With Covid-19 infections climbing, Washington has diverted shipments of vital protective masks from its allies in Germany and Canada to the US. A Berlin senator described the move as “modern piracy.” As confirmed coronavirus cases passed 250,000 in the US this week, the White House pressured safety gear manufacturer 3M to step up imports of protective masks from its Chinese factories. Trump publicly promised on Thursday […]
Berlin
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Groups of more than two people have been banned from gathering on German streets. However, there is no law against meeting with a total stranger, as Berlin police have clarified. The ban imposed on Monday is meant to restrict contact to immediate families (which are exempt from the rule) with the goal of limiting the transmission of the deadly coronavirus. But there are some personal goals […]
The United States wants to hold further video calls with the Group of Seven nations in April and May, a spokesman for the German government said on Friday. The White House on Thursday said that President Donald Trump will cancel an in-person meeting of G7 leaders at Camp David in June because of the coronavirus and will hold a video conference instead, Reuters reports. Earlier this […]
No action will be available in Germany’s capital from now on, after Berlin shut down all public venues in an attempt to halt the spread of the deadly coronavirus in central Europe’s most populated city. The decision was announced by Berlin’s authorities on Saturday. All venues such as bars, clubs, cinemas, theaters and even brothels have been closed, while citizens are effectively prohibited from forming any […]
A trend of assaulting non-mainstream politicians over their views seems to be taking root in Germany, with a car owned by the head of the AfD party’s Berlin branch being set on fire in the second such incident in over a week. Arsonists set ablaze a greyish Skoda belonging to Nicolaus Fest, provisional head of Alternative for Germany’s Berlin branch and member of the European Parliament, […]
German Chancellor Angela Merkel met retired Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in Berlin. German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a written statement on Tuesday that Merkel met Haftar in Berlin, where they exchanged views on the Libyan crisis. Seibert added that Merkel asserted that the use of military force would not lead to solving the Libyan conflict, while stressing the need to move forward to establish […]
German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar in Berlin on Tuesday in a bid to advance efforts to secure a lasting ceasefire in Libya. Merkel stressed that there can be no military solution to the conflict, and so “a ceasefire and progress in the political process, in line with the decisions of the Berlin conference, are necessary,” her spokesman Steffen Seibert said. He […]
Nina Hoss, the German actress best known to American audiences for her work with filmmaker Christian Petzold, as well as her recurrent role as the intelligence operative Astrid in Homeland, also has deep roots in contemporary German theater. Her mother, Heidemarie Rohweder, was a well-known stage actress. In 2006, Hoss won acclaim for playing the notoriously difficult role of Euripides’ Medea in a much-lauded production at […]
The Germans may have opposed closing borders in response to the outbreak in Italy, but it appears Berlin is planning to do something about the outbreak. According to reports, the Germans are stepping up to suspend Berlin’s longstanding constitutional “debt break” and deliver the fiscal stimulus for which economists have been begging. To try and prevent a full-blown recession as economists downgrade their projections for European […]
While the glory days of the New German Cinema of the 1970s are long gone, Christian Petzold remains the one contemporary German director who has made an impact on the film-going public and become an art house favorite. The best-known figure of the so-called “Berlin School” (a loose aggregation of directors, many of whom studied at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin during the […]
Transgender protagonists have increasingly been featured in fiction films with high profiles on the festival circuit. Lukas Dhont’s 2018 Girl won acclaim at Cannes, even though its American reception was complicated by complaints lodged by trans activists that the film dwelled inordinately on the central character’s genitals. Last year, Flavio Alves’s The Garden Left Behind was hailed at SXSW for its sensitive portrayal of an undocumented […]
BERLIN—A culture-clash movie with an erotic subplot, there’s little doubt that Uisenma Borchu’s Black Milk (which premiered on Friday at the Berlin Film Festival), the Mongolian-German director’s second feature, is an intensely personal project. Borchu emigrated from Mongolia to Germany with her family at the age of four and plays the central role of Wessi, a woman who returns as an adult to her homeland to […]
A German court has given a final green light to Tesla – the avowedly eco-friendly carmaker – to continue clearing a forest near Berlin to make way for a new factory, striking down last-ditch challenge from local environmentalists. The court rejected last minute appeals to halt the massive factory project, which will clear away 227 acres of woodland in the town of Gruenheide, noting that its […]
When a Chechen exile was shot dead in a Berlin park last summer it strained relations between Germany and Russia. A new investigation suggests his alleged killer may have been trained by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was regarded as a terrorist by Moscow for his role in conflicts in the Caucasus during the early 2000s. He moved to Germany after apparently surviving an […]
While Elon Musk advances his sustainability agenda, his ‘environmentally-friendly’ venture Tesla wages – and wins – a legal battle with locals who oppose leveling a pine forest to erect the company’s giant factory. Defying protests among locals and an appeal by environmentalist groups, a local court gave the green light to Elon Musk’s Gigafactory 4 construction in the middle of a serene forest in the Gruenheide […]