Germany

BERLIN, April 5. /TASS/: Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine has already caused three main consequences: ‘awakening’ of the EU, ‘resurrection’ of NATO and cohesion of the Ukrainian nation, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in an interview for Die Welt, published Tuesday.

"It [operation] has caused awakening on three directions. First, it has reinforced the Ukrainian nation," Le Drian said. "Second, it has led to an awakening inside the EU."

BERLIN, April 4. /TASS/: Germany’s foreign ministry has announced its decision to expel "a considerable number" of employees of the Russian embassy in Berlin.

According to the Focus Online portal, the decision applies to 40 embassy employees.

BERLIN (AP) — A U.N.-backed panel will release Monday a highly anticipated scientific report on international efforts to curb climate change before global temperatures reach dangerous levels.

Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are considered the most authoritative assessments of the state of global warming, its impacts and the measures being taken to tackle it.

BERLIN, March 31 (Reuters) - Germany plans to end mandatory quarantine for most people who catch COVID-19, the health ministry proposed on Thursday, as numbers isolating with the infection top four million.

Under the existing rules, people with COVID must quarantine for at least seven days.

But Health Minister Karl Lauterbach wants to change that to a voluntary five days of self-isolation with the recommendation of a COVID test at the end of that period, proposals seen by Reuters showed.

BERLIN, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Germany's Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) on Wednesday announced the first stage, or the early warning level, of the gas emergency plan, saying that it's for "precautionary purposes."

"Security of supply continues to be guaranteed," said Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck, stressing that there were "no supply bottlenecks currently."

Berlin, Mar 30 (AP) The German government said Wednesday it was triggering the early warning level for gas supplies amid concerns that Russia could cut off supplies unless it is paid in rubles.

Western nations have rejected the Russian demand for ruble payments, arguing it would undermine the sanctions imposed against Moscow over the war in Ukraine.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — When the bombs started falling on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, last month, Tatyana Zhuravliova had a horrible deja vu: the 83-year-old Ukrainian Jew felt the same panic she suffered as a little girl when the Nazis were flying air attacks on her hometown of Odesa.

“My whole body was shaking, and those fears crept up again through my entire body — fears which I didn’t even know were still hidden inside me,” Zhuravliova said.

BERLIN (AP) — The western German state of Saarland is holding an election Sunday that offers the country’s first test at the ballot box since Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s national government took office in December.

Polls before the election for the state legislature point to a solid lead for Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats in a region led since 1999 by the center-right Christian Democratic Union party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel.

BERLIN (AP) — Before Russia’s war in Ukraine, Europe’s most pressing energy policy goal was reducing carbon emissions that cause climate change.

Now, officials are fixated on rapidly reducing the continent’s reliance on Russian oil and natural gas — and that means friction between security and climate goals, at least in the short term.

To wean itself from Russian energy supplies as quickly as possible, Europe will need to burn more coal and build more pipelines and terminals to import fossil fuels from elsewhere.

BERLIN, March 23 (Reuters) - Nearly 239,000 refugees from Ukraine have been recorded in Germany so far, the German Interior Ministry said.

Federal police said 238,932 people - mostly women, children and the elderly - have arrived from Ukraine as of Wednesday, according to the ministry.