Karina Marnissi and her husband Isam had been looking forward to their vacation in Cuba. Relaxing under the palm trees of the Caribbean and enjoying the charms of Havana seemed just the thing. On July 20, they traveled from Stuttgart to the Munich Airport with tickets and visas in their pockets. They had already checked in. All they had to do was check their luggage for the Eurowings flight to Varadero. But they would never make it onto the plane.

German police began to remove protesters on Thursday who have been living in tree houses for the past six years in the ancient Hambach Forest, located in the western part of the country. German utility company RWE is seeking to expand mining operations in the 12,000-year-old forest, and protesters have been camping out in an effort to save what is left. “This year’s clearing measures are necessary to maintain opencast mining operations and coal extraction over the next two years,” RWE said in a statement, noting that no agreement was reached with the protesters following negotiations that took place on Monday.

Top German officials on Wednesday called for concerted global efforts to prevent chemical weapons being used in Syria, as conservative chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany could not simply look away if such attacks took place. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said diplomacy was the top priority to prevent the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said a “credible deterrent” was also needed.

Trial proceedings have begun in the lawsuit brought against Volkswagen by investors alleging the company did not give them timely notice of its scandal over cars rigged to cheat on diesel emissions tests. Investors are seeking almost 9 billion euros ($10.4 billion), saying Volkswagen didn’t give them the information they needed to decide what to do with their shares before the scandal became public. The U.S. Environmental Protection agency accused Volkswagen in September 2015 of manipulating diesel emissions, sending the shares sharply lower.

Freya radar - Wikipedia

The head of Germany's national teachers' union on Friday called for a ban on mobile phones for children under the age of 14, citing concerns about bullying. "During school breaks, the cellphone is a permanent source of bullying," said Heinz-Peter Meidinger. "Almost all physical bullying today is accompanied by bullying on the internet and social networks."

The greatest source of German angst are the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump, according to an insurance company's survey of the deepest fears plaguing the country's people. Trump's policies were named as the top fear factor by 69 percent of respondents in the annual survey, in which last year's number one issue, terrorism, was bumped down to fifth place.

More than two-thirds of Germans — or 69 percent — are extremely concerned that US President Donald Trump's policies are having a dangerous impact worldwide, according to the annual survey "The fears of Germans" by the R+V Infocenter. "Trump's ruthless 'America First' politics, his aggression with regards to international arrangements and his equally aggressive trade and security politics, even towards allied countries, scare the majority of the population," said Manfred G. Schmidt, a professor at the Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg and a consultant for R+V Infocenter.

A court in the southwestern German city of Landau on Monday sentenced asylum-seeker Abdul D. to eight years and six months in prison for the murder of a teenage girl in the town of Kandel in December last year. The murder had been seized upon by many opponents of Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policy to support their anti-immigration stance. The case has received great media attention in Germany, and many reporters were present outside the court as the verdict was announced.

Two competing demonstrations in Chemnitz were very much a clash of two Germanys. No police presence could obscure the fundamental conflict, indeed naked hatred, between these two sets of people.

Germany has handed back the human remains of indigenous people killed during a genocide in colonial Namibia more than 100 years ago. A Namibian government delegation received the skulls at a church service in the capital, Berlin. The bones had been sent to Germany for now-discredited research to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans.

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party is floating the idea of a new form of compulsory national service in Germany for all young people and migrants. For over 50 years, all German men were obliged to spend a year in the army after leaving school. Those who could not, or would not, volunteered their time in community service instead.

A wildfire the size of more than 500 soccer fields spread southwest of the German capital on Friday, leading to the evacuation of three villages. Efforts to extinguish the flames were complicated by old ammunition from World War II that is still buried in the forests around Berlin and could explode in the fire.

Germany on Tuesday took in a 95-year-old former guard at a Nazi labour camp where more than 6,000 people were killed after he was stripped of his US citizenship. The German foreign ministry said it had agreed to accept the former Ukraine national Jakiw Palij after his expulsion from the United States late Monday, citing Berlin's "moral duty" in light of the Nazis' crimes.

Nazi, fascist, socialist, ultra right-wing - these terms seem to be bandied about a lot these days. But what do they really mean?

Tommy Frenck is the proud owner and proprietor of The Golden Lion, a traditional, half-timbered guesthouse surrounded by meadows in a small village in central Germany.

After growing frustrated with unruly children, a German restaurant owner decided to ban them from his eatery and offer his guests "an oasis of peace." The man says his move is actually directed at ignorant parents.

German lifeguards have issued a warning that a growing number of child drownings this summer are linked to their parents’ obsession with mobile phones. More than 300 people have drowned in Germany this year, with hardly a day passing during the current heatwave when a swimmer has not died. The German Lifeguard Association (DLRG) – the biggest organisation of its kind in the world, providing 40,000 volunteer lifeguards at German beaches, lakes and the coast – has made a direct connection between children getting into difficulty in the water and parents being too busy on their mobile phones to notice.

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989. But it seems that its story still hasn't been fully told. A previously unknown section of the wall was discovered in summer 2018 in a residential section of northwest Berlin. Several locals on a walking tour came upon a 20-meter (66-foot) section of crumbling wall, covered in graffiti, in June. The wall had been covered by overgrown bushes, which is how it had escaped discovery for so long.

Germany’s top economic official is criticizing President Trump over U.S. trade policies, saying that the escalating tariff dispute is “destroying” economic progress in his country. “This trade war is slowing down and destroying economic growth - and it creates new uncertainties,” Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper, according to Reuters.