Germany

BERLIN, Feb 27 (Reuters) - The majority of flights at Germany's Duesseldorf and Cologne Bonn regional airports were grounded by a 24-hour strike by the Verdi trade union on Monday, the airports said.

The Duesseldorf airport on Monday said only 89 flights of a planned 330 were taking place while 29 were diverted to other airports and seven were rescheduled for the next day.

Of Monday's usual 136 daily passenger flights scheduled for Cologne Bonn airport, only two were set to operate as scheduled.

23 Feb 2023; MEMO: The Berlin Regional Court sentenced, on Thursday, a Palestinian-Syrian man to life imprisonment with hard labour over war crimes he committed in March 2014 in the Yarmouk Camp, which led to killing seven people.

The man identified as Mouaffaq Dawa, was a member of the Free Palestine Movement, a group allied with the Syrian regime of President Bashar Al-Assad.

BONN, Germany (AP) — The temperature outside Klaus Mueller’s office almost resembles spring, exactly the kind of mild weather that helped Germany get through the winter without Russian natural gas.

But Germany’s chief utility regulator is not ready to sound the all clear on an energy crisis spawned by the war in Ukraine, even with natural gas reserves abundant and prices well down from their peak.

BERLIN (AP) — Nearly a year after Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “turning point” that would trigger weapons shipments to a nation at war and a massive increase in Germany’s military spending, the turnaround for his country’s armed forces still has a long way to go.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany said Wednesday that it is expelling two Iranian diplomats over the death sentence imposed in Iran against one of its citizens.

Authorities in Iran announced Tuesday that Jamshid Sharmahd, a 67-year-old Iranian-German national and U.S. resident, was sentenced to death after being convicted of terrorist activities.

BERLIN (AP) — Nearly a year after Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “turning point” that would trigger weapons shipments to a nation at war and a massive increase in Germany’s military spending, the turnaround for his country’s armed forces still has a long way to go.

MUNSTER, Germany, Feb 20 (Reuters) - A Ukrainian soldier compared Germany's Leopard 2 tanks to a Mercedes as he underwent training with them ahead of their arrival on the battlefield, saying he hoped they would bring a breakthrough in the war.

He is among dozens of Ukrainian troops Germany is training on Leopard 2 simulators and then the tanks themselves at its largest military training ground, in Munster, before sending them to Ukraine.

BERLIN (AP) — Russian pranksters posing as Ukraine’s ex-President Petro Poroshenko managed to contact Angela Merkel by phone to discuss developments in Ukraine and Belarus, although the former German chancellor appeared wary during the call.

Merkel’s office said Monday that the former German leader received a call Jan. 12 from someone claiming to be Poroshenko. The conversation was assisted by a German-Ukrainian interpreter from the German Foreign Ministry’s language service.

MUNICH, Feb 19 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday warned top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi of consequences should China provide material support to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying in an interview after the two met that Washington was concerned Beijing was considering supplying weapons to Moscow.

Munich (AP) — Estonia’s prime minister on Sunday insisted that once the war in Ukraine ends, Russia must be brought to justice for war crimes as well as for the decision to invade its neighbor if it is to have any chance of developing a normal relationship with the West.

Kaja Kallas, whose small Baltic country is the biggest per-capita contributor of military aid to Ukraine, told The Associated Press that the conflict cannot end with a peace deal that carves up the country and doesn’t hold Moscow to account.