Germany

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s coronavirus tracing app has been used to transmit 1.2 million test results from labs to users during the first 100 days, officials said Wednesday.

The Corona-Warn-App, downloaded more than 18 million times since its launch in June, was touted by the government as a key tool in the country’s effort to contain the spread of the virus.

But the app, like others in Europe, has suffered a number of hiccups, prompting confusion and annoyance among some users.

BERLIN, Sept 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said he still believes ratification of an EU trade deal with South America is possible, despite European anger over deforestation in Brazil.

Even without reopening the text of the agreement, “there are some issues that we have to clarify, that we can clarify”, Altmaier said, after a meeting of EU trade ministers in Berlin.

A “sustainable solution” can be found, he said, urging his EU partners to not be divided on the hot-button issue.

22 Sep 2020; MEMO: As Ankara and Athens prepare for talks, Germany has called on Greece to withdraw its army from Aegean Sea islands, near Turkey, Greek newspaper ESTIA reported on Friday.

Speaking about the visit of the German Ambassador Ernst Reichel to the Greek parliament on Thursday, the newspaper said: “It was a real surprise.”

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Europe’s economic rebound is uncertain and uneven, requiring “very careful” assessment of incoming data, including the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Monday.

“The uncertainty of the current environment requires a very careful assessment of the incoming information, including developments in the exchange rate,” Lagarde said in a speech to the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany would relax insolvency rules under proposals set out on Saturday to help avert a wave of bankruptcies in Europe’s biggest economy, provided companies hit by the coronavirus crisis have a robust business model.

Keen to avoid bankruptcies and mass layoffs, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has launched a range of stimulus and relief measures as Germany braces for its biggest slump since World War Two, having shrunk by an unprecedented 9.7% in the second quarter.

Berlin, Sep 18 (AP/PTI) Germany is providing 22 million euros (USD 26 million) to improve security of synagogues and other Jewish sites in the country following an anti-Semitic attack last year.

The government pledged to step up security after a right-wing extremist tried to force his way into a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle on Judaism's holiest day, Yom Kippur, killing two passers-by after he failed to get in.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany will not take risky shortcuts when developing a vaccine against COVID-19, Research Minister Anja Karliczek said on Tuesday.

“Even when the world is waiting for a vaccine - we won’t take risky short-cuts here,” Karliczek told a news conference in Berlin

“We will not deviate from this line in Germany or in Europe. And I also believe that all countries should proceed in this way globally.”

She repeated her assertion from July that she does not expect that a vaccine will be broadly available until the middle of 2021.

BERLIN (AP) — Specialist labs in France and Sweden have confirmed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, the German government said Monday.

A German military laboratory previously confirmed the substance in his samples.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said that the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has also received samples and is taking steps to have those tested at its reference laboratories.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Euro zone governments must keep spending heavily to aid the bloc’s recovery from its historic pandemic-induced recession, complementing already super-easy monetary policy, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Sunday.

With debt levels blowing past 100% of GDP this year, concerns are rising that politicians will struggle to push through more support and some subsidies, raising the risk that employment and income schemes could abruptly end.

BERLIN, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's policy is the issue that Germans are worried about the most, according to the results of an annual study on people's fears by Germany's R+V insurance group published recently.

More than half of the 2,400 people surveyed in the study, or 53 percent, said that the U.S. president's policy makes the world a more dangerous place.

"That is justified," said Professor Manfred G. Schmidt, political scientist at Heidelberg University, who has been advising the R+V Infocenter on evaluating the study for a number of years.