Germany

FRANKFURT, Oct 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — German rail operator Deutsche Bahn and industrial group Siemens on Monday unveiled the world’s first automated, driverless train in the city of Hamburg, billing it as more punctual and energy efficient than traditional trains.

Four such trains will join the northern city’s S-Bahn rapid urban rail network and start carrying passengers from December, using the existing rail infrastructure.

BERLIN (AP) — Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Saturday that he will step down in a bid to defuse a government crisis triggered by prosecutors’ announcement that he is a target of a corruption investigation.

Kurz, 35, said he has proposed to Austria’s president that Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg become chancellor. But Kurz himself will remain in a key political position: he said he will become the head of his conservative Austrian People’s Party’s parliamentary group.

BERLIN, Oct 8 (Reuters) - German police said on Friday they are investigating several cases of so-called Havana syndrome at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, a mysterious ailment believed to have affected 200 U.S. diplomats, officials and family members worldwide.

The syndrome - with symptoms including migraines, nausea, memory lapses and dizziness - came to public attention in 2016 after dozens of diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, complained of the sickness.

BERLIN (AP) — German police carried out large-scale raids in 25 cities Wednesday in connection with a suspected money-laundering network alleged to have funneled millions in ill-gotten gains abroad.

Duesseldorf police said the raids, which began in the early hours, involved more than 1,000 officers and took place in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Bremen.

Eleven people were arrested, including a 39-year-old Syrian man who is accused of membership in Syria’s Nusra Front extremist group, police said.

BERLIN, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Germany's would-be "kingmakers", the Greens and Free Democrats, will take the next two days to decide how they will proceed with talks to form a new coalition government, Greens co-leader Robert Habeck said on Tuesday.

A close result in a Sept. 26 election, when no party won an overall majority, has kicked off a round of coalition talks that could last months, with the conservatives and Social Democrats (SPD) courting the two smaller parties to try to secure power.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — With oil prices near three-year highs, OPEC and allied countries are deciding whether to stay with their plans to gradually restoring production that was cut back during the pandemic recession — or to pump more oil to a recovering global economy that’s increasingly thirsty for it.

Analyst say OPEC and its allies, known as OPEC+, will likely stick with their existing road map at an online meeting Monday. That would mean agreeing to add 400,000 barrels per day to output next month.

WERLTE, Germany (AP) — German officials on Monday unveiled what they said is the world’s first commercial plant for making synthetic kerosene, touted as a climate-friendly fuel of the future.

Aviation currently accounts for about 2.5% of worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. While other forms of transportation are increasingly being electrified, the challenge to making large, battery-powered planes is formidable.

BERLIN, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Germany's liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) pressed Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives to say whether they really want to lead a new coalition government, ramping up pressure on its would-be ruling partners ahead of exploratory talks on Sunday.

The conservatives' chancellor candidate, Armin Laschet, has said he wants to form a government, even after his bloc of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) slumped to a record low result in last Sunday's vote.

BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday that Germans must keep working for democracy, as the country celebrated the 31st anniversary of the reunification of East and West.

In what is expected to be one of her last major speeches, the outgoing chancellor said that “mentally and structurally, unification hasn’t been completed yet.”

BERLIN, Oct 2 (Reuters) - A three-way German government led by the Social Democrats (SPD) should be ready to take office by the end of the year, the co-leader of the centre-left party said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday.

Norbert Walter-Borjans said he was confident his party, which won Sunday's national election by a narrow margin that left it seeking partners, could move swiftly to agree a coalition with the Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP).