BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s Premier Li Qiang pitched closer collaboration to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in new energy, smart manufacturing, biomedicine and intelligent driving during a meeting on Sunday on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Xinhua reported.
Relations between the world’s second- and third-largest economies have improved significantly over the past month, after Chinese export curbs on chips and rare earths caused major disruptions for German firms and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul to cancel a visit to Beijing last month due to China rejecting all but one of his meetings.
German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil made the first official visit of Merz’s premiership last week, stabilising ties by meeting China’s top economic official Vice Premier He Lifeng, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs weigh on the two major exporters.
Merz is also expected to visit China soon.
Li said he “hoped Germany would maintain a rational and pragmatic policy toward China, eliminate interference and pressure, focus on shared interests, and consolidate the foundation for cooperation,” a state media readout released late on Sunday quoted China’s second-ranking official as saying.
For all the friction over Beijing’s support for Russia and its actions in the Indo-Pacific, and Berlin’s vocal criticism of China’s human rights record and state-subsidised industrial policy, the two countries remain bound by a vast and mutually advantageous commercial relationship.
“China is willing to work with Germany to seize future development opportunities … in emerging fields such as new energy, smart manufacturing, biomedicine, hydrogen energy technology, and intelligent driving, Li said in Johannesburg, South Africa, which is hosting the first G20 summit on the continent.
China bought $95 billion worth of German goods last year, around 12% of which were cars, Chinese data shows, putting it among the $19 trillion economy’s top 10 trading partners. Germany purchased $107 billion of Chinese goods, mostly chips and other electronic components.
But Berlin stands out for China as an investment partner, having injected $6.6 billion in fresh capital in 2024, according to data from the Mercator Institute for China Studies, accounting for 45% of all foreign direct investment into China from the European Union and the United Kingdom.
For Germany, China represents a practically irreplaceable auto market, and is responsible for almost a third of German automakers’ sales. German chemicals and pharmaceuticals firms also have a large presence in the country, although they are facing increasing pressure from domestic competitors.
(Reporting by Joe Cash; Editing by Richard Chang)
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Talks between Ukraine and its Western allies on a U.S.-proposed peace plan to end Russia’s invasion got underway in Geneva on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.The head of the Ukrainian delegation, presidential chief of staff Andrii Yermak, wrote on social media that they held their first meeting with the national security advisers from the U.K., France, and Germany. The allies have rallied around Kyiv in a push to revise the plan, which is seen as favoring Moscow.U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was expected to join the talks together with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.”The next meeting is with the U.S. delegation. We are in a very constructive mood,” Yermak said. “We continue working together to achieve a lasting and just peace for Ukraine.”Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was waiting for the outcome of the talks. “A positive result is needed for all of us,” he said.”Ukrainian and American teams, teams of our European partners, are in close contact, and I very much hope there will be a result. Bloodshed must be stopped, and it must be guaranteed that the war will not be reignited,” he wrote in a post on Telegram on Sunday.Ukraine and allies have ruled out territorial concessionsThe 28-point blueprint drawn up by the U.S. to end the nearly four-year war has sparked alarm in Kyiv and European capitals. Zelenskyy has said his country could face a stark choice between standing up for its sovereign rights and preserving the American support it needs.The plan acquiesces to many Russian demands that Zelenskyy has categorically rejected on dozens of occasions, including giving up large pieces of territory. The Ukrainian leader has vowed that his people”will always defend” their home.Speaking before Sunday’s talks, Alice Rufo, France’s minister delegate at the Defense Ministry, told broadcaster France Info that key points of discussion would include the plan’s restrictions on the Ukrainian army, which she described as “a limitation on its sovereignty.””Ukraine must be able to defend itself,” she said. “Russia wants war and waged war many times in fact over the past years.”Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Saturday, Trump said the U.S. proposal was not his “final offer.””I would like to get to peace. It should have happened a long time ago. The Ukraine war with Russia should have never happened,” Trump said. “One way or the other, we have to get it ended.”Trump didn’t explain what he meant by the plan not being his final offer, and the White House didn’t respond to a request for clarification.Rubio’s reported comments cause confusionPolish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Sunday that Warsaw was ready to work on the plan with the leaders of Europe, Canada and Japan, but also said that it “would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created.”Some U.S. lawmakers said Saturday that Rubio had described the plan as a Russian “wish list” rather than a Washington-led proposal.The bipartisan group of senators told a news conference that they had spoken to Rubio about the peace plan after he reached out to some of them while on his way to Geneva. Independent Maine Sen. Angus King said Rubio told them the plan “was not the administration’s plan” but a “wish list of the Russians.”A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The Secretary of State doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible for a proposal that had surprised many from the beginning for being so favorable to Moscow.___Associated Press writers Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Poland and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.
Talks between Ukraine and its Western allies on a U.S.-proposed peace plan to end Russia’s invasion got underway in Geneva on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
The head of the Ukrainian delegation, presidential chief of staff Andrii Yermak, wrote on social media that they held their first meeting with the national security advisers from the U.K., France, and Germany. The allies have rallied around Kyiv in a push to revise the plan, which is seen as favoring Moscow.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was expected to join the talks together with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.
“The next meeting is with the U.S. delegation. We are in a very constructive mood,” Yermak said. “We continue working together to achieve a lasting and just peace for Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was waiting for the outcome of the talks. “A positive result is needed for all of us,” he said.
“Ukrainian and American teams, teams of our European partners, are in close contact, and I very much hope there will be a result. Bloodshed must be stopped, and it must be guaranteed that the war will not be reignited,” he wrote in a post on Telegram on Sunday.
The 28-point blueprint drawn up by the U.S. to end the nearly four-year war has sparked alarm in Kyiv and European capitals. Zelenskyy has said his country could face a stark choice between standing up for its sovereign rights and preserving the American support it needs.
The plan acquiesces to many Russian demands that Zelenskyy has categorically rejected on dozens of occasions, including giving up large pieces of territory. The Ukrainian leader has vowed that his people”will always defend” their home.
Speaking before Sunday’s talks, Alice Rufo, France’s minister delegate at the Defense Ministry, told broadcaster France Info that key points of discussion would include the plan’s restrictions on the Ukrainian army, which she described as “a limitation on its sovereignty.”
“Ukraine must be able to defend itself,” she said. “Russia wants war and waged war many times in fact over the past years.”
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Saturday, Trump said the U.S. proposal was not his “final offer.”
“I would like to get to peace. It should have happened a long time ago. The Ukraine war with Russia should have never happened,” Trump said. “One way or the other, we have to get it ended.”
Trump didn’t explain what he meant by the plan not being his final offer, and the White House didn’t respond to a request for clarification.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Sunday that Warsaw was ready to work on the plan with the leaders of Europe, Canada and Japan, but also said that it “would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created.”
Some U.S. lawmakers said Saturday that Rubio had described the plan as a Russian “wish list” rather than a Washington-led proposal.
The bipartisan group of senators told a news conference that they had spoken to Rubio about the peace plan after he reached out to some of them while on his way to Geneva. Independent Maine Sen. Angus King said Rubio told them the plan “was not the administration’s plan” but a “wish list of the Russians.”
A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”
Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The Secretary of State doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible for a proposal that had surprised many from the beginning for being so favorable to Moscow.
___
Associated Press writers Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Poland and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.
MUNICH (Reuters) -Germany will not hit its own 3.5% defence spending target in 2029, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Wednesday, as the country ramps up spending in the wake of Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Germany’s defence spending will only be 3.05% of gross domestic product that year, Pistorius said in Munich.
That is less than the 3.5% pledged by Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil earlier this year.
A NATO summit in The Hague this year agreed that allies will reach a new spending target of 5% of GDP by 2035. The target is made up of 3.5% in the defence budget, and another 1.5% of defence-related spending.
(Reporting by Alexander Huebner and Sabine Siebold; writing by Tom Sims; editing by Rod Nickel)
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BERLIN—Europe is moving to relax some of the world’s tightest digital regulations in a bid to boost growth and reduce its reliance on U.S. tech.
Germany and France on Tuesday backed an effort by the European Union, long seen as a global rulesetter for technology, artificial intelligence and digital services, to loosen regulatory strictures on the fast-growing, U.S.-dominated sectors.
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BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany will expand its security infrastructure in space to better protect its interests in a sphere where countries are already competing for dominance, said the foreign and defence ministers in a joint statement published on Wednesday.
The two ministries presented their new space security strategy to the cabinet on Wednesday, in which they commit to a peaceful, rules-based use of space while also pledging to build a space infrastructure strong enough to serve as a deterrent.
Germany’s defence ministry alone plans to invest 35 billion euros ($40 billion) in space over the next few years, and the German military will form the backbone of the space strategy, said Defence Minister Boris Pistorius in the statement.
The strategy sets the framework for how Germany can better protect itself, said Pistorius, for example against the GPS signal disruptions by Russia in the Baltic Sea region.
“Space has long been an arena for military conflicts and economic competition, as demonstrated most recently by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” said Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul in the same statement.
“The race for dominance in space is in full swing. It is therefore all the more important that Germany protects its interests,” he added.
(Reporting by Miranda Murray; editing by Matthias Williams)
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MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces had fired four U.S.-made ATACMS missiles at the southern Russian city of Voronezh in an attempted strike on civilian targets.
Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday it had attacked military targets in Russia with U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles, calling it a “significant development.”
Kyiv received the systems in 2023 but was initially restricted to using them only on its own territories, nearly a fifth of which are controlled by Russia.
“Russian S-400 air defence crews and Pantsir missile and gun systems shot down all ATACMS missiles,” Russia’s defence ministry said on Telegram.
Falling debris from the destroyed missiles damaged the roofs of a Voronezh retirement home and an orphanage, as well as one house, the ministry said adding that there were no casualties or injured among civilians.
The ministry published pictures of pieces of the missiles and said that air reconnaissance forces identified the Kharkiv region as the location of the ATACMS launch.
Russia said it had fired Iskander-M missiles to destroy two Ukrainian multiple rocket launchers.
Ukraine previously attacked Russian territories with U.S.-made ATACMS missiles on January, firing six missiles on Russia’s Belgorod region.
After Ukraine fired U.S. ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles into Russia last year, Putin ordered a hypersonic missile be fired at Ukraine.
(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Tom Hogue)
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NEW YORK (AP) — When Jennifer Austin met Molly in second grade, they quickly became best friends. They giggled through classes until the teacher separated them, inspiring them to come up with their own language. They shared sleepovers and went on each other’s family vacations.
But they gradually drifted apart after Austin’s family moved to Germany before the girls started high school. Decades passed before they recently reconnected as grown women.
“Strong friendships really do stay for the long haul,” Austin, 51, said. “Even if there are pauses in between and they fade, that doesn’t mean they completely dissolve or they go forgotten. They’re always there kind of lingering like a little light in the back.”
Early friendships are some of the deepest: the schoolmates who shared bike rides and their favorite candy. The roommates who offered comfort after breakups. The ones who know us, sometimes better than we know ourselves.
But as adults take on jobs and the responsibilities of homes and families, it can be challenging to stay connected with everyone we’ve loved.
Technology plays a role, too. Loneliness has increased since the television was invented and intensified with the introduction of smartphones, according to psychologist Marisa Franco, a University of Maryland assistant clinical professor and author of “Platonic,” a book about the science of attachment.
Once they’ve lost touch with friends, some people are reluctant to reach out, fearing rejection. But most of those on the receiving end appreciate the effort more than we expect, Franco said.
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
“People are delighted to hear from their old friends and open to connections,” she said.
Franco suggests reminiscing about a shared memory to span the time and distance. It can be something as simple as, “This pic came up and I just realized I wanted to check in on you,” she said. Propose a meetup. If the friend lives far away, try scheduling a phone date to catch up.
Below, six people who tried to rekindle lost friendships reflect on distance, loss and reconnection.
Heather Robb and Laine DiPasquantonio were nearly inseparable in their 20s, when they both lived in Boston. They went to concerts and vacationed together. DiPasquantonio was there when Robb met her future husband and attended their wedding as a bridesmaid.
But sometime after Robb married and DiPasquantonio moved to Colorado, their circle of friends scattered. They became busy raising children, juggling jobs and caring for aging parents.
“It’s terrible because you don’t know it’s happening,” Robb, 60, said in a joint interview. “I think it was simply space and time. We were all in different cities, we were all in that busy time of toddlers.”
Years passed with occasional holiday cards and texts but few meaningful interactions. DiPasquantonio saw photos on social media of Robb skiing and traveling with other friends. “I wasn’t sure there was so much room for me, from a distance,” she said.
“Aww, I feel badly about that,” Robb replied. “I would argue that’s the bad side of social media.”
The women found their way back to each other when Robb, president of Heather Robb Communications, had a business trip to Denver in April. She called to see if DiPasquantonio wanted to get dinner. “I didn’t know if she was going to be that happy to hear from me. I actually had some trepidation in reaching out,” Robb said.
When she did, Robb learned her friend was about to undergo surgery for breast cancer. Instead of meeting for dinner, DiPasquantonio, a placement specialist at Harmony Senior Referrals, invited Robb to stay for the weekend. A mutual friend flew out to join them.
“I was so tickled that you called and wanted to get together. It was awesome,” DiPasquantonio, 63, said during their interview. “What took us so long, right?”
They’ve remained close since.
“It just feels so good. It feels like there was a missing piece,” Robb said.
Reyna Dominguez, 18, had the same best friend since first grade. But when Dominguez moved from Long Island to Brooklyn, her friend began college. Dominguez started working in a salon and their schedules didn’t align. About six months passed without communication.
After graduating cosmetology school, Dominguez texted her friend to share the news.
“I was a bit anxious that she was not going to respond. But she did, and I was so relieved and happy,” Dominguez said.
Now they’re in touch about once a month and planning to get together.
“It’s important to stay in touch because sometimes I do get lonely, like I have no one to really talk to,” Dominguez said. “But with her, she knows all about my life.”
Dominguez encourages anyone considering reaching out to an old friend to go ahead. “I say just do it. You have nothing to lose,” she said. “I guess the worst they could do is not respond to you, but I feel like you’ll still be happy with the thought, ‘I tried.’”
Andrew Snyder’s best friend since 5th grade lives a plane ride away, but that hasn’t stopped them from keeping in touch. They call or email each other at least once a month and see each other several times per year.
At key points in their lives, they’ve visited each others’ homes “so when we talk about things, we actually can understand,” said Snyder, 50, who teaches philosophy and economics in New York City.
Living in different cities means it requires work to stay connected, but it’s important to Snyder, who feels that friendships are thinning out as people spend more time looking at cellphone screens.
“Friendship and cooking your own food, and exercising and being outside, these are the things that used to be real life, and now I think they’re all fading,” Snyder said. “I don’t think the real issue is time anymore. I think the real issue is a sense of overwhelm and a sense of depletion that we all feel.”
Kim Ventresca, 22, drifted from her best friend while attending college. She reached out a few times and they reconnected when the friend was having a rough time. But they stopped talking again when Ventresca was going through mental health and relationship challenges. Eventually, the other young woman told Ventresca she no longer wanted to be friends.
“I’ve got some new friends now, and I feel like it’s probably better because some things happen for a reason,” she said. “I’m hoping that she’s alright and that she is doing OK.”
Ventresca, who works as a social media manager and receptionist in New Jersey, said she still recommends reaching out to missed friends, even if it’s awkward.
“The worst thing that happens is you get ‘left on read’ or delivered or declined,” she said.
After Austin’s family moved to Germany, she didn’t see her childhood best friend again for 20 years, through a chance meeting on a New York City subway platform. They reconnected briefly, but contact lapsed again.
Molly’s 2021 visit with one of her children to a college near Austin’s home provided another chance to restore the friendship. They’ve remained close since.
“Something at that point just shifted,” Austin, owner of KindPoint Communications, said. “Things really picked up and we just basically outright said, ’Let’s just keep this momentum going. Let’s not wait another 20 years.’”
___
Send your wellness questions and story ideas to [email protected]. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well.
BERLIN (Reuters) -The German government will lift an order suspending some weapons sales to Israel from next week, following the ceasefire agreement reached last month, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
“The government will, as a general rule, revert to case-by-case reviews in decisions on arms exports and respond to further developments,” the spokesperson said.
The decision will allow the resumption of exports suspended in August, from Nov. 24, the spokesperson said.
Germany, the second-largest exporter of arms to Israel after the United States, announced a suspension of some arms exports to Israel in August, amid mounting popular pressure over the war in Gaza.
The decision affected weapons and systems that could be used in Gaza but not others deemed necessary for Israel to defend itself from external attacks.
The spokesperson said Germany remained committed to supporting a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of a two state solution and would continue to engage in supporting reconstruction in Gaza.
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke; writing by James Mackenzie; editing by Friederike Heine)
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BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s governing coalition agreed to subsidize energy prices for heavy industry over the next three years as it tries to breathe new life into a stubbornly slow economy that is weighing on Europe’s performance.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he and other coalition leaders agreed Thursday evening to introduce an electricity price of about 5 euro cents (6 U.S. cents) per kilowatt hour starting Jan. 1, through 2028, to “support companies that use a lot of electricity and face international competition.”
Talks on the plan with the European Union’s executive commission are near-complete and “we assume we will get permission for this,” Merz said.
The German economy, Europe’s biggest, has shrunk for the past two years and has not seen significant growth for much longer. The conservative Merz’s coalition government with the center-left Social Democrats has made revitalizing it a priority since taking office in early May.
Still, results haven’t shown through yet, with gross domestic product stagnating in the third quarter. This week, the government’s panel of independent economic advisers forecast it will grow by an unimpressive 0.9% next year after edging up 0.2% this year.
The country’s economy, which is heavy on manufacturing and exports, has been held back by multiple factors including high energy prices, competition from Chinese producers of autos and industrial machinery, a lack of skilled workers and excessive bureaucracy.
The government has launched a program to encourage investment and set up a fund of 500 billion euros ($581.4 billion) to pour money into Germany’s creaking infrastructure over the next 12 years. The government promises to cut red tape and speed up the country’s lagging digitization.
ING economist Carsten Brzeski, who put the current energy price at some 15 euro cents (17 U.S. cents) per kilowatt hour, said Friday that the planned subsidy “sends a strong signal and could provide industry not only short-term relief but also clarity and stability for years to come.”
Holger Lösch, deputy managing director of the Federation of German Industries, said the subsidized price would “help particularly energy-intensive industrial companies to remain competitive internationally,” adding that he hopes the EU allows Germany the flexibility to reduce a large number of companies’ costs.
Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil put the expected cost of the measure at between 3 and 5 billion euros ($3.4 billion and $5.8 billion).
Coalition leaders also agreed to cut a tax on airline tickets starting in July, something the air transport industry has long demanded. The measures will need parliamentary approval.
BERLIN—Germany will build a database of young people detailing their fitness, aptitude and outlook to help it pick whom to draft should the country be attacked.
The proposed move, a step toward reintroducing military conscription, comes as countries across Europe grapple with how to repopulate their armed forces under pressure from Washington and an expansionist Russia that European capitals accuse of waging a hybrid war on the continent.
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FRANKFURT (Reuters) -For years, it was a common occurrence: Dutch bandits would drive to Germany and in the dead of night blow up ATMs, grab cash and speed back home on the Autobahn.
Now, a crackdown is bearing fruit.
ATM attacks have dropped to 115 so far this year, less than a quarter of their peak of more than one a day – 496 – in 2022, according to German police data provided to Reuters.
The spree of explosions has terrorized residents throughout Germany, where – in contrast to other countries – cash remains popular and ATMs are often built directly beneath apartments and in pedestrian zones. The damage has amounted to more than 400 million euros ($466.48 million) since 2020.
“The threat level in Germany remains high, particularly in light of the use … of extremely unstable explosives,” according to a September report by Germany’s top crime-fighters at the federal criminal police, or BKA.
Now the gangs are driving a bit further to Austria, where using cash is still widespread. Attacks in Austria have doubled this year in what the BKA told Reuters was likely “a squeezing-out effect from Germany”. Dutch police have suspected hundreds of men are responsible, working in ever-evolving groups as new recruits replace those caught.
GERMANS STILL LOVE TO USE CASH
Underscoring the shift to Austria, prosecutors said a Dutchman who stole 220,000 euros from cash machines near Frankfurt in 2023 blew up ATMs in Vienna earlier this year, getting away with 89,000 euros in booty and causing 1.5 million euros in damage.
The person was taken into custody on a European arrest warrant and is awaiting trial.
Over the years, this modern twist on the old-fashioned bank heist arose out of two distinctly German factors, investigators say.
First, Germany is a wealthy nation whose residents love to use cash for purchases, meaning ATMs are aplenty. And second, Germany’s famous highway network makes for a quick getaway.
German banks have also invested more than 300 million euros in security in recent years, according to the most recent figures from Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft, an umbrella group for financial institutions, a drop in the ocean for a sector where profits collectively top 50 billion euros annually.
The measures include mechanisms that blow a thick fog when machines are tampered with or emit dyes that render bills unusable. Many banks now lock lobbies around ATMs at night.
The thefts are less sophisticated than many online scams, where law enforcement in Germany and across the globe are battling a surge.
Last week, Germany announced arrests after a years-long probe of fraudsters who – with the help of German payment providers, sham websites and fictitious companies – stole more than 300 million euros from people in 193 countries.
CASES FALL IN GERMANY, RISE IN AUSTRIA
Cases fell this year in all but three of Germany’s 16 states, according to police statistics.
The state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which borders the Netherlands, was one of the hardest hit in 2022 with 182 attacks. So far this year, they are down to just 25.
Despite the decline, collateral damage is still significant, police there pointed out, with one attack in January near Cologne causing 1.8 million euros in damage.
Police credit cooperation with Dutch investigators to locate and nab suspects. The majority of culprits have been Dutch, but some are German, French and Moldovan. Dutch police did not respond to questions from Reuters but in the past have acknowledged the trend.
Police in the state of Hesse, home to Germany’s banking capital Frankfurt, created a tool that generates a probability forecast of an ATM getting hit, based on make, location and other variables.
Last week, Germany’s parliament voted to increase prison sentences for such attacks.
In Austria, cases have risen to 29 so far this year, up from 13 in 2024, according to figures from the interior ministry, which said they first detected the Dutch gangs in 2023.
Austrians have the highest preference for paying in cash in the euro zone, a 2024 European Central Bank study found, meaning plenty of ATMs.
Police there said they are cooperating closely with the police in Germany and the Netherlands.
(Reporting by Tom Sims; Editing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and Andrew Cawthorne)
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LONDON—The U.K. has long been torn between two mutually exclusive desires: Voters want European levels of welfare with American levels of taxation.
By accident or design, that debate is slowly being resolved in the direction of higher taxes, as Britain’s Labour government prepares its second major tax increase in as many years.
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German prosecutors said on Wednesday they have arrested a suspected Hamas member accused of procuring weapons that they assume were intended for attacks on Israeli or Jewish institutions.
The suspect was arrested on the motorway as he entered Germany from the Czech Republic, the federal public prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe said.
He is to be brought before an investigating judge in Karlsruhe, who will decide whether he is to be remanded in custody.
Prosecutors accuse the Lebanese-born suspect of membership in a foreign terrorist organization.
In August, he allegedly procured a fully automatic rifle, eight pistols and over 600 rounds of ammunition in Germany. He is then believed to have transported them to Berlin to pass them to another suspected Hamas member who was already in pre-trial detention.
The weapons and ammunition were seized at the time of the arrest.
The Danish police also searched premises belonging to the man and to another suspect in Copenhagen and the surrounding area, prosecutors said.
Last month, German prosecutors arrested three suspected Hamas members in Berlin, who are in pre-trial detention.
The three suspects, including a naturalized Lebanese-born man and a naturalized Syrian-born man, are accused of having procured firearms and ammunition since at least the summer of 2025.
“The weapons were to be used by Hamas for assassinations targeting Israeli or Jewish institutions in Germany,” prosecutors said. However, there was apparently no concrete plan for an attack.
In early November, a weapons cache was found in Vienna linked to the three suspects arrested in Berlin. Austria’s DSN domestic intelligence agency said five handguns and 10 magazines were seized.
“The weapons cache is attributed to structures of the terrorist organization Hamas operating abroad,” the DSN said.
Last week, another man was arrested in London who is alleged to have transported weapons to Vienna as a member of Hamas. According to the DSN, the man is a 39-year-old British citizen. He is to be extradited to Germany.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were taken hostage. The onslaught sparked the Gaza war.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Friday rejected allegations of “treason” over plans for several of the far-right party’s lawmakers to visit Russia next week.
The trip has attracted severe criticism from conservative German politicians due to Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Martin Huber, general secretary of the Bavaria-only Christian Social Union (CSU), called the move “treason” and described the party as “Moscow’s mouthpiece.”
“Anyone who allows Putin’s henchmen to dictate their policies is not a patriot, but a puppet and a risk to our country,” he added in comments to the Handelsblatt business newspaper.
But senior AfD figure Bernd Baumann compared the situation to visits by German conservative politicians to Moscow in 1987, during the Soviet Union’s war with Afghanistan.
He also emphasized that the AfD parliamentary group has unanimously passed a resolution condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine “unequivocally as a war of aggression contrary to international law.”
The AfD delegation includes two lawmakers in the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, as well as one regional politician and a European Parliament lawmaker.
The group is reportedly travelling to Russia to attend a “BRICS Europe Symposium” with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev listed among the speakers.
The BRICS countries include founding members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, along with additional nations.
The AfD, an anti-immigrant party that opposes the sanctions slapped on Moscow over the war in Ukraine, has repeatedly made headlines with its Russia-friendly positions.
BERLIN (Reuters) -Russia must never come to the assumption that it can win a war against NATO or one of the alliance’s members, Germany’s Chief of Defence Carsten Breuer warned in a speech to the country’s top military brass in Berlin on Friday.
“We need to look into the lessons learned from the war in Ukraine, adapt them for ourselves and develop our own concepts and structures accordingly because the war in Ukraine is our teacher,” Breuer said, adding that Moscow expected a quick win when it invaded its neighbour in 2022.
“We must prevent Russia from another miscalculation like this. Russia must never come to the assumption that it can win a war against NATO or a single NATO country.”
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold, Editing by Miranda Murray)
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In the 1980s, the CDU kept neo-Nazis down by accepting all legitimate conservative views.
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Industrial production in Europe’s largest economy rebounded less than expected in September, amid hopes that the outlook could be changing for the sector ahead of large-scale government investment.
Output rose 1.3% on month, Germany’s statistics agency Destatis said Thursday, offsetting some of the 3.7% decline in August. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal expected a larger 2.5% uptick.
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Ed Frankl
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