Germany

7 Dec 2018; DW: The explosion destroyed the toilet, demolished the stall and shattered windows. Police do not know where the boy got the explosives and say he's lucky to have escaped without seriously injuring himself or others.

A 10-year-old student in the western German city of Duisburg caused serious damage at his elementary school on Friday morning when he used an extremely powerful firecracker to blow up a toilet.

7 Dec 2018; AFP: Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a close ally of Angela Merkel, won a tight race to succeed her as party leader Friday, seeing off a longtime rival of the German chancellor.

The contest, which required a runoff vote to secure a 52-percent majority for AKK as she is known, is expected to increase the likelihood that Merkel will be able to see out her fourth term until 2021.

7 Dec 2018; DW: One in four of Europe's Jews have endured anti-Semitic abuse, some violent, in the past year, according to Germany's Bild newspaper. It follows a vow by EU interior ministers to boost security for Jewish communities.

The German mass daily Bild reported Friday that behind the EU ministers' declaration was "a large EU survey among 16,395 Jews in the whole of Europe," apparently still under wraps in Brussels.

2 Dec 2018; DW: German police shut down a far-right concert Saturday after members of the crowd started chanting "Sieg Heil" (Hail Victory), a Nazi-era victory slogan.

German law forbids the use of any kind of Nazi slogan or symbol, such as displaying swastikas.

The concert, which took place in Ostritz, a small town in the eastern state of Saxony, had drawn several hundred people, police said.

29 Nov 2018; DW: Thousands had to be evacuated from their homes after the discovery of a World War II bomb in the western German city of Cologne. Army experts were drafted in to defuse the device.

Public order officials helped move some 10,000 people to temporary shelters on Wednesday, after a decision to evacuate all homes within a one-kilometer (0.62-mile) radius of the bomb.

29 Nov 2018; AFP: German chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer said Thursday it would slash 12,000 jobs in a major restructuring following the mammoth takeover of Monsanto, enabling it to save 2.6 billion euros ($3 billion) a year from 2022.

The planned job cuts will affect about one in every ten of the group's 118,200 posts, "a significant number of them in Germany", said the group in a statement.

Bayer swallowed Monsanto in one of Germany's biggest ever corporate takeovers at a cost of $63 billion in June.

BERLIN (AP) — The European Union’s executive branch proposed Wednesday that the bloc should cut its emissions of greenhouse gases to net zero by 2050, a measure scientists say needs to be adopted worldwide in order to avoid catastrophic global warming.

The European Commission is the first major economy to set its sight on achieving climate neutrality in the next three decades. But the plan, which was announced days before a global climate summit , is far more ambitious than the national targets set so far by many of the EU’s 28 member states.

BERLIN, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) -- German auto parts manufacturer Webasto is entering into a long-term cooperation with Chinese Lithium-Ion producer Wanxiang A123 to pool their automotive industry expertise, the German firm announced on Tuesday.

The Munich-based company said that a first joint project would involve the development and production of a battery module for the Chinese market which will be integrated into its own battery system for commercial vehicles.

People in Germany and the United States appear to have very different ideas about the state of relations between their countries. Germans see Berlin and Washington increasingly at odds, but Americans are more positive.

A study published on Monday by the Pew Research Center found that Americans and Germans were "worlds apart" in how they viewed their countries' relations with one another. 

While most Germans said current ties were at something of a low point, a comfortable majority of Americans viewed relations positively.

27 Nov 2018; DW: German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has said Germany could mediate between Ukraine and Russia in the ongoing crisis in the Sea of Azov. But some critics in Germany are calling on Berlin to help Kyiv militarily.

Angela Merkel and various members of her Cabinet have appealed to both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict to de-escalate amid Ukraine's calls for more military support from Germany and NATO.