017 Jul 7, Russian President
Vladimir Putin told US President Donald Trump that Moscow had not
meddled in the US elections, and Trump accepted it, according to
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Trump and Putin engaged in a
conversation during a G20 dinner.
(Reuters, 7/8/17)(SFC, 7/19/17, p.A4)
2017 Jul 8, In Germany a final
statement agreed by the leaders of the Group of 20 economic powers
exposed a divide between the United States and other G20 members on
the Paris climate accord aimed at combating climate change. The
leaders of the other G20 members stated that the Paris Agreement is
irreversible.
(Reuters, 7/8/17)
2017 Jul 8, In Germany
anti-globalization activists rioted violently for a second night as
Hamburg hosted G20 leaders, setting up street barricades, looting
supermarkets and attacking police with slingshots and firebombs.
(AP, 7/8/17)
2017 Jul 9, In Germany
anti-globalization activists rioted for a third consecutive night in
Hamburg early today even after Group of 20 leaders had already left
the city. Germans expressed anger over violence that hit the G20
world leaders' July 7-8 summit, raising awkward questions for
Chancellor Angela Merkel less than three months before an election.
Police said they had arrested 186 people and took 225 into custody.
(AP, 7/9/17)(Reuters, 7/9/17)
2017 Jul 9, Germany began to
pull its troops out of Turkey’s Incirlik air base where they have
supported international operations against Islamic State following a
row with Ankara over access.
(Reuters, 7/9/17)
2017 Jul 9, The United Nations'
cultural agency added to its list of World Heritage sites six caves
in west Germany with art dating back to the Ice Age and old silver
ore mines in southern Poland.
(AP, 7/9/17)
2017 Jul 11, Germany’s dpa news
agency reported that a Bavarian court has convicted Hans D. (62), a
Buddhist monk, of more than 25 counts of sexually abusing children
and sentenced him to seven years and nine months in prison.
(AP, 7/11/17)
2017 Jul 12, German police
arrested four suspects they linked to an Arabic criminal clan over
the spectacular theft of a giant 100-kilogram (220-pound) gold coin
from a Berlin museum early this year, but found no sign of the loot.
(AFP, 7/12/17)
2017 Jul 13, French President
Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have opened the
19th annual summit between the two European countries, centered on
security, defense and boosting the European project in a time of
doubt.
(AP, 7/13/17)
2017 Jul 13, France and Germany
agreed to develop a European fighter jet to replace their existing
fleets, part of a raft of measures to tighten defense and security
cooperation, according to a document issued after a Franco-German
cabinet meeting in Paris.
(Reuters, 7/13/17)
2017 Jul 18, In Germany a
report released today said at least 547 members of the Domspatzen
boys’ choir in Regensburg choir were physically or sexually abused
between 1945 and 1992. It counted 500 cases of physical violence and
67 of sexual violence, committed by a total of 49 perpetrators. The
choir was led from 1964 to 1994 by Benedict's brother, the Rev.
Georg Ratzinger.
(AP, 7/18/17)
2017 Jul 20, German customs
authorities said they've seized over 3.8 tons of cocaine that
arrived in Hamburg in shipping containers from South America in
three operations between March and May.
(AP, 7/20/17)
2017 Jul 20, Germany's
president signed legislation legalizing gay marriage, paving the way
for it to take effect this fall.
(AP, 7/21/17)
2017 Jul 23, In Germany former
Vietnamese oil executive Trinh Xuan Thanh was taken from the
Tiergarten, a large forested park in central Berlin, by armed men.
(Reuters, 8/2/17)
2017 Jul 26, One of Germany's
most notorious Islamist preachers, Sven Lau (36), was sentenced to
five and a half years in jail for helping to recruit for Jaish
al-Muhajiroun wal-Ansar (JMA) or Army of Emigrants and Supporters.
(AFP, 7/26/17)
2017 Jul 27, Germany's
transport minister announced plans for a fund to help cities
modernize their transport systems and reduce pollution, but said it
was too soon to bury the internal combustion engine.
(Reuters, 7/27/17)
2017 Jul 28, In Germany a
Palestinian man (26) stabbed one person to death and wounded six
others in Hamburg. He was known to authorities as a suspected
Islamic radical but also was psychologically unstable.
(AP, 7/29/17)
2017 Jul 30, In Germany a
shooting in a discotheque claimed two lives in Konstanz, including
that of the gunman, and wounded four people, three of them
seriously. Police identified the gunman as an Iraqi citizen (37).
(AP, 7/30/17)
2017 Aug 1, German sources said
the government will not force the car industry to make costly
changes to engines to cut diesel emissions but will settle for
software updates for around 2 million vehicles.
(Reuters, 8/1/17)
2017 Aug 2, German automakers
offered to help cut inner-city pollution by updating the software of
5 million diesel cars in an attempt to avert vehicle bans and repair
their reputation.
(Reuters, 8/2/17)
2017 Aug 2, Germany accused
Vietnam of kidnapping a former Vietnamese oil executive who was
seeking asylum in Berlin and taking him home to face accusations of
corruption. Trinh Xuan Thanh was accused of causing around $150
million in losses at a Vietnamese state firm.
(AP, 8/2/17)
2017 Aug 2, German prosecutors
said Oskar Groening (96), a former Auschwitz death camp guard,
is fit to go to prison. He was convicted in 2015 as an accessory to
murder. His lawyer said he will contest their decision.
(AP, 8/2/17)
2017 Aug 2, Al-Qaida leader
Ayman al-Zawahri posted an audio message online in which he said a
man he identifies as Zuhair al-Maghribi (aka Said Bahaji) who worked
for As-Sahab, the terror network's media arm, is a "martyr." The
German man is believed to have provided logistical support to the
Hamburg-based Sept. 11 hijackers.
(AP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 2, Italian authorities
impounded a German NGO's migrant rescue boat on suspicion of
facilitating illegal immigration. The Iuventa was operated by the
Jugend Rettet organization.
(AFP, 8/2/17)
2017 Aug 7, In Germany some
2,600 pigs and piglets died in a fire at a farm southwest of Berlin
that caused an estimated 800,000 euros ($950,000) in damage in the
area of Frankenfoerde.
(AP, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 8, Germany’s wind
power group Siemens Gamesa said it has installed Asia's tallest wind
turbines, with a total height of 210 meters (230 yards), in
Thailand.
(Reuters, 8/8/17)
2017 Aug 10, Scientists in
Germany said they have identified a new type of pox virus that's
sickening young red squirrels in Berlin.
(AP, 8/10/17)
2017 Aug 11, A German court
sentenced three Syrian men for running a smuggling ring from Turkey
to Europe over the deaths of 13 migrants in the Mediterranean in
September 2015. The main suspect was sentenced to four years in
prison and the man who piloted the dinghy two and a half years in
prison. A third man, who liaised with the refugees' family members
in Germany, was given two years on probation.
(Reuters, 8/11/17)
2017 Aug 11, In Germany a
26-ton garbage truck tipped over on a road, crushing a car and
killing five people, including at least four members of the same
family in the Baden-Wuerttemberg town of Nagold.
(AP, 8/11/17)
2017 Aug 14, In Germany the
court in the town of Krefeld said Hartmut Hopp (73) must serve in
Germany the five-year sentence given to him by a Chilean court in
2011 for 16 counts of aiding in the sexual abuse of children.
(AP, 8/14/17)
2017 Aug 15, In Germany new
licenses were awarded that will increase onshore wind energy
capacity by more than 1 gigawatt, equal to that of a nuclear plant.
(Reuters, 8/15/17)
2017 Aug 15, German efforts to
overcome a diesel scandal were dealt a blow after prosecutors
widened a Volkswagen probe and a key environmental group said steps
proposed by automakers to cut pollution remained inadequate.
(Reuters, 8/15/17)
2017 Aug 15, Germany's second
largest airline, Air Berlin, filed for bankruptcy protection after
its main shareholder, Abu Dhabi-based Etihad, said it would make no
more financing available following years of unsuccessful turnaround
attempts.
(AP, 8/15/17)
2017 Aug 16, Deutsche Post DHL
Group and US automaker Ford unveiled a jointly manufactured electric
delivery van amid growing demand for emission-free utility vehicles.
(AP, 8/16/17)
2017 Aug 16, Fiat-Chrysler said
it will cooperate with BMW to develop self-driving cars.
(SFC, 8/17/17, p.C2)
2017 Aug 19, In Germany
anti-fascist activists gathered in the Berlin suburb of Spandau to
protest against a vigil by some 500 neo-Nazis commemorating the 30th
anniversary of the death of Nazi convict Rudolf Hess. Berlin police
detained 39 people in connection with the march. 35 of those
detained belonged to the far-right march, while four were taking
part in the counter-protest.
(Reuters, 8/19/17)(AP, 8/20/17)
2017 Aug 19, Spanish police in
Granada arrested German-Turkish author Dogan Akhanli after Turkey
issued an Interpol warrant for the writer, a critic of the
government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Akhanli was
conditionally released the next day following a court hearing, but
ordered to stay in Madrid while Turkey's extradition request is
considered.
(Reuters, 8/19/17)(AP, 8/20/17)
2017 Aug 20, It was reported
that a Moscow court has rejected a request by Siemens to seize its
gas turbines, which have turned up in Crimea contrary to EU
sanctions, and to ban their installation ahead of preliminary
hearings next month.
(Reuters, 8/20/17)
2017 Aug 28, Germany said it
had reached a deal with Egypt to stem the flow of migrants from the
Arab country, part of a broader push by Berlin to head off waves of
migrants that have stoked domestic political tensions.
(Reuters, 8/28/17)
2017 Aug 28, German authorities
raided the homes and workplaces of a police officer and another
suspect on allegations they opposed the country's policy on migrants
and were drawing up a "kill list" of left-wingers in the
northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
(AP, 8/28/17)
2017 Aug 28, German police said
a nurse, identified only as Niels H., convicted in 2015 of two
charges of attempted murder and two counts of murder by an Oldenburg
court, is suspected of killing at least 84 other people.
(Reuters, 8/28/17)
2017 Aug 28, The leaders of
France, Germany, Italy and Spain met in Paris with counterparts from
Libya, Niger and Chad to discuss ways to curb illegal migration
across the Mediterranean Sea to European shores.
(AP, 8/28/17)
2017 Aug 29, The World
Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Germany has reported an
outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus in three swans
in the central state of Saxony-Anhalt.
(Reuters, 8/29/17)
2017 Aug 30, German officials
said a Syrian man identified only as Abdullah K. (40), held on
suspicion of fighting for an extremist group in his homeland, has
hanged himself in a Hamburg jail cell.
(AP, 8/30/17)
2017 Sep 1, In Germany the
world's largest X-ray laser wen t online and will help them capture
images of structures and processes at an atomic level. Scientists
hoped the European XFEL project will open up new areas of research.
(AP, 9/1/17)
2017 Sep 1, German’s Cologne
Zoo said German-born Elizabeth Reichert (93), an American widow of a
Holocaust survivor, is leaving it $22 million (18.5 million euros)
in her will. Reichert has already started transferring $6,000 per
month to the zoo. The entire sum is to be donated upon her death.
(AP, 9/1/17)
2017 Sep 3, In Germany a
political website of Julia Kloeckner, vice chairman of Merkel's
Christian Democratic Union (CDU), saw some 3,000 attacks before a
debate between Merkel and Social Democratic leader Martin Schulz.
(Reuters, 9/4/17)
2017 Sep 3, German explosives
experts started to defuse a massive WW II bomb in Frankfurt after
tens of thousands of people evacuated their homes.
(Reuters, 9/3/17)
2017 Sep 4, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel announced plans to double to 1 billion euros ($1.19
billion) a fund aimed at cleaning up urban transport, in an effort
to avert bans of diesel vehicles in some cities.
(Reuters, 9/4/17)
2017 Sep 5, Authorities in
Germany said they've recovered 15 stolen paintings and drawings by
German artist Georg Baselitz worth around 2.5 million euros ($2.9
million). A man (51) was arrested last month for selling the art
after returning from a trip abroad.
(AP, 9/5/17)
2017 Sep 8, Germany dismissed
Poland's threat to demand new talks over World War II reparations
from Berlin, saying the issue had already been settled in 1953.
(AFP, 9/8/17)
2017 Sep 11, German Foreign
Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Berlin had suspended major arms exports
due to deteriorating human rights in Turkey and increasingly
strained ties between the NATO allies.
(Reuters, 9/12/17)
2017 Sep 11, A group of German
women's organizations wrote to Chancellor Angela Merkel demanding
more support for their goals of equal participation, equal pay and
better monitoring of gender policies after the Sept. 24 election.
(Reuters, 9/11/17)
2017 Sep 12, In Germany
carmakers at the Frankfurt auto show unveiled low-emissions vehicles
and technology strategies that they hope will let them profit from
the sweeping changes expected to hit the auto industry in the next
few years.
(AP, 9/12/17)
2017 Sep 12, Bankrupt German
airline Air Berlin said its existence is threatened by an apparent
wildcat strike, after 200 pilots called in sick at short notice.
(AP, 9/12/17)
2017 Sep 13, Eight Afghans with
criminal records arrived in Kabul after their applications for
asylum were rejected in Germany.
(Reuters, 9/13/17)
2017 Sep 16, In Germany the
184th Oktoberfest opened in Munich.
(SSFC, 9/17/17 p.A3)
2017 Sep 20, Germany’s
Chancellor Angela Merkel and her ministers expressed their support
for a definition of anti-Semitism that includes attacks against
religious institutions, the state of Israel and non-Jews who are
attacked for anti-Semitic reasons.
(AP, 9/20/17)
2017 Sep 20, Germany's
Thyssenkrupp and Tata Steel of India signed a preliminary deal to
merge their European steel operations, a combination that could lead
to up to 4,000 job cuts.
(AP, 9/20/17)
2017 Sep 22, Germany said it
had ordered a second Vietnamese embassy official to leave the
country, after the alleged July 23 kidnapping of Trinh Xuan Thanh, a
Vietnamese businessman, who had applied for asylum and was facing
corruption allegations back home. A day earlier Germany informed the
Vietnamese ambassador it was temporarily suspending the strategic
relationship between the two countries.
(Reuters, 9/22/17)
2017 Sep 24, Germany’s
Chancellor Angela Merkel won a fourth term in office but faced the
prospect of forming a coalition with two disparate new partners. The
rightwing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) poached one million
votes from Merkel's conservatives, leaving her without an obvious
coalition.
(AP, 9/24/17)(AFP, 9/25/17)(SFC, 9/25/17 p.A3)
2017 Sep 26, In Germany
Frankfurt customs found cocaine when an X-ray scan of packets
containing two Spanish-language fairy-tale books posted from Uruguay
showed "unusual shadows." The drugs had an estimated street value of
about 30,000 euros ($34,950).
(AP, 11/3/17)
2017 Sep 27, Finnish energy
group Fortum offered to buy all the shares in German utility Uniper
in an 8.05 billion-euro ($9.5 billion) deal that aims to boost
Fortum's gas, hydroelectric and nuclear assets. Fortum offered to
buy the 46.65 percent stake that Germany's E.ON holds and the rest
of the shares for 22 euros each. E.ON has until early 2018 to decide
whether to sell its stake
(AP, 9/27/17)
2017 Sep 28, German’s police
said a man has slipped a potentially lethal poison into food,
including baby food, on sale in some supermarkets in an extortion
scheme aimed at raising millions of euros. No cases of poisoning had
been reported so far.
(Reuters, 9/28/17)
2017 Sep 28, Munich prosecutors
said they have arrested a second suspect in connection with an
emissions scandal at carmaker Audi and have widened the number of
suspects in their investigation.
(Reuters, 9/28/17)
2017 Sep 29, German police
arrested a suspect (55) in the case of an alleged extortionist who
attempted to force supermarkets into coughing up tens of millions of
euros by slipping a potentially lethal poison into baby food.
(Reuters, 9/30/17)
2017 Sep 29, Shareholders in
Rosneft, a Russia energy giant, appointed Germany’s ex-chancellor
Gerhard Schroder as a board director.
(http://tinyurl.com/y7srpcpj)(Econ, 9/16/17,
p.64)
2017 Oct 1, In Germany same-sex
couples married for the first time, with several dozen couples tying
the knot at civil registry offices that opened specially to mark the
coming into force of a law passed by parliament in June.
(Reuters, 10/1/17)
2017 Oct 3, In Germany
specialists defused a 250-kg (550-pound) bomb successfully in the
Tempelhof-Schoeneberg district of Berlin after some 10,000 people
were evacuated from their homes. It had been found during
construction work near a freight depot and was described by police
as a German bomb with a Russian detonator.
(AP, 10/3/17)
2017 Oct 5, German prosecutors
said they have closed an investigation into suspected mass phone
tapping of German citizens by British and US spies after finding no
concrete indication of any criminal activity.
(Reuters, 10/5/17)
2017 Oct 9, In Germany burglars
broke into Berlin’s immigration office and stole blank
identification documents, stamps and seals.
(AP, 10/10/17)
2017 Oct 12, In Germany
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said that the airline will sign an
agreement to buy large parts of the bankrupt carrier Air Berlin.
(AP, 10/12/17)
2017 Oct 16, A Berlin court
sentenced Ursula Haverbeck (88) to six months in prison for denying
the Holocaust and for inciting hatred. A court in North
Rhine-Westphalia last summer gave her a 10-month prison sentence for
the same charges. She avoided going to jail by appealing the
verdict.
(AP, 10/17/17)
2017 Oct 18, German researchers
published a paper that showed a 76 percent decline in bug numbers
over a 27-year period. The midsummer loss was up to 82 percent. They
speculated that intensive agriculture and pesticide use may be to
blame.
(AP, 10/19/17)
2017 Oct 18, German brothers
Maxim and Raphael Nitsche sold Cogeon, maker of the app Math 42, to
California-based education publisher Chegg Inc. in a deal worth at
least 12.5 million euros ($15 million). The Math 42 app was first
launched five years ago.
(AP, 10/19/17)
2017 Oct 20, German magazine
Der Spiegel reported that Germany will wait for Israeli prosecutors
to conclude all investigations in a corruption scandal involving PM
Benjamin Netanyahu before delivering three submarines in a $2
billion defense deal.
(Reuters, 10/20/17)
2017 Oct 22, In Germany several
thousand people marched past Berlin's Reichstag building to protest
"hate and racism in parliament" as newly elected lawmakers from the
nationalist, anti-migration Alternative for Germany party prepared
to take their seats.
(AP, 10/22/17)
2017 Oct 23, The German
government said it approved the sale of three Thyssenkrupp
submarines to Israel and will provide financial support for the
purchase.
(Reuters, 10/23/17)
2017 Oct 23, In Germany a
right-wing extremist member of a group that claims allegiance to
Adolf Hitler's World War Two-era German Reich was convicted of
murder for shooting and killing a police officer last October and
sentenced to life in prison.
(Reuters, 10/23/17)
2017 Oct 24, German Broadcaster
ZDF reported that employees of a security company that runs several
refugee camps in Berlin were luring asylum seekers, some of them
minors, into prostitution.
(Reuters, 10/26/17)
2017 Oct 26, Germany’s dpa news
reported that a Swiss man has confessed to a Frankfurt court that he
spied for his country on German tax investigators between July 2011
and February 2015, in a case that has sparked tension between the
two nations.
(AP, 10/26/17)
2017 Oct 27, Air Berlin,
Germany's second-biggest airline, ended operations after 38 years
with an evening Munich-to-Berlin flight.
(AP, 10/28/17)
2017 Oct 28, British budget
airline easyJet said it has reached an agreement with Air Berlin to
buy parts of the bankrupt German airline as part of a 40-million
euro ($46 million) deal.
(AP, 10/28/17)
2017 Oct 29, In Germany the
"Green Belt" project, first conceived in the 1970s, was awarded the
German Environmental Prize at a ceremony in the northern city of
Braunschweig. The 1,400-km long swatch of land marked the former
border between East and West Germany is now a refuge for a broad
variety of flora and fauna.
(Reuters, 10/29/17)
2017 Oct 29, High winds knocked
down trees and caused widespread travel chaos across much of Central
Europe, leaving five people dead and several injured in the Czech
Republic, Austria, Germany and Poland.
(AP, 10/29/17)
2017 Oct 31, German police
arrested a Syrian (19) suspected of planning an Islamist-motivated
bomb attack in Germany with the aim of killing as many people as
possible. Yamen A. was arrested in the early hours in the
northeastern town of Schwerin.
(Reuters, 10/31/17)
2017 Nov 2, Volkswagen’s
premium carmaker Audi said it would recall 4,997 of its A8 model
vehicles with V8 diesel engines in Europe to update software after
it found they emitted too much nitrogen oxide.
(Reuters, 11/2/17)
2017 Nov 3, Britain, Canada,
Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands issued a statement late today
critical of Egypt’s detention of Ibrahim Metwaly, who was helping
investigate the 2016 murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni.
Metwaly was taken by airport security in September while heading to
Geneva to attend a UN conference on enforced disappearances.
(Reuters, 11/5/17)
2017 Nov 4, In Germany some 25
thousand demonstrators marched through Bonn to protest the use of
fossil fuels ahead of a global climate conference being held in the
western German city next week.
(AP, 11/4/17)(SSFC, 11/5/17, p.A4)
2017 Nov 5, In Germany more
than 2,500 anti-coal demonstrators protested in the western town of
Kerpen and at a nearby surface-mining site before an upcoming global
climate conference in Bonn.
(AP, 11/5/17)
2017 Nov 6, The UN said this
year will be among the three hottest on record, as almost 200
countries began talks in Germany to bolster a global climate accord
that the United States plans to quit.
(Reuters, 11/6/17)
2017 Nov 7, Syria said at UN
climate talks in Bonn that it would join the Paris Agreement,
leaving the United States as the only nation to say it will remain
outside the landmark treaty.
(AFP, 11/7/17)
2017 Nov 8, Germany's highest
court decided that people must be allowed to be entered in official
records as neither male nor female, saying in a published ruling
that authorities should create a third identity or scrap gender
entries altogether.
(AP, 11/8/17)
2017 Nov 9, In Germany a Swiss
man (Daniel M.) was given a 22-month suspended prison sentence for
spying on German tax officials between July 2011 and February 2015.
(AP, 11/9/17)
2017 Nov 9, German police
detained a 29-year-old man suspected of trading narcotic drugs
internationally over the internet through anonymous websites and
sending them by mail to customers in Germany. A day earlier, in
Ingolstadt in Bavaria, police had arrested a man who had ordered
marijuana and amphetamines. In cooperation with Dutch authorities,
police soon seized 400,000 euros ($470,840) and 75 kg (165 lb) of
ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine, amphetamine and heroin at the
apartments of the suspect and at his mother in the Netherlands.
(Reuters, 11/22/17)
2017 Nov 9, A coalition of US
cities, companies and other groups said that many in the United
States remained committed to the 2015 Paris climate agreement
despite plans by US President Donald Trump to pull out. The
coalition opened a 2,500-square meter tent pavilion outside the
COP23 UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn.
(AP, 11/9/17)
2017 Nov 13, German police
published videos showing three former members of the Red Army
Faction (RAF) militant group taking part in a 2016 armed robbery in
northern Germany, and called for public help to track them down.
(Reuters, 11/13/17)
2017 Nov 14, Brazil’s
government said Germany and Britain will provide a combined $153
million to expand programs to fight climate change and deforestation
in the Amazon rainforest.
(Reuters, 11/14/17)
2017 Nov 16, German police said
they have arrested a Dutch man earlier this week accused of running
an international narcotics business from his apartment, after
seizing drugs with an estimated street value of 3 million euros
($3.5 million).
(AP, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 16, In Germany
delegates at UN climate talks in Bonn said at least 15 countries
have joined an international alliance to phase out coal from power
generation before 2030. China and 18 other nations representing half
the world's population said they planned to increase the use of wood
and other plant matter from sustainable sources to generate energy
as part of efforts to limit climate change.
(Reuters, 11/16/17)
2017 Nov 17, In Germany global
talks on curbing climate change wrapped up, with delegates and
observers claiming progress on several key details of the 2015 Paris
accord.
(AP, 11/17/17)
2017 Nov 18, In Germany
hundreds of people formed a human chain between the United States
and North Korean embassies in downtown Berlin during a protest of
the rising tensions and harsh words between the two nations.
(AP, 11/18/17)
2017 Nov 19, In Germany
coalition talks to form a new government failed late today.
(Reuters, 11/20/17)
2017 Nov 21, German police
displayed around 100 recovered items that belonged to late Beatles
star John Lennon that were stolen in 2006 from his widow in New
York. Police a day earlier arrested a suspect and raided his Berlin
home and cars. A second suspect, who is living in Turkey, was
currently not available.
(AP, 11/21/17)
2017 Nov 28, Airbus, Siemens
and Rolls-Royce said they are teaming up to develop a hybrid
passenger plane that would use a single electric turbofan along with
three conventional jet engines running on aviation fuel.
(AP, 11/28/17)
2017 Dec 3, In western Germany
a fire in a multi-story apartment building killed at least four
people and left 23 others injured so far in the city of
Saarbruecken.
(AP, 12/3/17)
2017 Dec 4, Ragia Omran, a
prominent Egyptian human rights lawyer, was among 15 rights
defenders from around the world to receive the Franco-German Prize
for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, for her work representing
political prisoners and torture victims as well as advocating for
women's rights.
(http://tinyurl.com/y9acyam7)(AP, 12/7/17)
2017 Dec 8, In Germany French
President Emmanuel Macron was awarded Aachen’s prestigious
International Charlemagne Prize for contributions to European unity
in recognition of his "vision of a new Europe."
(AP, 12/7/17)
2017 Dec 8, Britain, France,
Germany, Sweden and Italy called on the United States to put forward
detailed proposals for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and
described as "unhelpful" a decision by President Donald Trump to
recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
(Reuters, 12/8/17)
2017 Dec 9, In Germany the
Swedish comedy "The Square" swept this year's European Film Awards
in Berlin, winning six prizes, including for best film, director and
screenwriter. This year's best actress award went to Alexandra
Borbely of Slovakia for her role in "On Body and Soul."
(AP, 12/10/17)
2017 Dec 10, The head of
Germany's domestic intelligence agency said the number of Islamic
radicals is growing and becoming increasingly difficult to keep
under surveillance as recruiting efforts move underground. He also
warned that China is allegedly using social networks to try to
cultivate lawmakers and other officials as sources.
(AP, 12/10/17)(AP, 12/11/17)
2017 Dec 12, German lawmakers
extended the military's participation in missions against the
Islamic State group and in Afghanistan, Mali and Iraq until the
spring of 2018.
(AP, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 12, Germany's KBA
automotive watchdog announced a recall of Volkswagen's flagship
European sport-utility vehicles (SUV) with 3-litre diesel engines
after detecting two illicit emissions control devices in the models.
(Reuters, 12/12/17)
2017 Dec 13, The Dutch
government said it is joining Austria's lawsuit against Germany at
the European Court of Justice over plans for a road toll for foreign
drivers.
(Reuters, 12/13/17)
2017 Dec 18, German government
officials said Turkey has released German journalist Mesale Tolu
after nearly eight months in prison on the condition that she does
not leave the country.
(AP, 12/18/17)
2017 Dec 19, German authorities
arrested an Afghan man (21) accused of being a member of the
Taliban. Jabar N. told investigators he left Afghanistan via Iran,
Turkey and Greece in the summer of 2015.
(AP, 12/20/17)
2017 Dec 20, The European
Union's top court ruled that the bloc's divorce regulations don't
cover private agreements, throwing a case back to a Munich court to
decide whether to recognize a divorce granted under religious Sharia
law to a couple who are both Syrian-German.
(AP, 12/20/17)
2017 Dec 21, The EU approved a
deal that will see Lufthansa take over part of defunct Air Berlin,
formerly the second-largest carrier in Germany.
(AP, 12/21/17)
2017 Dec 22, In Germany a
Romanian truck driver was convicted of murder and rape in the
killing last year of a woman (27) who was out jogging in a forest in
Endingen. Austria sought the man's extradition for a further trial
there over the killing in 2014 of a French female student in
Kufstein.
(AP, 12/22/17)
2017 Dec 25, German billionaire
Erich Kellerhals (78), co-founder of electronics retail giant Media
Markt and a major shareholder in its current owner Ceconomy, died.
(Reuters, 12/28/17)
2017 Dec 27, In Germany an
Afghan asylum-seeker (15) fatally stabbed his ex-girlfriend, a
German of the same age, in a drugstore in Kandel. The suspect was
taken into custody on suspicion of manslaughter.
(AP, 12/28/17)
2017 Dec 28, In Germany four
men used a hammer to break down part of a concrete wall at the
Ploetzensee prison before climbing over a barbed-wire fence. On Jan.
2 one of the escapees turned himself in.
(AP, 12/28/17)(AP, 1/2/18)
2017 Dec 29, Germany's
constitutional court ruled that Oskar Groening (96) must go to jail
over his role in mass murders committed at the Nazi death camp at
Auschwitz during World War Two, refusing to overturn a lower court
ruling.
(Reuters, 12/29/17)
2018 Jan 1, German police said
that a man (35) died after igniting fireworks, and a 19-year-old
suffered fatal head injuries after he set off a homemade device in
the Brandenburg region outside Berlin. Police in Cologne said there
were seven cases of sexual harassment, while Berlin police reported
13.
(AP, 1/1/18)
2018 Jan 3, In Germany a
government study said violent crime rose by about 10 percent in 2015
and 2016. It attributed more than 90 percent of that to young male
refugees.
(Reuters, 1/3/18)
2018 Jan 4, Germany's highest
civil and criminal court ruled that a transsexual woman, who used
sperm she had banked prior to her sex change to have a baby with her
female partner, cannot be legally registered as the child's mother.
(Reuters, 1/4/18)
2018 Jan 4, South Korea’s
Hyundai Motor Co. said it will begin selling its first self-driving
vehicles by 2021 in partnership with US based self-driving
technology startup Aurora Innovation Inc. Hyundai and Volkswagen
each said they're partnering with Aurora Innovation, a US autonomous
vehicle tech firm led by former executives from Google, Tesla and
Uber.
(AP, 1/4/18)
2018 Jan 6, Germany and
Turkey's foreign ministers agreed to pull out all the stops to
improve ties that have soured due to disputes over Ankara's
post-coup crackdown and the arrests of German citizens in Turkey,
but they stressed differences remain.
(Reuters, 1/6/18)
2018 Jan 8, Germany's powerful
metalworkers' union launched mass strikes over pay and working hours
that could impact a key industry and the shape of labor nationwide.
IG Metall demanded that all workers have the option to temporarily
switch to a 28-hour week in the pursuit of better work-life balance.
(AFP, 1/8/18)
2018 Jan 8, A bid by
International Airlines Group, the parent of British Airways and
Iberia, to acquire much of bankrupt Air Berlin's Niki division hit a
legal stumbling block with an appeals court ruling. The Berlin state
court decided that a Berlin administrative court did not have the
jurisdiction to handle the insolvency of Austria-based Niki and that
it's up to an Austrian court to decide.
(AP, 1/8/18)
2018 Jan 9, German prosecutors
said they had arrested Milorad Obradovic (51), a Bosnian Serb man.
He was suspected of taking part in the illegal detention of around
120 Bosnian Muslim civilians in the village of Miska Glava, near the
northwestern town of Prijedor, in July 1992, and their summary
execution in nearby Ljubija.
(AP, 1/9/18)
2018 Jan 9, In Germany and
Italy 169 people, including mayors, businessmen and local
administrators, were arrested in a large anti-mafia blitz against
clan members who controlled restaurants, garbage collection and
funeral services.
(Reuters, 1/9/18)
2018 Jan 10, Germany's Central
Council of Jews said new migrants to Germany must visit Nazi
concentration camp memorials to help tackle a perceived rise in
anti-Semitism, supporting a proposal by a Palestinian-German
politician.
(Reuters, 1/10/18)
2018 Jan 11, German authorities
said they have arrested eight suspected members of an online
pedophile network in what they describe as one of the most serious
child sexual abuse cases they ever investigated. All the arrests
occurred last fall.
(AP, 1/11/18)
2018 Jan 11, A German federal
court overturned the acquittal of seven men who posed as a
self-styled "Sharia police" in Wuppertal, ordering a retrial on
charges that they violated rules on wearing uniforms.
(AP, 1/11/18)
2018 Jan 12, In Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Social Democrat (SPD) reached a deal
that paves the way for a coalition government, saying its
provisional terms were good for Europe.
(Reuters, 1/12/18)
2018 Jan 13, Left-wing German
Social Democrats lobbied party members against joining Chancellor
Angela Merkel's conservatives in a re-run of their 2013-2017
alliance, a week before delegates are asked to back a coalition
blueprint.
(Reuters, 1/13/18)
2018 Jan 14, Germany's defense
minister says her country is delivering millions of dollars' worth
of equipment to Jordan's military to improve the kingdom's border
surveillance.
(AP, 1/14/18)
2018 Jan 15, It was reported
that Japan's Softbank is investing 460 million euros ($558 million)
in German used car trading platform AUTO1. The Berlin-based company
was launched in 2012 and operates in over 30 countries, selling more
than 40,000 cars a month on its associated sites.
(AP, 1/15/18)
2018 Jan 17, Germany and Poland
said they would consider setting up a commission to explore Polish
calls for reparations for German actions during World War Two.
(Reuters, 1/17/18)
2018 Jan 17, A copy of
Lithuania's 1918 Independence Act found in German archives was
returned to the Baltic country, but only on loan, to be returned in
2023.
(AP, 1/17/18)
2018 Jan 18, German railway
operator Deutsche Bahn suspended all long-distance rail service
across Germany due to a powerful storm blowing across Germany and
the Netherlands.
(Reuters, 1/18/18)
2018 Jan 18, In the Netherlands
at least 260 flights were scrapped and falling roof tiles led to the
closure of airport terminals as powerful winds toppled trees and
blew trucks off the road. Three people were killed in the
Netherlands, three in Germany and one person in Belgium.
(Reuters, 1/18/18)(AFP, 1/18/18)(SFC,
1/19/18, p.A5)
2018 Jan 19, In Germany a man
identified only as Philipp K. (33), who sold the pistol used by a
teenager in a deadly 2016 shooting rampage in Munich, was convicted
of involuntary manslaughter and other offenses and was sentenced to
seven years in prison.
(AP, 1/19/18)
2018 Jan 21, Germany's Social
Democrats (SPD) voted to begin formal coalition talks with
Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, moving Europe's economic
powerhouse one step closer to a stable government after months of
political deadlock.
(Reuters, 1/21/18)
2018 Jan 21, French President
Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to agree
on a new French-German treaty this year to deepen cooperation
between the two countries.
(AP, 1/21/18)
2018 Jan 22, German and French
lawmakers stressed the need for closer cooperation between the two
nations as they mark the 55th anniversary of the 1963 signing of the
Elysee friendship treaty.
(AP, 1/22/18)
2018 Jan 22, German public
prosecutors said they had brought new charges against former nurse
Niels Hoegel, already serving a life sentence for murdering two
patients, accusing him of killing another 97 people with lethal
injections.
(Reuters, 1/22/18)(SFC, 1/23/18, p.A2)
2018 Jan 23, In Germany a small
aircraft crashed midair with a helicopter northwest of Stuttgart,
killing four people.
(AP, 1/23/18)
2018 Jan 24, In Germany named
as Amaechi Fred O. (27), a Nigerian man suspected of being a member
of Boko Haram and killing people in Nigeria during attacks on
schools and a village, was arrested in Bavaria.
(Reuters, 1/26/18)
2018 Jan 25, It was reported
that Germany's caretaker government has decided to put on hold any
decision on upgrading German-made tanks in Turkey as requested by
its NATO ally Ankara.
(Reuters, 1/25/18)
2018 Jan 27, German police shut
down a tense demonstration in Cologne, after around 15,000 Kurds
took to the streets to protest Turkey's offensive in northern Syria.
(AFP, 1/27/18)
2018 Jan 29, The German
government dismissed as unjustifiable any auto emissions testing on
monkeys or people. German daily Stuttgarter Zeitung reported at the
weekend that a research organization funded by German carmakers
sponsored scientific experiments testing nitrogen dioxide, a gas
found in exhaust fumes, on people.
(Reuters, 1/29/18)
2018 Jan 30, In Lebanon German
Pres. Frank-Walter Steinmeier met with Lebanese PM Saad Hariri in
Beirut, where they discussed Berlin's participation in upcoming
international conferences aimed at shoring up Lebanon's security
forces and boosting its economy. Steinmeier also met with local
Christian and Muslim spiritual leaders on the second day of his
visit.
(AP, 1/30/18)
2018 Jan 31, In Germany Marcel
Hesse (20) was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison
for killing a child and a 22-year-old acquaintance last March.
(AP, 1/31/18)
2018 Jan, Two amateur
archeologists found a silver coin on the German island of Ruegen.
The state's archeology office became involved and soon uncovered
hundreds of silver coins linked to the 10th century reign of Danish
King Harald Gormsson.
(SFC, 4/17/18, p.A2)
2018 Feb 1, German lawmakers
approved a measure extending rules limiting migrants' rights to
bring close relatives to the country, paving the way for a new
migrant plan this summer.
(AP, 2/1/18)
2018 Feb 1, German police
arrested six members of the far right National Democratic Party
(NDP), who were handing out tear gas bottles and flyers in the
eastern city of Cottbus and said they were stepping up security
ahead of an anti-refugee protest there on February 3.
(Reuters, 2/1/18)
2018 Feb 1, Industrial workers
in Germany began a second day of 24-hour strikes over pay and
working hours, affecting companies including carmakers VW and Ford .
(Reuters, 2/1/18)
2018 Feb 2, Weekly magazine Der
Spiegel reported that Germany has granted asylum to four Turkish
soldiers, including one Ankara accuses of playing a leading role in
the failed military coup of July 2016, in a new setback for
relations between the two countries.
(Reuters, 2/2/18)
2018 Feb 2, In northwest
Germany a mosque in the town of Oer-Erkenschwick may no longer
broadcast its Friday midday call to prayer by loudspeaker for now
after a local court upheld a challenge by a couple who live nearly 1
km (1,000 yards) away.
(Reuters, 2/2/18)
2018 Feb 2, Car factories
across Germany were at a standstill as industrial workers staged a
third day of 24-hour strikes, focusing on plants owned by
Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Audi and BMW.
(Reuters, 2/2/18)
2018 Feb 3, The head of
Germany's domestic intelligence agency said North Korea has used its
embassy in Berlin to acquire equipment apparently intended for its
missile or nuclear programs.
(AP, 2/3/18)
2018 Feb 3, Arab refugees and
Germans carrying pro-immigrant and anti-fascism placards marched in
Cottbus to denounce what they say are attempts by far-right groups
to stoke tension in the eastern city after two knife attacks by
Syrian teenagers.
(Reuters, 2/3/18)
2018 Feb 4, In Germany US
soldier 1st Sgt. Nicholas S. Amsberry (34), who was deployed to
Europe as part of a mission to reassure eastern European allies, was
found dead near a train station in the town of Parsberg.
(AP, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 5, In southwestern
Germany a family of four was found dead in Esslingen. Police said
their house had elevated carbon monoxide levels.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 5, Software maker
NVIDIA and German auto parts supplier Continental said they are
teaming to build a self-driving vehicle system that will hit the
market in 2021.
(AP, 2/5/18)
2018 Feb 6, Germany's biggest
industrial union and employers reached a wage deal that gives
workers the equivalent of 3.5 percent annual raises over 27 months
and the chance to work a 28-hour week for up to two years.
(AP, 2/6/18)
2018 Feb 7, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel's conservatives made major concessions to the
center-left Social Democrats (SPD) to agree a coalition deal that
should give Europe's powerhouse a new government after four months
of uncertainty. Merkel handed her Social Democrat (SPD) coalition
partners control of the finance ministry, giving them license to
spend a record budget surplus, and embracing their demands for
European reform.
(Reuters, 2/7/18)
2018 Feb 8, The Christian
Social Union (CSU), the smallest partner in Germany's prospective
new government, signed off on the coalition deal giving Chancellor
Angela Merkel a stable government for her fourth term.
(AP, 2/8/18)
2018 Feb 12, In Germany
millions of dressed-up revelers and schoolchildren took to the
streets across the country to celebrate Carnival with elaborate
costumes and fervor.
(AP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 12, Germany’s dpa news
agency reported that a local court has ruled that Facebook's
insistence that users provide their real names violates the
country's data protection laws.
(AP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 12, In Germany several
people died after a truck struck two cars on the A5 Autobahn,
pushing the smaller vehicles under another tractor-trailer near
Walldorf.
(AP, 2/12/18)
2018 Feb 16, In southern
Germany dozens of world leaders, top defense officials and diplomats
gathered for the Munich Security Conference amid growing strains
between the US and other NATO nations and Russia over the conflicts
in Syria and Ukraine.
(AP, 2/16/18)
2018 Feb 16, At the Munich
Security Conference the defense ministers of Germany and France
pledged to redouble their military and foreign policy cooperation
efforts, inviting other European countries to participate if they
felt ready to do so.
(Reuters, 2/16/18)
2018 Feb 21, In Germany John
Ausonius (64), one of Sweden's most notorious criminals, was
sentenced to life in prison by a Frankfurt court for a murder he was
convicted of having committed in Frankfurt more than 25 years ago.
(Reuters, 2/21/18)
2018 Feb 21, Scientists in
Germany who developed a new way to make a key malaria drug several
years ago said they have come up with a technique to make the
process even more efficient, which should increase global access and
reduce the cost.
(AP, 2/21/18)
2018 Feb 22, Germany said it is
withdrawing a system of special visa treatment for Cambodian
officials, including PM Hun Sen and his family, citing the southeast
Asian country's crackdown on the opposition.
(AP, 2/22/18)
2018 Feb 22, A court in
southeastern Germany has sentenced a former Catholic priest to 8½
years in prison for child sex abuse. The court found the defendant
guilty of abusing five boys on more than 100 occasions since the
mid-1990s. The man was previously imprisoned for sexual offenses
from 2003 to 2009. A church court expelled him from the priesthood
in 2008.
(AP, 2/22/18)
2018 Feb 23, In western Germany
a food bank in Essen drew widespread criticism for its decision to
stop giving access cards to foreigners, who it says make up a
growing percentage of its users. The move was hailed by some
far-right groups.
(AP, 2/23/18)
2018 Feb 23, Germany said
another of its citizens has been released from jail in Turkey, a
week after German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel was freed from
detention in a move that helped to ease tensions between the two
NATO allies.
(Reuters, 2/23/18)
2018 Feb 26, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel's conservatives approved a coalition deal with the
Social Democrats (SPD), bringing closer a fourth term for her as
well as an end to political limbo in Europe's preeminent power.
(Reuters, 2/26/18)
2018 Feb 27, A top German court
ruled that cities can impose diesel driving bans to combat air
pollution, a landmark decision that plunges millions of drivers into
uncertainty.
(AFP, 2/27/18)
2018 Feb 28, Germany said
security officials were investigating an isolated attack on its
government computer networks, but the incident had been brought
under control.
(Reuters, 3/1/18)
2018 Mar 1, In Germany a top
interior ministry official said security officials allowed hackers
"controlled" access to government networks in order to track
possible culprits and their methods, as outraged lawmakers
complained about being kept in the dark.
(Reuters, 3/1/18)
2018 Mar 1, In Germany police
arrested Russian businessman Andrei Kovalchuk (49), accused of
smuggling nearly 400 kg of cocaine from Argentina into Russia.
(AP, 3/2/18)
2018 Mar 2, Police in western
Germany arrested a leading member of the Italian mafia who is wanted
in his home country since 2013.
(AP, 3/2/18)
2018 Mar 2, Turkey requested
that German authorities detain and extradite wanted Syrian Kurdish
politician Salih Muslim, the former co-chair of the Democratic Union
Party, or PYD.
(AP, 3/5/18)
2018 Mar 4, Germany's Social
Democrats (SPD) decisively backed another coalition with Chancellor
Angela Merkel's conservatives, clearing the way for a new government
in Europe's largest economy after months of political uncertainty.
(Reuters, 3/4/18)
2018 Mar 7, A German court
sentenced seven men and one woman to four to 10 years in jail for
founding the far-right terrorist “Freital Group” responsible for
attempted murder and bomb attacks on refugee shelters and
politicians in the former Communist East.
(Reuters, 3/7/18)
2018 Mar 7, German prosecutors
said they have indicted a Vietnamese man (47) on suspicion of
espionage and involvement in the kidnap former Vietnamese oil
executive Trinh Xuan Thanh and a woman accompanying him in Berlin
last year.
(AP, 3/7/18)
2018 Mar 7, German and Romanian
officials raided homes and hotels in both countries to smash an
illegal migrant trafficking ring they said was one of the biggest of
its kind in Europe.
(AP, 3/7/18)
2018 Mar 7, Germany’s Cabinet
agreed to extend six overseas military missions, including its
long-running operation in Afghanistan. It will increase the maximum
number of troops deployed as part of the international "Resolute
Support" mission by 320 to 1,300.
(AP, 3/7/18)
2018 Mar 7, Germany deported a
group of Egyptians to Cairo over violations of residency
requirements, including those whose asylum requests were rejected.
(AP, 3/8/18)
2018 Mar 7, European police
said they have smashed an international weapons-smuggling ring
operating in at least four countries. Police said the group traded
firearms in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and France.
(AP, 3/7/18)
2018 Mar 8, Germany’s the
Federal Environmental Agency said some 6,000 early deaths linked to
nitrogen oxides (NOx) are recorded each year in the country.
(AP, 3/8/18)
2018 Mar 11, In Germany a
mosque in the Reinickendorf district of Berlin was set ablaze early
today, likely by three teenagers. Firebombs were also thrown at a
Turkish immigrants' association in the western town of Meschede.
(AP, 3/11/18)
2018 Mar 11, Cardinal Karl
Lehmann (81), the former head of Germany's Catholic Bishops
Conference, died at his home in Mainz.
(AP, 3/11/18)
2018 Mar 14, German lawmakers
voted to re-elect Angela Merkel as chancellor for a fourth term,
that may prove her most challenging yet as she takes charge of a
fragile coalition with her personal standing diminished.
(Reuters, 3/14/18)
2018 Mar 14, German industrial
group Siemens announced plans to invest a billion euros in Brazil
over the next five years.
(AFP, 3/14/18)
2018 Mar 15, The leaders of the
United States, France and Germany joined Britain in blaming Russia
for poisoning a former spy with a powerful nerve agent.
(AP, 3/15/18)
2018 Mar 21, German authorities
confirmed outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N6 bird flu type at a
farm off the German North Sea coast. The virus was found on a farm
of with 57 chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese on the island of
Hallig Suederoog. All the birds on the farm have been culled.
(Reuters, 3/21/18)
2018 Mar 21, The European Union
approved Bayer's $57 billion buyout of Monsanto in a massive
agriculture business deal, but said they will have to shed over $7.4
billion in firms and other remedies to ensure fair competition in
the market.
(AP, 3/21/18)
2018 Mar 22, A German court
sentenced Afghan migrant Hussein K. to life in prison for raping and
murdering a university student in Freiburg in 2016.
(Reuters, 3/22/18)
2018 Mar 23, In Germany the
decapitated body of Gerd Michael Straten (59), a homeless former
picture framer, was discovered at main cemetery on Koblenz, where he
regularly spent the night. Police later offered a 10,000 euro
($12,400) reward for information about the killing.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 25, Carles Puigdemont,
the fugitive ex-leader of Catalonia and ardent separatist, was
arrested by German police on an international warrant as he tried to
enter the country from Denmark. Puigdemont faces charges in Spain
including rebellion that could put him in prison for up to 30 years.
(AP, 3/25/18)
2018 Mar 28, German police
searched the homes of 10 people suspected of providing support to
the far-right extremist "Freital Group" in the states of Saxony,
Lower Saxony and Bavaria.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 28, German Automakers
Daimler and BMW said they agreed to merge their transportation
services businesses, so they can expand offerings in ride-hailing
apps, car-sharing, parking, and charging electric cars.
(AP, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 29, German police
seized 16 kilos (35.3 pounds) of cocaine with a street value of
678,000 euros ($833,000) during a check on a highway near the Dutch
border. They found the drugs hidden in an Italian-registered Volvo
being driven along the A61 highway near Moenchengladbach by a
28-year-old Albanian man.
(AP, 4/4/18)
2018 Mar 29, It was reported
that Volkswagen AG has paid more than $7.4 billion to buy back about
350,000 US diesel vehicles through mid-February. The German
automaker has been storing hundreds of thousands of vehicles around
the US for months.
(Reuters, 3/28/18)
2018 Mar 30, Russia ordered new
cuts to the number of British envoys in the country, escalating a
dispute with the West over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain.
Scores of foreign ambassadors streamed into the Russian Foreign
Ministry in Moscow to receive the notices given to 23 nations:
Albania, Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark,
Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia,
Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland,
Romania, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine.
(AP, 3/30/18)
2018 Mar 31, In Germany a bus
driver was killed and 18 other people were injured when the bus
drove into a truck on a Bavarian highway early today.
(AP, 3/31/18)
2018 Apr 1, In Germany hundreds
of Catalan independence supporters marched in Berlin to demand the
release of ex-regional president Carles Puigdemont, who was arrested
in Germany last week and faces extradition to Spain on rebellion
charges.
(AFP, 4/1/18)
2018 Apr 2, Israel announced it
had reached a deal with the UN refugee agency to cancel a
controversial plan to deport African migrants and replace it with a
new one that will see thousands sent to Western countries. PM
Benjamin Netanyahu said that Canada, Italy and Germany will take in
some of Israel's African migrants under an agreement Israel reached
with the UN refugee agency.
(AfP, 4/2/18)(Reuters, 4/2/18)
2018 Apr 3, The Essen food bank
in western Germany reversed a three-month old decision to prevent
more foreigners from accessing its services, a move that drew
criticism from aid groups and politicians.
(AP, 4/3/18)
2018 Apr 4, A Berlin court
convicted two Romanian men (29) of killing an Angora goat at the
Hasenheide petting zoo in February, following a trial in which the
defendants testified that they had been hungry.
(AP, 4/4/18)
2018 Apr 5, In Antarctica
German scientists said they have harvested their first crop of
vegetables grown without earth, daylight or pesticides as part of a
project designed to help astronauts cultivate fresh food on other
planets.
(AP, 4/5/18)
2018 Apr 6, In Germany former
Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont walked out of a prison after
posting 75,000 euros ($92,000) bail, demanding that Spanish
authorities release fellow Catalan separatists and open a dialogue
on his region's future.
(AP, 4/6/18)
2018 Apr 7, In Germany Jens
Ruether (48) drove a camper van into a group of people sitting
outside a restaurant in Muenster, killing two people. He then shot
himself dead. Authorities later said Ruether acted alone and appears
to have had mental health problems. A third person died three weeks
later from injuries sustained in the crash.
(Reuters, 4/8/18)(AP, 4/26/18)
2018 Apr 7, In Switzerland
Karl-Erivan Haub (58), heir to the German Tengelmann retail empire,
disappeared in Zermatt while training for a ski mountaineering race
on the famous Matterhorn peak. A search for him was officially
called off after six months.
(AP, 4/11/18)(AP, 10/11/18)
2018 Apr 8, German police
raided the homes of suspected members of a far-right group in Berlin
and in the states of Brandenburg and Thueringia, searching for
weapons. The investigators believed the suspects are members of the
Reichsbuerger (Citizens of the Reich) group, who do not recognize
modern-day Germany as a legitimate state.
(Reuters, 4/8/18)
2018 Apr 9, In Germany six men
detained over concerns about a possible attack on Berlin's
half-marathon were released after investigators found no concrete
evidence to back their initial suspicions.
(AP, 4/9/18)
2018 Apr 9, In southern Germany
an employee at an airfield died after being hit by flying debris
when the rotor blades of a military helicopter collided with the
facility's control tower at the Hassfurt-Schweinfurt airfield.
(AP, 4/10/18)
2018 Apr 10, In Germany tens of
thousands of air passengers were stranded as workers at airlines
Lufthansa staged strikes that crippled traffic.
(AFP, 4/10/18)
2018 Apr 11, In Germany trade
unions piled more pressure on public sector employers with a second
day of nationwide wage strikes, as more than 25,000 workers staged
walkouts at hospitals, childcare centers and waste depots.
(Reuters, 4/11/18)
2018 Apr 12, In Germany a woman
(34) and her 1-year-old daughter died after being stabbed at a busy
subway station in central Hamburg. The suspected assailant (33), the
woman's ex-husband from Niger, was arrested.
(AP, 4/12/18)
2018 Apr 12, In Germany Herbert
Diess (59) was named as the new boss of VW, replacing longtime
insider Matthias Mueller.
(AP, 4/13/18)
2018 Apr 13, In Germany police
in the central city of Fulda shot dead a young Afghan refugee (19)
who went on a violent rampage in a bakery.
(AFP, 4/13/18)
2018 Apr 20, In eastern Germany
several hundred neo-Nazis gathered for a far-right rock festival in
Ostritz on Adolf Hitler's birthday. Many local residents took a
stance against them by attending a festival for peace.
(Reuters, 4/21/18)
2018 Apr 21, It was reported
that Ireland-based Smyths Toys has reached a deal to take over more
than 90 Toys R Us stores in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
(AP, 4/21/18)
2018 Apr 22, Germany's Social
Democrats (SPD) elected Andrea Nahles (47) as their first ever
female leader, hoping she can reinvigorate the country's oldest
party after it suffered heavy losses in September's election.
(Reuters, 4/22/18)
2018 Apr 24, Germany-based Audi
said it is recalling about 1.2 million cars and SUVs worldwide
because the electric coolant pumps can overeat and possibly cause a
fire.
(AP, 4/24/18)
2018 Apr 25, Germans of various
faiths donned kippas, Jewish skullcaps, and took to the streets in
several cities to protest an anti-Semitic attack in Berlin and
express fears about growing hatred of Jews in the country.
(AP, 4/25/18)
2018 Apr 26, German and French
officials signed four documents in Berlin that they said underscored
their determination to work together to jointly develop new weapons
systems, including a maritime airborne warfare aircraft and a new
fighter jet.
(Reuters, 4/26/18)
2018 Apr 27, The German
government said a Syrian presidential decree on real estate
registration is a "cynical plan" designed to confiscate refugees'
property. The decree, which ran in state-run media this month, gives
property owners in certain parts of Syria one month to provide
ownership deeds or face having their property confiscated.
(AP, 4/27/18)
2018 Apr 27, US Pres. Donald
Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel aired differences over
trade and NATO at a White House meeting where they tried to put on a
show of warmth and friendship. Merkel faced an uphill struggle to
save the Iran nuclear deal, avoid a trade war and make her
relationship with the US president functional again.
(AFP, 4/27/18)(Reuters, 4/28/18)
2018 Apr 29, Sprint and
T-Mobile announced that they had reached a deal to merge. Deutsche
Telekom would own roughly 43 percent of the combined businesses.
(SFC, 4/30/18, p.A7)
2018 Apr 30, A leading German
nationalist politician won a court injunction forcing Facebook to
ensure a user's slur against her can't be seen in Germany.
(AP, 4/30/18)
2018 May 1, Tens of thousands
of workers marched across Germany and Austria rallying for their
rights in the face of globalization.
(AP, 5/1/18)
2018 May 3, Hundreds of German
police officers raided a refugee shelter in the southern town of
Ellwangen, days after an angry mob of migrants prevented authorities
from deporting a 23-year-old man from Togo.
(AP, 5/3/18)
2018 May 4, Munich-based
Allianz said it will stop insuring coal-fired power plants and coal
mines as part of its contribution to combating climate change.
(AP, 5/4/18)
2018 May 4, Albanian police
said Arber Cekaj, owner of the Arbi Garden company, has been
arrested near Duesseldorf. His company owned a container with 613 kg
(1,350 pounds) of cocaine that was discovered in February.
(AP, 5/4/18)
2018 May 5, In Germany a larger
than life statue of Communist philosopher Karl Marx was unveiled on
the 200th anniversary of his birth in the western town of Trier. The
4.4-meter (14-foot) bronze statue of Marx was donated by China.
(AP, 5/5/18)
2018 May 7, In Germany a crash
between a freight train and a passenger train killed two people in
Bavaria. A controller (24) was soon detained over the death of a
train driver and a female passenger (73).
(Reuters, 5/8/18)
2018 May 8, In northern Germany
about 800 police officers raided properties overnight and into the
morning arresting three men suspected of belonging to a gang of
human traffickers with links to a right-wing radical movement.
(Reuters, 5/8/18)
2018 May 8, German luxury
carmaker Audi said it had detected "irregularities" in the emissions
controls of recent A6/A7 models, prompting it to halt deliveries in
the latest twist in the "dieselgate" scandal dogging parent company
Volkswagen.
(AFP, 5/8/18)
2018 May 9, Chancellor Angela
Merkel's cabinet agreed on rules to allow a limited number of family
members to join migrants in Germany, ending a long-standing dispute
between the parties in her two-month old right-left coalition.
(Reuters, 5/9/18)
2018 May 9, Germany's foreign
minister vowed to work to preserve the Iran nuclear deal and prevent
an "uncontrolled escalation" of tensions in the Middle East. The
Federation of German Industries, or BDI, said it rejects "the
extraterritorial application of sanctions" and called upon the EU to
find a solution to protect European companies from the "unlawful and
unilateral" application of US sanctions.
(AP, 5/9/18)
2018 May 10, In Germany a
gathering of almost 180 nations made slow progress on a "rule book"
for a global climate accord at talks ending today and agreed to a
new round of negotiations to break a diplomatic logjam before a
year-end deadline for a deal.
(Reuters, 5/10/18)
2018 May 15, Germany's police
raided 20 flats in Berlin and Brandenburg and arrested three men
suspected of being members of a gang smuggling Vietnamese people
into the country.
(Reuters, 5/15/18)
2018 May 15, The Open Society
Foundations of billionaire philanthropist, George Soros, said it is
relocating its headquarters to Berlin from Budapest in the wake of
an "increasingly repressive" environment in Hungary.
(AP, 5/15/18)
2018 May 17, German media
reported that the country's foreign intelligence service secured a
sample of the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok in the 1990s and
passed on its knowledge to partners including Britain and the US.
(AP, 5/17/18)
2018 May 18, Germany's top
administrative court confirmed that local cities are entitled to ban
older diesel vehicles from streets with immediate effect to bring
air pollution levels in line with European Union rules.
(Reuters, 5/18/18)
2018 May 19, In Germany two
people were reported killed in a shooting near the southwestern city
of Saarbruecken. Police said it was a domestic incident.
(AP, 5/19/18)
2018 May 22, In Germany Susanna
Feldman (14), a member of the Jewish community in Mainz, went
missing. Her body was found June 6 on the outskirts of Wiesbaden.
Police sought a fugitive Iraqi asylum-seeker and on June 6 arrested
a Turkish man.
(AP, 6/7/18)
2018 May 23, Germany's interior
minister banned a local branch of the Federal Office for Migration
and Refugees from making asylum decisions amid a widening scandal
over the allegedly improper granting of more than a thousand
requests for asylum.
(AP, 5/23/18)
2018 May 24, Germany's largest
lender Deutsche Bank said it will slash over 7,000 jobs globally and
dramatically scale back its investment banking activities as it
seeks to turn the page on years of losses.
(AFP, 5/24/18)
2018 May 24, Germany-based
car-sharing service car2go said it is indefinitely suspending its
operations in Toronto, Canada, because parking regulations make its
business inoperable. It will suspend operations of the flexible,
short-term rental system on May 31.
(AP, 5/24/18)
2018 May 25, German magazine
Der Spiegel reported that Daimler faces a recall order for more than
600,000 diesel-engine vehicles including C-Class and G-Class models
because of suspected emissions manipulation.
(Reuters, 5/25/18)
2018 May 27, In Germany
thousands of demonstrators for and against the far-right faced off
in mass rival rallies in Berlin, where calls of "We are the people"
were met with chants of "Go away, Nazis" and techno music.
(AFP, 5/27/18)
2018 May 27, In Germany Melanie
Rehberger (30) was found dead in a park next to a railway line in
the north of Berlin, two days after going missing during a work
break. On July 3 Spanish police arrested a 38-year-old suspect and
his extradition to Germany was sought.
(AP, 7/4/18)
2018 May 31, Hamburg became the
first German city to implement a ban on older diesel-powered trucks
and drivers of such vehicles are now prohibited from using two road
sections in the city. Hamburg will uphold the ban until air quality
improves or Chancellor Angela Merkel's government enforces vehicle
retrofits.
(AP, 5/31/18)(Reuters, 5/31/18)
2018 Jun 1, In Germany a
controversial decree requiring Christian crucifixes to be put up at
entrances of most public buildings in Bavaria came into force,
sparking accusations of identity politics ahead of elections in the
state.
(AFP, 6/1/18)
2018 Jun 3, Germany's Pres.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier asked gays for forgiveness for decades of
suffering and injustice they endured as a result of repressive laws
in Germany in the Nazi era and after World War II.
(AP, 6/3/18)
2018 Jun 3, In Germany the
international airport in Hamburg suspended all flights because of a
power outage, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded.
(AP, 6/3/18)
2018 Jun 6, Germany's Transport
Ministry said the motor authority KBA has ordered a recall of Audi
A6 and A7 models with 3.0 liter Euro 6 diesel engines after finding
illegal emissions software in them.
(Reuters, 6/6/18)
2018 Jun 6, German authorities
arrested four Iraqis suspected of membership in the Islamic State
group, including one who is alleged to have carried out attacks
(2006-2008) that killed and wounded US troops.
(AP, 6/7/18)
2018 Jun 7, German
pharmaceutical company Bayer AG said it has completed its purchase
of US seed and weed-killer maker Monsanto Co.
(AP, 6/7/18)
2018 Jun 8, German media
reported that local prosecutors have issued an international arrest
warrant for Jamil Hassan, a top Syrian intelligence officer, accused
of overseeing the torture and murder of hundreds of detainees.
(AFP, 6/8/18)
2018 Jun 8, Kurdish authorities
in northern Iraq detained Ali Bashar (20) on suspicion of raping and
murdering Susanna Feldman (14), a Jewish girl who went missing May
22 in Germany.
(Reuters, 6/8/18)
2018 Jun 8, The United Nations
General Assembly voted to elect Germany, Belgium, South Africa, the
Dominican Republic and Indonesia for a two-year term in the Security
Council starting on Jan. 1, 2019.
(Reuters, 6/8/18)
2018 Jun 8, Vietnamese
authorities released from prison and expelled prominent human rights
lawyer Nguyen Van Dai (49) and dissident Le Thu Ha (36), both of
whom were sent to Germany.
(AP, 6/8/18)
2018 Jun 10, Germany and France
sharply criticized US President Donald Trump's decision to abruptly
withdraw his support for a Group of Seven communique, accusing him
of destroying trust and acting inconsistently.
(Reuters, 6/10/18)
2018 Jun 11, In Germany a young
woman was fatally stabbed in the Casinogarten park in the city of
Viersen and a massive search for the assailant was underway. The
following day a new suspect (17) in the fatal stabbing of a
15-year-old Romanian girl in Viersen turned himself in to police.
(AP, 6/11/18)(AP, 6/12/18)
2018 Jun 11, It was reported
that German building materials maker Knauf is buying American
building products maker USG in an approximately $7 billion deal. USG
will keep its headquarters in Chicago.
(AP, 6/11/18)
2018 Jun 12, German police
arrested a Tunisian man after discovering "toxic substances" at his
flat in Cologne. Der Spiegel soon named the suspect as Sief Allah H.
(29) and said he had been trying to build a bomb containing the
deadly poison ricin using ingredients he bought online.
(AFP, 6/13/18)
2018 Jun 13, In Germany the
regional court in Duesseldorf sentenced a man, identified only as
Saleh A., to seven years in prison after finding him guilty of
membership in foreign terrorist groups, manslaughter and other
charges.
(AP, 6/13/18)
2018 Jun 13, More than 150
German and Danish police officers searched a dozen apartments and
offices in a joint cross-border raid on an illegal human trafficking
network that focused on arranging hundreds of sham marriages.
(AP, 6/13/18)
2018 Jun 13, Germany extradited
Milorad Obradovic (49), a Bosnian Serb, to Bosnia. He was accused of
taking part in the 1992 detention and torture of about 120 Muslim
Bosniaks in the Bosnian war, and personally killing three others.
(Reuters, 6/13/18)
2018 Jun 15, A German court
ruled that investors pushing for damages over a sharp fall in
Volkswagen shares after the carmaker disclosed emissions cheating in
2015 can also seek redress from majority shareholder Porsche SE .
(Reuters, 6/15/18)
2018 Jun 18, Germany's
environment minister said the country will likely miss its goal of
cutting emissions by 40 percent by 2020, an embarrassing admission
for a government that wants to lead the charge on limiting climate
change.
(AP, 6/18/18)
2018 Jun 19, French President
Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel said they
have agreed to set up a common budget for the eurozone.
(AFP, 6/19/18)
2018 Jun 19, Germany-based
reinsurance group Hannover Re said will no longer invest in
companies that earn 25 percent or more of revenue from mining or
burning coal. It said the policy began "some months ago," but
details of the policy are new.
(Reuters, 6/19/18)
2018 Jun 21, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel promised a $100 million loan to troubled Jordan, where
mass protests over austerity measures forced the prime minister to
resign earlier this month.
(AP, 6/21/18)
2018 Jun 23, In western Germany
25 people were injured, four of them severely, when an explosion
destroyed an apartment building late today in the city of Wuppertal.
(AP, 6/24/18)
2018 Jun 24, In Germany
hundreds of protesters marched through Berlin to demand an end to
burning coal to produce electricity.
(AP, 6/24/18)
2018 Jun 24, A majority of 16
of 28 EU national leaders gathered in Brussels for emergency talks
on migration. German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked EU leaders to
stop asylum seekers moving freely around the bloc, an issue that is
threatening her ruling coalition.
(Reuters, 6/24/18)
2018 Jun 25, German officials
said a Tunisian man who allegedly served as a bodyguard to Osama bin
Laden has been detained and is to be deported. Sami A. (41) had
previously successfully argued against his deportation, saying he
risked being tortured in his homeland.
(AFP, 6/25/18)
2018 Jun 26, In southern
Germany a woman and three children were found dead at an apartment
in Gunzenhausen, and the woman's husband was being treated as a
suspect. The children's father (31), was found lying outside the
building with injuries caused by a fall from a great height.
(AP, 6/26/18)
2018 Jun 27, Authorities in
northwestern Germany opened an investigation into 21 deaths at a
company, after a male employee was caught on camera poisoning a
colleague's lunch. Police said they had arrested a suspect (56) in
the town of Schloss Holte-Stukenbroc.
(Reuters, 6/27/18)
2018 Jun 27, The first
Rwandan-made Volkswagen car rolled off the assembly line on at the
country's first auto factory in Kigali. The cars will be mostly for
export to other African nations and will remain unaffordable to the
average Rwandan.
(AFP, 6/27/18)
2018 Jun 30, It was reported
that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has secured agreements with 14
European Union countries to rapidly return some asylum seekers as
she seeks to end a schism in her government over migration policy.
(AP, 6/30/18)
2018 Jul 1, In Germany a
Vienna-based Iranian diplomat, identified later as Assadollah Assadi
(46), was arrested over a suspected plot to carry out a bomb attack
on an exiled Iranian opposition group. French police also detained a
man of Iranian origin in France.
(Reuters, 7/4/18)(AP, 7/4/18)
2018 Jul 2, SpaceX's Dragon
capsule delivered nearly 6,000 pounds of supplies to the Int'l.
Space Station. The supplies included the round AI robot Cimon,
slightly bigger than a basketball, from the German Space Agency
intended to assist German astronaut Alexander Gerst with science
experiments.
(SFC, 7/3/18, p.A7)
2018 Jul 3, In Germany
Wiesbaden prosecutors said that Ali Bashar (20), who's in custody
for the May slaying of Susanna Feldman, is believed to have raped a
11-year-old German girl in a refugee home in March in the western
city. Prosecutors said Bashar and a 14-year-old Afghan boy also
raped the 11-year-old together in May. The Afghan boy is accused of
also raping her another time and was arrested a day earlier.
(AP, 7/3/18)
2018 Jul 4, German authorities
deported 69 Afghans whose asylum requests were rejected back to
their home country.
(AP, 7/4/18)
2018 Jul 6, Germany's top court
ruling that files of unpublished documents about Volkswagen's
emission scandal seized from a US law firm may be reviewed. VW had
hired law firm Jones Day and advisory firm Deloitte to investigate
the issue and look at who was responsible shortly after the
dieselgate scandal broke in September 2015.
(Reuters, 7/6/18)
2018 Jul 6, Meeting in Vienna
top diplomats from Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China
reaffirmed their commitment to the 2015 deal with Iran, known as the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
(AP, 7/6/18)
2018 Jul 7, In Germany
demonstrators marched in Berlin and several other cities in support
of the private aid ships that rescue migrants in the Mediterranean
Sea.
(AP, 7/7/18)
2018 Jul 9, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel and Chinese PM Li Keqiang stressed their commitment to
a multilateral trade system. German companies signed a raft of
agreements with Chinese partners at their meeting in Berlin.
(AP, 7/9/18)(Reuters, 7/9/18)
2018 Jul 10, Germany-based BMW
Group and the biggest Chinese SUV brand, Great Wall Motor, announced
a partnership to produce electric MINI vehicles in China as global
automakers ramp up development under pressure from Beijing.
(AP, 7/10/18)
2018 Jul 11, In Germany Iranian
diplomat Assadollah Assadi, suspected of involvement in a bomb plot
against an Iranian opposition rally in France, was charged with
activity as a foreign agent and conspiracy to commit murder.
(AP, 7/11/18)
2018 Jul 11, In Germany Beate
Zschaepe (43), a member of a neo-Nazi gang, was jailed for life for
her part in the murders of 10 people during a seven-year campaign of
racially-motivated violence.
(Reuters, 7/11/18)
2018 Jul 11, President Donald
Trump barreled into a NATO summit in Brussels with claims that a
pipeline deal has left Germany "totally controlled" and "captive to
Russia" as he lobbed fresh complaints about allies' "delinquent"
defense spending at the opening of what was expected to be a fraught
two-day meeting.
(AP, 7/11/18)
2018 Jul 13, Germany deported a
Tunisian man who allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin
Laden, more than a decade after his asylum bid was first rejected.
He was identified by German authorities only as Sami A. and by Tunis
as Sami Idoudi, and had lived in Germany for more than two decades.
(AP, 7/13/18)
2018 Jul 15, Germany said it
had agreed with Italy to take in 50 of the 450 migrants aboard two
EU border agency vessels, matching similar pledges by France and
Malta.
(AFP, 7/15/18)
2018 Jul 17, Amazon workers in
Germany and Spain called for strikes over salary and working
conditions to coincide with the online retailer's global sales
event, Prime Day.
(AP, 7/17/18)
2018 Jul 18, In Germany a
Vietnamese man admitted in court that he helped his country's secret
services to kidnap a former oil executive in broad daylight from a
Berlin street and smuggle him back to Vietnam last year, where
businessman Trinh Xuan Thanh has been jailed for life for
corruption.
(Reuters, 7/18/18)
2018 Jul 19, In western Germany
Ahmed Massoud (32) was arrested in Duesseldorf after a standoff with
police, who were alerted by the suspect's wife. The woman told
officers that she had received a video call from Massoud in which he
was seen holding their crying daughter (7) and threatening to hurt
the girl. By the time police entered the apartment, the girl was
dead.
(AP, 7/21/18)
2018 Jul 20, In Germany a man
armed with a knife attacked people on a bus in the northern city of
Luebeck, wounding at least 14 people, two seriously, before being
arrested by police.
(Reuters, 7/20/18)
2018 Jul 20, German astronaut
Alexander Gerst played a duet of Kraftwerk's 1978 song "Spacelab"
with the band to cheers from an audience in Stuttgart.
(AP, 7/21/18)
2018 Jul 20, Germany-based
Bayer, the maker of a permanent contraceptive implant subject to
thousands of injury reports and repeated safety restrictions by
regulators, said that it will stop selling Essure in the US, the
only country where it remains available.
(AP, 7/21/18)
2018 Jul 22, In Germany
thousands of people protested in the southern city of Munich against
what they say is the "politics of fear" that is pushing public
debate in the country to the right.
(AP, 7/22/18)
2018 Jul 22, German soccer star
Mesut Ozil announced his decision to quit the national team due to
the "racism and disrespect" he faced over his Turkish roots. This
triggered a bad-tempered public debate about the country's relations
with its largest immigrant community.
(Reuters, 7/23/18)
2018 Jul 24, Germany's domestic
intelligence agency said the number of Germans who reject the
legitimacy of the government has increased sharply over the past 18
months. the Reichsbuerger movement increased to about 16,500 people
last year from about 10,000 in 2016. By July of this year officials
estimated the movement had grown further to about 18,000 people.
(AP, 7/24/18)
2018 Jul 24, German authorities
arrested Yasmin H., the wife of a Tunisian man detained last month,
over a plot to use the toxin ricin to carry out an attack, alleging
that she was an accomplice. Her husband, Sief Allah H., was arrested
on June 12.
(AP, 7/24/18)
2018 Jul 25, A German court
sentenced Long N.H. (47), a Czech-Vietnamese national, to nearly
four years in jail for taking part in a brazen Cold War-style
kidnapping ordered by Hanoi of an oil executive from a Berlin park.
(AFP, 7/25/18)
2018 Jul 27, The German
government said it took a minority stake in electricity transmission
firm 50Hertz for "national security" reasons, thwarting Chinese
investors from buying into the strategic company. 50Hertz is one of
four transmission system operators in Germany and ensures that 18
million people are supplied with electricity.
(AFP, 7/27/18)
2018 Jul 31, In Germany Ralf
Spies (52) was cleared of 12 counts of attempted murder with a
"racist" motive and with causing an explosion in the attack at a
commuter rail station in the western city of Duesseldorf on July 27,
2000.
(AFP, 7/31/18)
2018 Jul 31, German farmers
intensified calls for around 1 billion euros ($1.17 billion) in
special aid after crop damage from a drought and heatwave, but
Berlin said it would wait for an August harvest report before making
a decision.
(Reuters, 7/31/18)
2018 Aug 1, German lawmakers
approved the payment of a final bailout loan instalment to Greece
worth 15 billion euros ($17.6 billion). Greece's third successive
international bailout ends in late August.
(AP, 8/1/18)
2018 Aug 4, In Germany Sahra
Wagenknecht one of the country's most prominent left-wing
politicians, launched a website for the "Aufstehen" ("Stand Up")
movement, with a full official launch to follow next month.
Wagenknecht is a divisive figure even within her own party, in part
for taking a skeptical position on migration.
(AP, 8/4/18)
2018 Aug 7, In southwestern
Germany a mother (48) and her partner were convicted and jailed for
repeatedly raping the woman's young son, now 10, and selling him to
pedophiles on the internet, abusing him for more than two years.
(AP, 8/7/18)
2018 Aug 7, A pharmaceutical
company filed a lawsuit to prevent Nebraska from using lethal
injection drugs next week in what would be the state's first
execution in more than two decades. The federal lawsuit could delay
the Aug. 14 execution of Carey Dean Moore, who was sentenced to
death for killing two Omaha cab drivers in 1979. Germany-based
Fresenius Kabi opposes the use of its drugs in executions.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 8, Germany said it has
reached an agreement with Spain for that country to take back
previously registered migrants who show up at the German border, a
first step toward implementing a deal to defuse a domestic political
dispute over migration.
(AP, 8/8/18)
2018 Aug 10, German police
detained former cyclist and Tour de France champion (1997) Jan
Ullrich (44) for attacking and injuring a prostitute in a Frankfurt
luxury hotel.
(Reuters, 8/10/18)
2018 Aug 10, Ryanair pilots in
several European countries staged a strike over work conditions that
prompted the budget carrier to cancel 400 flights. Walkouts called
by German and Belgian unions accounted for many of the cancelations,
with strikes also called in Sweden and Ireland.
(AP, 8/10/18)
2018 Aug 15, Germany's Cabinet
approved a third gender option for official records that will allow
people to be registered as "diverse," complying with a ruling from
the country's highest court.
(AP, 8/15/18)
2018 Aug 15, German authorities
deported 46 Afghans whose asylum requests were rejected to their
homeland. German authorities have sent 349 people back to
Afghanistan since December 2016.
(AP, 8/15/18)
2018 Aug 17, The German
government said Greece has agreed to take back migrants who apply
for asylum there and later turn up at Germany's border with Austria.
(AP, 8/17/18)
2018 Aug 21, Germany, citing
its "moral duty", took in Jakiw Palij, a 95-year-old former guard at
the Trawniki Nazi labor camp where more than 6,000 people were
killed in 1943, after he was stripped of his US citizenship.
(AFP, 8/21/18)
2018 Aug 22, The German
government said it will compensate thousands of farmers whose
harvests have suffered as a result of this year's extreme drought,
which many experts have linked to climate change.
(AP, 8/22/18)
2018 Aug 22, A man (26) in
Germany died after a AA battery-charging device exploded, firing an
object into the man's chest.
(AP, 8/23/18)
2018 Aug 23, In Germany a
wildfire southwest of Berlin forced the evacuation of residents in
three villages.
(SFC, 8/25/18, p.A2)
2018 Aug 25, In Germany
searchers found the body of a Canadian man who went missing in the
Bavarian Alps on August 2. The remains were found by a fellow
Canadian, a police climber and friend of the man's family who had
joined the search.
(AP, 8/26/18)
2018 Aug 26, A German man was
stabbed after a street festival early today in Chemnitz, Saxony
state. Police soon arrested a Syrian (22) and an Iraqi (21) on
suspicion of manslaughter. Prosecutors later said the killing was
preceded by a verbal confrontation that escalated.
(AP, 8/28/18)
2018 Aug 26, German journalist
Mesale Tolu, who was on trial in Turkey on terror-related charges,
returned to Germany after a Turkish court ruled that she could leave
the country.
(AP, 8/26/18)
2018 Aug 27, In Germany at
least 20 people were injured as pyrotechnics and other objects were
hurled by both far-right demonstrators as well as anti-fascist
counter-protesters in the eastern city of Chemnitz. This 2nd day of
protests followed the fatal stabbing of a German man (35) allegedly
by a Syrian and an Iraqi.
(AFP, 8/28/18)
2018 Aug 29, Germany announced
a new agency to fund cutting-edge research on cyber security and to
end its reliance on digital technologies from the United States,
China and other countries.
(Reuters, 8/29/18)
2018 Aug 29, In Germany a
golden statue of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that was
installed at an art festival whose motto is "Bad news" was taken
down after authorities in the city of Wiesbaden said it was becoming
a security issue.
(AP, 8/29/18)
2018 Aug 29, A Namibian
delegation in Berlin took possession of the remains of 27 countrymen
whose bones were taken by German colonial forces more than a century
ago for pseudo-scientific racial experiments.
(AP, 8/29/18)
2018 Aug 30, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel arrived in Ghana during a three-nation West Africa
visit aimed at boosting investment in a region that is a major
source of migrants heading toward Europe. Merkel first stopped in
Senegal, another of Africa's fastest-growing economies, and will
continue on to Nigeria.
(AP, 8/30/18)
2018 Aug 31, In Nigeria German
Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Nigerian President Muhammadu
Buhari wrapping up a three-day Africa visit with a meeting that
focused on migration.
(AP, 8/31/18)
2018 Sep 1, In Germany 18
people were injured as the anti-migrant far-right and
counter-protesters held opposing rallies in the city of Chemnitz,
which was hit by xenophobic demonstrations last week. Police brought
an early close Saturday to the anti-migrant march that far-right
activists hoped would launch a nationwide movement to challenge the
political establishment.
(AFP, 9/1/18)(AP, 9/2/18)
2018 Sep 1, In Germany Hesse
state police arrested a 17-year-old on suspicion of preparing a
serious act of violence. The suspect was reportedly planning to
attack a gay nightclub in Frankfurt and a Catholic church in the
city.
(AP, 9/13/18)
2018 Sep 3, In Germany a
migrant was convicted of murdering his 15-year-old German
ex-girlfriend in Kandel in December 2017 and was sentenced to 8.5
years in prison.
(AP, 9/3/18)
2018 Sep 4, In Germany lawmaker
Sahra Wagenknecht, whose Left Party grew out of the former East
Germany's communist party, and two members of the Greens and the
Social Democrats said more than 100,000 people have pledged online
to support a new movement called "Aufstehen" (Stand Up) with the aim
of reviving the fortunes of the country's ailing left by attracting
like-minded people across party lines.
(AP, 9/4/18)
2018 Sep 6, South African
President Cyril Ramaphosa ramped up an anti-corruption drive,
authorizing an investigation of alleged wrongdoing in the national
water department's dealings with German software firm SAP.
(AP, 9/6/18)
2018 Sep 7, The US Army Europe
said it's expanding its troop presence by adding 1,500 solders to
its forces in Germany.
(AP, 9/7/18)
2018 Sep 7, Speaking in Germany
Qatar's emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said in Berlin his
country would invest some 10 billion euros ($11.6 billion) in
Germany, as he battled a policy of isolation by neighboring states.
(AFP, 9/7/18)
2018 Sep 9, In Germany a
22-year-old German man died overnight in the eastern town of Koethen
and two Afghans were detained on suspicion of killing him.
(Reuters, 9/9/18)
2018 Sep 9, German pop singer
Daniel Kueblboeck (33) went missing at sea after going overboard
from the cruise ship AIDAluna off the coast of Canada.
(AP, 9/9/18)
2018 Sep 12, Germany's Catholic
Church said it was "dismayed and ashamed" by decades of child sex
abuse by priests, after a report was leaked showing that thousands
of minors were assaulted. The report said 3,677 people were abused
by clergy between 1946 and 2014.
(AFP, 9/13/18)(SFC, 9/13/18, p.A2)
2018 Sep 12, Irish budget
carrier Ryanair was defiant as dozens of flights were disrupted in a
walkout by German pilots and cabin crew, the latest flare-up in a
bitter Europe-wide battle for better pay and conditions.
(AFP, 9/13/18)
2018 Sep 13, German activists,
living in treehouses to protect the ancient Hambach Forest from
being razed for a nearby coal mine, vowed to resist as police began
evicting them, in a major escalation of the long-running
environmental battle.
(AFP, 9/13/18)
2018 Sep 13, Volkswagen
announced it would end production of its iconic "Beetle" cars in
2019 after adding a pair of final editions of the bug-shaped
vehicles.
(AFP, 9/14/18)
2018 Sep 15, California Gov.
Jerry Brown announced a sister-state relationship with the German
state of Baden-Württemberg that furthers strengthens climate and
economic ties between the two entities.
(AP, 9/16/18)
2018 Sep 15, Pyotr Verzilov,
publisher of a Russian online news outlet and affiliated with the
anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot, arrived in Berlin from Moscow
late today on a medical transport plane. The anti-Kremlin activist
lost his sight, hearing and his ability to walk in a suspected
poisoning last week.
(Reuters, 9/16/18)
2018 Sep 16, In western Germany
some four thousand people protested against the expansion of a coal
strip mine that would entail the chopping down of the ancient
Hambach forest.
(AP, 9/16/18)
2018 Sep 16, In northern
Germany a Polish man (20) received a fatal stab wound after an
altercation with an unknown man who then fled the scene in
Neumuenster.
(AP, 9/17/18)
2018 Sep 17, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel visited Algeria to promote bilateral ties and discuss
migration and the situation in neighboring Libya.
(AP, 9/17/18)
2018 Sep 18, In Germany
Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of the BfV intelligence agency, was
ousted from his post but then made deputy minister — with a hefty
pay rise. He had been criticized for appearing to downplay
anti-migrant violence and for his contacts with a far-right party.
(AP, 9/21/18)
2018 Sep 20, In Germany a man
(23) killed his baby son by throwing the infant from the 7th floor
of a high-rise building before jumping to his death in Berlin.
(AP, 9/21/18)
2018 Sep 22, In Germany the
185th Oktoberfest got under way in Munich.
(SSFC, 9/23/18, p.A4)
2018 Sep 23, Sports car maker
Porsche said it would become the first German auto giant to abandon
the diesel engine, reacting to parent company Volkswagen's emissions
cheating scandal and urban driving bans.
(AFP, 9/23/18)
2018 Sep 25, A German court
said it could not enforce a Chilean prison sentence for Hartmut Hopp
(74), a German former member of a Nazi pedophile sect, for
complicity in child sex abuse because the evidence the Chilean court
had provided against him fell short of that required under German
judicial standards. Dr. Hopp was the right-hand man of convicted
pedophile Paul Schaefer, a former Wehrmacht soldier and lay preacher
who in 1961 founded the "Colonia Dignidad" commune that
indoctrinated residents and kept them as virtual slaves.
(AP, 9/25/18)
2018 Sep 25, The head of the
Catholic Church in Germany apologized "for all the failure and
pain", after a report spanning a 70-year period ending in 2014,
found indications of sexual abuse by 1,670 clerics, with more than
3,700 possible victims.
(Reuters, 9/25/18)
2018 Sep 27, German steel
company and industrial equipment maker Thyssenkrupp said it plans to
split into two separate entities that will be run as independent,
listed companies.
(AP, 9/27/18)
2018 Sep 27, Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Germany for a controversial
three-day state visit that both sides hope will help rebuild
relations that have been battered in recent years.
(AFP, 9/27/18)
2018 Sep 28, In Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
vowed to rebuild strained relations after a two-year crisis despite
remaining differences on civil rights and other issues. President
Tayyip Erdogan called on Berlin to extradite what he said were the
hundreds of supporters of the cleric Fethullah Gulen residing in
Germany.
(AFP, 9/28/18)(Reuters, 9/28/18)
2018 Sep 28, Germany's
financial capital of Frankfurt unveiled its new "Old City" — 35
buildings reproduced in part an area that was destroyed during World
War II bombings. The 7-hectare (17-acre) site was previously
occupied by a 1970s concrete building that housed part of the
Frankfurt city administration and was demolished in 2010.
(AP, 9/28/18)
2018 Sep 29, In Germany Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan opened one of Europe's largest
mosques in Cologne as he wrapped up a controversial 3-day visit,
with police deploying in force to manage rival rallies.
(AFP, 9/29/18)
2018 Oct 1, German police
arrested six more men on suspicion of forming a "far-right terrorist
organization" in the eastern city of Chemnitz and planning to carry
out attacks against foreigners and political enemies. A seventh
suspect was arrested in a separate case last month.
(AP, 10/1/18)
2018 Oct 2, German ministers
said the government will ease immigration rules to attract foreign
jobseekers, including giving well-integrated, irregular migrants who
are employed a shot at staying in the country to combat a
fast-ageing worker shortage.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 2, German car giant
Volkswagen said it was removing Rupert Stadler, the chief executive
of subsidiary Audi who has been jailed in an emissions fraud probe
since June, from his post and the parent group's board.
(AFP, 10/2/18)
2018 Oct 3, The Japan Space
Exploration Agency said the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT),
a German-French observation device, was released from the unmanned
spacecraft Hayabusa2 and successfully landed on the asteroid Ryugu.
(AP, 10/3/18)
2018 Oct 4, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel paid homage in Jerusalem to the six million Jews
killed by the Nazis and said Germany had a responsibility to
confront anti-Semitism and never to forget the Holocaust. At a news
conference Merkel reaffirmed her support for a two-state solution in
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and concern about Israeli
settlement expansion in occupied territory where Palestinians seek
for a country of their own. Germany and Israel agree that Iran
should never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons but they differ
on how to achieve this goal.
(Reuters, 10/4/18)
2018 Oct 5, In Germany the
Muenster administrative court issued a temporary halt after an
environmental group argued that the Hambacher Forest near Cologne
deserves protected status because of the bats that live there.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 6, In western Germany
thousands of environmentalists protested the expansion of a coal
mine a day after a court blocked the felling of endangered Hambacher
Forest near the site.
(AP, 10/6/18)
2018 Oct 9, A Berlin court
ordered the city to ban older diesel vehicles from several downtown
streets to reduce nitrogen dioxide levels in the German capital.
(AP, 10/9/18)
2018 Oct 9, German police
arrested a suspect in the rape and killing of a television
journalist from Bulgaria whose work highlighted corruption in the
East European country. Severin Krassimirov (21), a Bulgarian
citizen, was arrested outside the city of Hamburg.
(AP, 10/10/18)
2018 Oct 12, Germany said it
will extend temporary controls at its border with Austria for six
months due to concerns the EU's external frontiers are not
sufficiently protected. The Danish government made a similar
announcement, citing the threat of terrorism.
(Reuters, 10/12/18)
2018 Oct 13, In Germany tens of
thousands of people protested racism and discrimination in Berlin, a
demonstration that came amid rising concerns about Germany's
increasingly confident far right.
(AP, 10/13/18)
2018 Oct 14, In Germany the
Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party of Merkel's own
Christian Democrats (CDU), slumped to its worst result in almost 70
years in the election in Bavaria.
(Reuters, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 14, In western Germany
three people died when a Cessna plane crashed into a crowd near
Fulda, Hesse state.
(Reuters, 10/14/18)(SFC, 10/15/18, p.A2)
2018 Oct 14, Britain, France
and Germany insisted that "light must be shed" on the whereabouts of
journalist Jamal Khashoggi as they called for a credible
investigation into his disappearance at the Saudi consulate in
Istanbul.
(AFP, 10/14/18)
2018 Oct 15, Germany deported
Mounir el Motassadeq (44) to Morocco. He was convicted in 2003 of
membership in a terrorist organization and accessory to the murder
of the 246 passengers and crew on the four jetliners used in the
2001 al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington.
(AP, 10/15/18)
2018 Oct 15, In Germany a
Syrian refugee, identified only as Mohammad A.R. (55), sparked panic
at the busy station in Cologne after he started a fire in a
McDonald's restaurant that left a 14-year-old girl with burns. He
then took a female employee hostage in a nearby pharmacy. Police
opened fire on the suspect, who underwent emergency surgery and
remained in a coma.
(AFP, 10/17/18)
2018 Oct 18, A group of media
outlets led by Germany's non-profit Correctiv reported that traders
have manipulated transactions in multiple European countries over
years, draining tax coffers of some 55.2 billion euros ($63.5
billion).
(AP, 10/18/18)
2018 Oct 20, In Germany a
19-year-old man died after blowing up a ticket machine at a railway
station in the eastern city of Halle. Two alleged accomplices, aged
15 and 20. were soon arrested. Six other ticket machines and an ATM
were destroyed in Halle earlier this month.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 20, The German group
Sea-Watch said that the vessel, Sea-Watch 3, has been cleared to
leave Malta for repairs. It had been "blocked" from leaving Malta
since July 2 amid an investigation into Dutch-registered rescue
ships.
(AP, 10/20/18)
2018 Oct 21, Multinational
giants Siemens and General Electric say they have signed memorandums
of understanding with Iraq to rebuild the country's electricity
infrastructure.
(AP, 10/21/18)
2018 Oct 22, A German man (54)
was convicted of attempted murder for poisoning baby food and
putting it on store shelves in a failed attempt to extort money from
supermarkets. He was sentenced in Ravensburg state court to 12 years
in prison.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 23, German automaker
BMW said it is expanding a recall to cover 1.6 million vehicles
worldwide due to possible fluid leaks that could result in a fire.
(AP, 10/23/18)
2018 Oct 24, A court in Germany
ruled that Volkswagen's parent company must pay 47 million euros
($54 million) in damages to investors for not making a timely
disclosure of its scandal over cars rigged to cheat on diesel
emissions tests.
(AP, 10/24/18)
2018 Oct 27, In western Germany
protesters blocked a railway line leading to a large strip coal mine
near Cologne that has become a cause celebre for environmentalists
amid plans to clear part of a neighboring forest to expand the
facility.
(AP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 27, The leaders of
Turkey, Russia, France and Germany met to try to find a political
solution to Syria's devastating civil war, provide access to
humanitarian aid and salvage a fragile ceasefire in the country's
last major rebel-held bastion.
(AFP, 10/27/18)
2018 Oct 29, Angela Merkel
announced she will quit as German chancellor when her mandate ends
in 2021, as she sought to draw a line under a series of political
crises that have rocked her fragile coalition.
(AP, 10/29/18)
2018 Oct 30, In Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the G20 Compact with Africa meeting
saying it's critical "not only to talk about Africa but to talk with
Africa" about development needs and goals. So far 11 countries have
joined the program: Benin, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana,
Guinea, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, A German court
ordered the release of former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler, on condition
that he refrain from contact with people relevant to the
investigation, more than four months after he was arrested in an
investigation into the manipulation of diesel emissions controls.
(AP, 10/30/18)
2018 Oct 30, German police
arrested a Russian man (43) suspected of smuggling some 12 million
cigarettes into the country from 2009-2011.
(AP, 11/1/18)
2018 Nov 13, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel called for an integrated EU military, recalling the
lessons of the First World War and the divisions that led to the
conflict.
(Reuters, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 13, German authorities
said they suspect a male nurse of killing six elderly patients, and
attempting to kill at least three more, after he admitted to
injecting them with diabetes medication. Suspect Grzegorz Stanislaw
Wolsztajn (36), arrested last February, denied intending to kill
them.
(AP, 11/13/18)
2018 Nov 19, Germany banned
Saudi citizens suspected of involvement in the killing of journalist
Jamal Khashoggi from much of Europe and moved to halt all arms sales
to the kingdom in a firming of its stance towards Riyadh.
(Reuters, 11/19/18)
2018 Nov 22, A German teenager
(15) was convicted of murder for killing a 14-year-old girl in a
case that was seized upon by far-right groups, who falsely claimed
that the perpetrator was a migrant. The German-born boy had
reportedly planned the March 3 murder of schoolmate Keira G. (14) in
advance.
(AP, 11/22/18)
2018 Nov 23, Berlin prosecutors
said Hans Werner H. (95) has been charged with more than 36,000
counts of being an accessory to murder on allegations that he served
as a guard at the Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp from 1944 to
1945.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 23, Unions in Britain
said they would stage protests at five sites to complain about
safety conditions. In Germany, workers walked off the job at Amazon
distribution centers in Rheinberg and Bad Hersfeld as part of a
years-long push for higher pay. In Spain Labor groups representing
workers at Amazon said that around 90 percent of workers at a
logistics depot near Madrid joined a walkout.
(AP, 11/23/18)
2018 Nov 27, In Germany Sergej
Wenergold (29), who launched a shrapnel bomb attack on the team bus
of football club Borussia Dortmund in April 2017 to make money on
the club's shares diving, was sentenced to 14 years in jail.
(AFP, 11/27/18)
2018 Nov 29, In Germany some
170 police officers, investigators and prosecutors raided the
offices of Deutsche Bank on the suspicion bank employees helped
clients set up offshore companies in tax havens to launder hundreds
of millions of euros.
(AP, 11/29/18)
2018 Dec 1, In Germany
thousands of people marched in Berlin to demand that Germany make a
quick exit from using coal-fired energy. This and a simultaneous
event in the western city of Cologne were organized by environmental
groups.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 1, Ukraine's President
Petro Poroshenko said Russia is building up its land forces and
weapons along the border as German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned
Russia not to block Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov.
(AP, 12/1/18)
2018 Dec 2, Germany's
Development Minister Gerd Mueller said his country will unveil an
initiative at UN talks on climate change this week to attract more
private investment in projects in Africa and elsewhere.
(Reuters, 12/2/18)
2018 Dec 3, German police said
the body of a missing 17-year-old girl has been found at a shelter
for homeless people and others in western Germany and a resident has
been detained. The girl's parents had reported her missing on Nov.
30 from her home in a neighboring region.
(AP, 12/3/18)
2018 Dec 4, Germany's top human
rights official said she has been denied entry to China's Xinjiang
region, where the UN estimates that up to one million Muslims are
being held in detention camps.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 5, Police arrested
dozens of suspected mobsters in Europe and South America in dubbed
"Operation Pollina," a huge international swoop targeting Italy's
notorious 'Ndrangheta mafia clan. Police seized four tons of
cocaine, 120 kilos of ecstasy and two million euros (dollars) in
cash across Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and
Suriname.
(AFP, 12/5/18)
2018 Dec 7, Germany's Christian
Democrats elected Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (56) to replace Angela
Merkel as party leader, a decision that moves her into pole position
to succeed Europe's most influential leader as chancellor.
(Reuters, 12/7/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Germany Thomas
K. (37) was sentenced in Duesseldorf state court to six years in
prison. He had fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan from 2013-2018
and was convicted of membership in a terrorist organization.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 10, In Germany a
four-hour strike affected more than 1,400 trains nationwide, hitting
long-distance traffic and also metro rail systems in Berlin, Munich,
Hannover and Frankfurt. The EVG labor union called the so-called
"warning strike" to put pressure on Deutsche Bahn after wage
negotiations broke off on Dec. 8 without an agreement.
(AP, 12/10/18)
2018 Dec 12, Eight European
Union nations (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland,
Sweden and the United Kingdom) underlined their commitment to the
Iran nuclear deal while urging Tehran to stop its "destabilizing
regional activities" especially the launch of ballistic missiles.
(AP, 12/12/18)
2018 Dec 13, In Germany three
women were stabbed and wounded in Nuremberg. Police investigated
whether the incidents were connected. A German man (38) was arrested
on Dec. 15 in connection with the stabbing.
(AP, 12/14/18)(AP, 12/16/18)
2018 Dec 14, A Berlin court
said the insolvency administrator for bankrupt airline Air Berlin
has sued its former largest shareholder, UAE-based airline Etihad,
for 2 billion euros ($2.26 billion) in damages.
(AP, 12/14/18)
2018 Dec 17, German authorities
said five Frankfurt police officers are under investigation over
allegations they shared far-right images, videos and texts in a chat
group with one another.
(AP, 12/17/18)
2018 Dec 18, A German court
convicted a man of unauthorized dealing in firearms over the sale in
2016 of weapons that he advertised as being usable to "shoot down
asylum-seekers." Mario R. (35) was sentenced to two years and 10
months in prison and was confiscated 99,100 euros ($112,287) in
proceeds.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 18, The
Washington-based Fulbright Association said its 2018 prize for
international understanding will go to German Chancellor Angela
Merkel.
(AP, 12/18/18)
2018 Dec 19, Chancellor Angela
Merkel's cabinet passed new immigration laws to make it easier for
lower-skilled foreigners to seek work in Germany and offer rejected
asylum seekers who can't be deported a path to residency.
(Reuters, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 19, German weekly Der
Spiegel said Claas Relotius (33), one of its star reporters, has
left the publication after committing journalistic fraud "on a grand
scale" over a number of years. He resigned after admitting to
inventing interviews.
(AP, 12/19/18)
2018 Dec 20, Germany's top
appeal court partially overturned the conviction of former Rwandan
rebel group leader Ignace Murwanashyaka for abetting war crimes in
CongoDRC, citing a lack of evidence and referring it to a different
court.
(Reuters, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 20, Britain, Germany
and France, three of the United States' main allies in the war
against the Islamic State group, reacted with alarm to President
Donald Trump's decision to pull US troops out of Syria. Analysts
said the US decision to pull troops out of eastern Syria will leave
the Kurds exposed to Turkish military threats and forced to
cooperate with Damascus.
(AFP, 12/20/18)
2018 Dec 24, South Korea said
it will fine BMW 11.2 billion won ($9.9 million) and file a criminal
complaint against the company with state prosecutors over an
allegedly botched response to dozens of engine fires reported in the
country. BMW has apologized and recalled some 172,000 vehicles of 65
different models in July and October over the fires.
(AP, 12/24/18)
2018 Dec 26, Sea-Watch 3, a
private rescue boat operated by a German humanitarian group,
continued its appeal for a safe port. It has tweeted that 33
migrants were rescued from waters off Libya on Dec. 22.
(AP, 12/26/18)
2018 Dec 27, German authorities
said customs officials in the Hamburg area destroyed nine tons of
drugs last week with an estimated total street value of about 520
million euros ($592 million).
(AP, 12/27/18)
2018 Dec 30, In Germany an
18-year-old driver trying to evade a highway patrol crashed into a
stationary vehicle near Heppenheim, killing a woman (39) and
injuring her son (10).
(AP, 12/31/18)
2018 Dec 30, In western Germany
Edgar Hilsenrath (92), a German-Jewish writer whose fictional
account of the Holocaust from the perspective of a Nazi perpetrator
became a best-seller, died. His first novel, "Night," recounting the
horrors of trying to survive in a Jewish ghetto, was published in
1954. His 1971 novel "The Nazi and the Barber," a grotesque story
about an SS member who pretends to be Jewish after the war to escape
prosecution, sold millions of copies worldwide.
(AP, 1/1/19)
2019 Jan 1, In western Germany
a man (50) ploughed his car into a crowd of people in early today,
injuring at least four in Bottrop and Essen before being arrested by
police on suspicion of attempted homicide. This appeared to have
been an intentional attack against foreigners.
(AP, 1/1/19)
2019 Jan 4, In Germany an
Interior Ministry spokesman said personal data and documents from
hundreds of German politicians and public figures have been
published online, in what appears one of the most far-reaching
cyber-attacks in a country that has become a target of choice for
hackers.
(Reuters, 1/4/19)
2019 Jan 4, Twitter suspended
an account that posted links to sensitive personal data and
documents stolen by hackers from hundreds of German public figures
and politicians — from every political party but the far-right
Alternative for Germany. The breach, discovered by journalists a day
earlier, affected politicians at all levels.
(AP, 1/4/19)
2019 Jan 5, Heavy snow caused
travel chaos in parts of Austria and Germany as authorities closed
roads and train routes because of avalanche danger and airports
reported weather-related cancelations. A 20-year-old skier died in
an avalanche on Mount Teisen, near the Austrian border.
(AP, 1/5/19)(AP, 1/6/19)
2019 Jan 7, In Germany lawmaker
Frank Magnitz (66), a local leader of the far-right Alternative for
Germany (AfD) party, was attacked and seriously wounded by several
men in the northwestern city of Bremen.
(AP, 1/8/19)
2019 Jan 8, German authorities
said a local student (20) in Hesse state has admitted obtaining and
publishing the personal data of hundreds of politicians and
celebrities and told investigators he acted alone.
(AP, 1/8/19)
2019 Jan 9, It was reported
that France and Germany have agreed to deepen a 1963 treaty of
post-war reconciliation in a bid to show that the European Union's
main axis remains strong and counter growing eurosceptic nationalism
among some other members. The extension to the Elysee Treaty will be
signed on Jan. 22.
(Reuters, 1/9/19)
2019 Jan 10, In Germany almost
640 flights were cancelled as security staff went on strike at three
airports, meaning disruption for around 100,000 passengers.
(AFP, 1/10/19)
2019 Jan 10, Heavy snowfall
continued in parts of Austria and southern Germany, with several
places cut off and the bad weather expected to persist. Snow was
causing problems in other parts of Europe, even in Norway's Arctic
Svalbard archipelago. At least 17 weather-related deaths have been
reported in Europe over the past week.
(AP, 1/10/19)
2019 Jan 11, In Germany
airlines canceled around 120 flights at Frankfurt Airport and 90 at
Munich Airport because of concerns about snow.
(AP, 1/11/19)
2019 Jan 11, German automaker
Volkswagen posted another annual sales record in 2018 as new SUV
models boosted deliveries and the company managed to increase its
share in China even as the car market there shrank for the first
time in years.
(AP, 1/11/19)
2019 Jan 11, Egypt deported a
German citizen early today whom it detained in Cairo airport on Dec.
27 on suspicion of plotting terrorism.
(AP, 1/11/19)
2019 Jan 12, In Germany a small
plane crashed east of Berlin, killing two people.
(AP, 1/12/19)
2019 Jan 11, Greece told German
Chancellor Angela Merkel it had grounds to pursue a legal claim for
billions of euros in reparations for the Nazi occupation of the
country in World War Two.
(Reuters, 1/14/19)
2019 Jan 15, In Germany
Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess and Ford CEO Jim Hackett said they are
forming a global alliance to develop commercial vans and
medium-sized pickups together while exploring broader cooperation on
future battery-powered and autonomous vehicles and services.
(AP, 1/15/19)
2019 Jan 17, German authorities
said they have arrested Navanithan G. (39), a suspected member of
the Tamil Tigers. He is alleged to have been involved in the August
2005 assassination of Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Lakshman
Kathirkamar and the attempted killing of Eelam People*s Democratic
Party leader Douglas Devananda.
(AP, 1/17/19)
2019 Jan 18, Germany-based
Volkswagen Group said that it will pay a fine of 1 billion rupees
($14.2 million) imposed by India for installing software on vehicles
that allegedly cheated pollution testing devices, though it is still
appealing the order.
(AP, 1/18/19)
2019 Jan 18, Russia said it has
agreed for France and Germany to monitor shipping traffic in the
Kerch Strait following a naval confrontation between Moscow and Kiev
last year.
(AFP, 1/18/19)
2019 Jan 20, Spiegel Online
reported that German weapons maker Rheinmetall plans to sue the
government over its decision to stop all arms exports to Saudi
Arabia after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(Reuters, 1/20/19)
2019 Jan 20, Sea-Watch 3, run
by a German NGO, said it has contacted Italy, Malta, Libya as well
as the Netherlands, since the boat is Dutch-flagged, asking where it
can bring the 47 migrants it had taken aboard. Another vessel
crowded with panicking migrants and taking on water, meanwhile, put
out an urgent, separate appeal for help in the southern
Mediterranean.
(AP, 1/20/19)
2022 In Germany all nuclear
power plants were expected to be switched off by this time.
(Econ, 6/15/13, SR p.11)