Germany news: China chides Berlin for 'microphone diplomacy'

An alleged member of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been arrested in Hamburg, following a request from local investigating authorities.

The suspect is a 54-year-old Turkish man, who is alleged to have led the PKK's activities in several Germany cities, including Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Magdeburg and Halle from 2015-2018.

He is accused of having membership of a terrorist organization abroad.

The PKK are considered a terrorist organization in the European Union, Turkey and the United States and have been banned in Germany since 1993.

The group took up an armed struggle for a Kurdish state in south-east Turkey in the 1980s but agreed this year to disarm and end its fight.

Dresden Higher Regional Court issued the arrest warrant for the suspect, with the local Public Prosecutor General's Office adding: "The tasks of the accused included the supervision and management of the PKK room managers subordinate to him as well as the organisation of propaganda events and meetings."

"He also organized annual fundraising campaigns for the PKK," prosecutors added.

Properties for two other suspects were also searched in the eastern town of Bautzen. The men, aged 46 and 53, also have Turkish citizenship and are suspected of having been members of or supported the PKK.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier found time on Tuesday during his visit to Ghana to play football with former German national player Gerald Asamoah.

The Ghanaian-born striker was holding a football session in the city of Kumasi, where Steinmeier was visiting a vocational school.

Although it proved to be a brief kickabout back and forth between the pair, the children in attendance were seemingly impressed.

"That was very, very good. You can tell he used to play football," Asamoah said of Steinmeier's football skills. 

On Monday, Asamoah — a former Bundesliga player and head coach with Schalke — was awarded the Federal Cross of Meritt by Steinmeier.

The idea to take a break from the formal activities of the trip came from the minister of state at the Foreign Office, Serap Güler, who has been accompanying Steinmeier throughout the trip to Ghana.

Deutsche Telekom has agreed to build a €1 billion ($1.1 billion) artificial intelligence (AI) data center with US chipmaker Nvidia in Munich, chief executive Timotheus Höttges announced on Tuesday.

"Without AI, you can forget about industry," said Höttges. "Without AI, you can forget about Germany as a business location."

While the technology used in the center will come from both Germany and the United States, all the data that is processed in Munich will remain within Germany.

The joint venture between Germany's biggest telecoms operator and Nvidia will allow companies throughout Europe to use AI in processes that include design and banking through "secure" IT infrastructure on the continent.

Initially the service will be provided industrial clients, such as Deutsche Bank, software company SAP and robotics company Agile Robots.

Concerns have mounted in recent months that Europe is falling behind in the AI-boom and German Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger hailed the new initiative as "a great day for Germany and for Europe."

German Football Association (DFB) President Bernd Neuendorf says his organization is considering a bid to host the men's World Cup in 2038 or 2042 during his next term as president.

He said he could "basically imagine that we might take up this question in the future and examine under what conditions such a bid would even be conceivable."

The 64-year-old added: "It's clear that there are only a few associations in the world that have the infrastructure to host a tournament with 48 teams and all the accompanying requirements. We can confidently say that we have excellent infrastructure."

However, Neuendorf emphasized that the DFB's focus for now is on its bid to host the Women's European Championship in 2029. The European Football Union (UEFA) Executive Committee will decide on that on December 3. A bid for the men’s World Cup, he said, was therefore still "a matter for the future."

The World Cup finals in 2030 (Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco) and 2034 (Saudi Arabia) have already been awarded. The last men's World Cup in Germany took place in 2006; before that, the Federal Republic hosted the tournament in 1974. Last year, the DFB hosted the men's European Championship.

Neuendorf, who has been in office since March 2022, is up for re-election at the DFB Congress on Friday.

A Ukrainian man accused of masterminding the Nord Stream pipeline blasts has been refusing food for days to protest prison conditions.

He is demanding better conditions as he awaits a ruling on extradition to Germany.

The attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines caused a worldwide sensation three years ago. Almost half a year after the start of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, several explosions damaged the two pipelines so severely that no gas could flow through them anymore.

Read our full report on the Ukrainian suspect's hunger strike here.

A large majority of Germans has supported hosting the Olympic Games again.

In a Forsa poll for the news magazine Stern, 72% said they would welcome Summer Olympics in Germany for the first time since Munich in 1972.

Only 22% opposed the idea, while 6% gave no opinion. Support was strong across age groups and political parties.

The German Olympic Sports Confederation plans to decide by autumn 2026 which city to nominate for the 2036, 2040, or 2044 Games. Among those in favor, 39% preferred Munich, 24% favored the Rhine-Ruhr region, 15% backed Berlin — where the games were held in the Nazi era in 1936 — and 11% chose Hamburg.

Forsa surveyed 1,008 adults on October 30 and 31. A separate YouGov poll for the DPA news agency last year showed lower support, with 48% in favor and 32% against a German Olympic bid.

During the Munich 1972 Olympics, the first major international sporting event on German soil since the 1936 Berlin Olympics, eight Palestinian gunmen stormed the Israeli team's apartment at the Olympic village. 

The Black September militants shot dead two Israeli team members, and took a further nine Israelis hostage.

In a botched response from West German police, all nine hostages were killed, as well as five hostage-takers and a police officer. The incident caused a deep rift between Germany and Israel.

Several Afghan families with German entry permits have departed Islamabad en route to Hanover in Germany after months of waiting.

The scheduled flight would mark the fourth group of vulnerable Afghans to reach Germany since a change of government in May.

The new arrivals had previously fled Afghanistan and stayed in Pakistan while awaiting permission to travel. 

The Interior Ministry said every Afghan entering Germany under admission pledges must first undergo document and security checks.

The current conservative CDU/CSU and center-left Social Democrat government has halted new admission programs for at-risk Afghans, a move that left many stranded in Pakistan. Some have since won the right to enter Germany through court rulings, supported in part by the group Kabul Luftbrücke.

According to the Interior Ministry, about 1,900 Afghans with approved applications remain in Pakistan.

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court has struck down rules on medical triage, declaring them unconstitutional. The case concerned how doctors allocate treatment when medical resources are scarce.

Two constitutional complaints from emergency and intensive care doctors have been upheld, the court said on Tuesday.

The judges ruled that the provisions lacked federal authority and unlawfully restricted doctors' professional freedom. They said physicians must retain the right to decide how and whether to continue treatment as part of their therapeutic responsibility.

The challenged law, passed in 2022, had prohibited so-called "ex post" triage — ending treatment for one patient with poor survival chances to save another with better prospects.

The plaintiffs argued that the rule contradicted medical ethics and prevented doctors from saving the greatest number of lives in a crisis.

Germany's oldest known man, Karl Haidle, has died at the age of 110. The municipality of Kernen im Remstal in Baden-Württemberg said Haidle passed away peacefully during the night on Saturday, just weeks after his birthday.

Mayor of Kernen Benedikt Paulowitsch praised the former farmer, born on September 2, 1915, as "a model of calmness and appreciation," who had impressed many people "with his warmth and down-to-earth nature."

"He saw and endured much in his long life — without bitterness, but with great respect for life," the mayor said in a tribute published by the municipality. The community would keep him in honorable memory, Paulowitsch said.

According to the statement, Haidle was considered the oldest known man in Germany at the time of his death. He had lived through more than a century of German history and "the profound upheavals of the 20th century."

Haidle was a trained mechanic drafted as a soldier into the Reich Labor Service and later the Wehrmach during World War II, stationed in Austria as a mountain infantryman. In 1944, he was taken prisoner of war in Yugoslavia and returned to Germany three years later.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi has urged Germany to avoid making temporary disagreements appear public after Berlin postponed a planned visit by German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul.

According to Beijing, Wang told Wadephul in a phone call that Germany should refrain from "unfounded accusations that contradict the facts." He said both countries should build a "more stable and sustainable political framework" to keep relations on the right track.

"China and Germany should create a more stable and sustainable political framework to ensure that bilateral relations always stay on the right track," Wang said.

Wadephul and Wang had also agreed that the visit should be rescheduled "soon," the German Foreign Office spokesperson added. China had also reaffirmed its invitation to Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) and extended an additional invitation to President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The phone call had initially been described in cordial terms. A German Foreign Office spokesperson had previously said that Wadephul and Wang had agreed in their phone call that "stable German-Chinese relations are of great interest to both countries."

At the end of October, the Foreign Office had postponed Wadephul's planned trip to China shortly before departure. The reason given was that the Chinese hosts had not confirmed any appointments for Wadephul other than the meeting with Wang. The Foreign Office expressed regret over this and pointed to a number of topics on which the German government would have liked to engage in dialogue with China — such as trade disputes, rare earth metals and relations with Russia.

Guten Tag from DW's newsroom in a cloudy Bonn and Danke Schön for joining us for the latest Germany news.

In diplomatic news, China has urged Germany to avoid making disagreements public after Berlin postponed Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul's planned visit.

Beijing said Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Wadephul that Germany should refrain from "unfounded accusations." 

Berlin had delayed the trip after Beijing confirmed no meetings beyond the one with Wang, citing the need for broader talks.

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