Germany news: Interior Ministry bans 'Muslim Interactive'

Flight operations at Germany's Hannover Airport were suspended late Wednesday night after a drone was spotted near the premises, police said. 

The airport was closed between 10:00 p.m and 10:45 p.m (2100 to 2145 GMT) after a pilot on approach reported seeing a drone. Authorities said the initial investigation revealed the drone was flying over a nearby industrial area. 

An airport spokesperson told German news agency DPA that three flights were diverted but other flights were able to land and take off without delays. 

Several airports in Germany and across Europe have had an increase in drone sightingsin recent days, promting security concerns. 

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has offered his condolences to the family of Itay Chen, the last person with German citizenship held hostage by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose remains were returned to Israel.

Hamas handed over the body of Chen, an Israeli soldier who also held German and US citizenship, late on Tuesday. His remains were definitively identified on Wednesday.

"After agonizing months and years of waiting, the family now has sad certainty," Steinmeier said in Angola, where he is on an official visit. "I would like to express my deepest condolences to the family and hope that they find comfort and support during this time of pain and grief.

"I hope and wish that the return of the living hostages, but also the handover of the bodies of the murdered hostages, is a beginning on a long road to peace in the Middle East," Steinmeier added.

According to the Israeli military, Chen was 19 years old when he was killed during the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in southern Israel, after which his body was taken to the Gaza Strip.

Düsseldorf's administrative court on Wednesday ruled that two Syrian men could be deported, ruling that they no longer faced significant danger or impoverishment if returned. 

The court found in two separate rulings that the men's home regions, the Damascus and Latakia provinces, would not expose them to indiscriminate violence at a level that would constitute a serious threat. 

The decisions cannot be appealed.

The two men, a 46-year-old cook and his 26-year-old son, had earlier tried and failed to gain refugee status while living in Austria. Neither had been convicted of any crimes while living in Germany. 

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt had said in September that the government would first prioritize returning convicted criminals.

According to government statistics, just over 950,000 Syrian nationals were living in Germany as of the end of August. 

Only a tiny proportion of them, 920 or roughly 1 in 1,000, are required to leave because they do not have at least a temporary legal right to reside.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called for the swift resumption of returns to Syria since the fall of Bashar Assad's regime last December after more than a decade of civil war. 

Syria is now led by a transitional government under President Ahmed al-Sharaa, an Islamist rebel leader with past ties to al-Qaida in Iraq and Syria. It held its first elections since Assad's ouster in October but not in all provinces, with Kurdish groups in particular calling the process a "political farce." 

But not all members of the German government are on board with the plan for deportations. CDU Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul faced criticism from party colleagues on Wednesday, for comments seemingly aiming to dampen their expectations of mass returns to Syria any time soon. Wadephul reportedly told party colleagues at an internal meeting, following his recent trip to Syria, that the country was in a worse state than Germany was after its surrender in World War II in 1945.

A German police officer is facing negligent homicide charges after firing five shots and killing a 21-year-old Black man in the northwestern city of Oldenburg earlier this year. 

News of his death had prompted widespread protests and criticism, not least as he had been shot in the back. 

The young man, identified only as Lorenz under German privacy standards, was shot as he fled police in Oldenburg's pedestrian zone on the evening of April 20. 

The autopsy report found he was hit in the hip, upper body, and head, while another bullet grazed his thigh. 

The German national had previously used pepper spray outside a nightclub, mildly injuring several people, and then threatened police with the pepper spray as they tried to arrest him. He was also carrying a knife but prosecutors allege he did not use this to threaten police.

Oldenburg prosecutors said they had only sought negligent homicide charges because the 27-year-old police officer "mistakenly believed he was acting in self-defense," but also said he was mistaken and that at the time the weapon was fired, the young man had been trying to flee. 

Lawyers for Lorenz's parents argued that the conditions to declare the shooting negligent were not met in the case. 

"It is not credible that the officer in this situation still mistakenly believed he was going to be attacked with a knife," Lea Voigt, Nils Dietrich and Thomas Feltes wrote, criticizing the investigations to date as prejudiced and insufficient.

Three teachers and 29 students required medical attention at a school in Spiesen-Elversberg in Saarland on Wednesday, police said, when "an irritant gas was seemingly released." 

Police said there were roughly 170 people in the building at the time of the suspected crime, at around 11:30 a.m. local time. 

The injured people suffered irritation of the airways and eyes.

"Many of the injured were given medical attention on site, a few were taken to nearby hospitals for further treatment," police from the larger nearby town of Neunkirchen said in a statement. 

Police said they were launching investigations against an as yet unknown suspect on suspicion of intentionally releasing the gas and causing dangerous bodily harm. 

"The exact material used in the crime is not yet clear and is a subject of the ongoing investigation," police said. They appealed to potential witnesses who might have seen suspicious activity at or near the Albert-Schweitzer School near Saarbrücken and the French border to get in touch.

Signs of the ongoing US government shutdown causing difficulties or uncertainties for US soldiers appeared, and then were swiftly removed after drawing attention, on the US Army Garrison Bavaria website this week. 

"The shutdown will impact services provided by the Garrison at installations across Rose Barracks, Tower Barracks, Hohenfels and Garmisch," it said on a web page to provide guidance to members of how to deal with the government shutdown.

The web page also contained a "running list of German support organizations for your kit bags" that included charities like Foodsharing e.V and Essen für Alle (Food for All), as well as the app Too Good To Go.

At the top of the list was Tafel Deutschland, which it described as "the umbrella organization distributes food to people in poverty through its more than 970 local food banks."

On Wednesday, the garrison removed references to these German food banks and other free or discounted food provision services from the web page in question. But some of the listings remained on a separate document listing various services for those affected by the shutdown.

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The German Police Union (DPolG) welcomed the news that the "Muslim Interactive" group, which advocated the overthrow of the German government, has been banned.

DPolG chair Rainer Wendt said that the government was "implementing...the active protection of our democracy and our constitution."

The Islamist association had called for a caliphate to replace the German state.

Wendt also said that membership of "Muslim Interactive" should be grounds for the deportation of non-citizens.

"We now expect the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees to review the respective residence status of the association's members in order to subsequently justify a special interest in expulsion," he said.

Deportation continued to be a hot topic in Berlin on Wednesday, as Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul openly disagreed as to whether it is safe for refugees to return to Syria.

Herta Müller, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, will be given the German Culture Prize next week.

The award honors her entire body of work, which includes renowned novels like "The Hunger Angel" and "The Passport" as well as poetry and essays.

Born in 1953 as part of the German minority in Romania, much of her work focuses on the terror and persecution faced by ordinary people under the Iron Curtain.

Stiftung Kulturförderung, the foundation who presents the German Culture Prize, hailed Müller's "literary fearlessness" and her "unwavering commitment to freedom."

Müller will receive the prize at a ceremony in Munich on November 14.

A 40-year-old palliative care nurse was given a life sentence by a court in Aachen for the murder of 10 patients and the attempted murder of 27 others.

The prosecution claimed the man was playing "master of life and death" over those in his care, and that he showed a distinct lack of empathy for patients who required a higher level of attention.

Though the acknowledged that he suffered from a personality disorder, they said he purposefully gave elderly patients extremely high doses of medication in order to reduce his workload on night shifts.

He was arrested in 2024 while working at a hospital in the town of Wuerselen, where he had been working since 2020.

The judge ruled that due to the "high severity of guilt," he will not be eligible for parole for at least 15 years.

German public broadcaster ARD reported on Wednesday that Bundestag members from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) are planning official trips to Russia.

According to official party documents, on top of regular trips to Turkey, Kyrgyzstan and the US, two AfD lawmakers will visit Sochi, Russia, on November 13.

Party members Steffen Kotre und Rainer Rothfuss are due to give talks at a symposium for Europeans looking to forge connections with the BRICS. BRICS is a summit group that includes Russia and China that seeks to counter Western-led alternatives like the G7.

It is not the first recent trip to Russia for either lawmaker, who have also traveled to Moscow.

Vice-parliamentary chief for the AfD, Stefan Keuter, told ARD he believed it was "time to intensify contact with Russia."

The AfD has repeatedly come under criticism for forging ties with authoritarian leaders, and has been labeled extremist by German intelligence services, but the label has been put on hold pending an AfD appeal.

China's Football Association has turned to a homegrown former player who spent most of his career in Germany, Shao Jiayi, to take over stewardship of the national team. 

The world's second-most populous nation recently missed out once again on World Cup qualification, dismissing Croatian Branko Ivankovic as coach as a result in June. The team had lost seven of 10 qualifying matches.

China's CFA said in a statement that the decision was made with a view to "the current situation for Chinese men's football and the long-term construction of the national team." 

Shao spent several years competing in Germany's Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga in his prime, in stints at 1860 Munich, then Energie Cottbus and finally MSV Duisburg. 

The midfielder also competed for China in the 2002 World Cup — still the only time China ever made it to world football's biggest competition. The country is still seeking its first points and goals at a World Cup.

Shao has spent some of his coaching career with China's national setup already, training the youth teams and as assistant coach for the seniors. Most recently, he was coaching Chinese Super League team Qingdao West Coast.

Germany's far-left party hailed Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City mayoral election, saying his victory could provide momentum for Berlin next year.

"His campaign is like a blueprint for next year's elections in Berlin," said Jan van Aken, leader of the Left Party, which has bounced back in support in the past year after a decade of relative obscurity.

The Left Party faces an uphill battle in the race for Berlin's city hall, as the more residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of town tend to support the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), and the environmentalist Green Party also remains popular.

Indeed, the CDU took power in the Berlin senate for the first time in two decades in 2023 from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), who remain in government as junior coalition partners.

The center-left government of Hamburg, which is also its own federal state, welcomed the news that the Muslim Interactive organization had been banned.

The group, which had called for the German government to be overthrown and replaced by a caliphate, was particularly active in Berlin and Hamburg.

Senator for the Interior Andy Grote called it a "strike against modern TikTok-Islamism." 

Hamburg intelligence chief Torsten Voss stressed that the move protected religious freedom, as the ban "was not against Muslims, but against enemies of the constitution who are exploiting Islam for political reasons."

As other German auto giants are making moves to slash costs amidst plummeting sales, the BMW group announced on Wednesday that it had done robust business in the third quarter of 2025.

CEO Oliver Zipse announced profits of €1.7 billion (nearly $2 billion), compared to €476 million in the same period last year, when its cars were facing issues with their brakes.

Zipse also said that the company was "fully on track" to meet European Union emissions targets for 2025.

While other European carmakers have complained about unfair competition in the electric vehicle sector from China, BMW's report highlighted its iX3 electric SUV in particular as having driven the increase in sales.

Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) announced late on Tuesday that it had arrested 18 individuals in connection with an online fraud network that was using German payment service providers.

The BKA said that between 2016 and 2021, the network amassed the credit card details of some 4.3 million individuals from 193 countries, stealing over €300 million ($344 million).

The raids that resulted in the 18 arrests were part of a coordinated law enforcement effort that also involved Canada, the US, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Luxembourg, and Singapore, German authorities said.