Germany news: Lufthansa pilots stage another strike

A German tourist who vanished without paying a large hotel bill or returning his rental car in Mallorca has been arrested in Barcelona, police said on Thurday, apparently as he tried to sneak home undetected. 

The man had been holidaying at a Mallorca hotel and asked if he could extend his stay. Staff asked him if he could first settle his bill of around €6,000 (roughly $6,900), and soon after the man vanished. 

According to a report by a rental company, he had also failed to return a rental car. 

Investigators soon realized that the budget holidaymaker was trying to make his escape on a ferry to Barcelona in mainland Spain, where he was arrested. 

Mallorca has long been a firm favorite among holiday destinations for German tourists, with thousands visiting the island each year and tales of misadventure by no means unheard of. 

SPD collapse, AfD surge and a Green revival — Germany's state of Baden‑Württemberg has delivered an election few expected. How did Cem Özdemir turn a flat campaign into a comeback? DW unpacks Germany's shifting political landscape.

Four young men in Stuttgart stand accused of posing as teenage girls on a dating platform to attract men they deemed pedophiles, arrange a date and then assault and rob their targets. 

The case opens early on Friday in the southwestern city. 

Prosecutors are seeking convictions on charges including attempted homicide, rape and aggravated robbery and extortion.

They allege that the men posed as girls aged 16-18, and attacked the men they arranged meetings with using knives, pepper spray, batons or firearms, with victims left assaulted and in some cases robbed, raped or seriously hurt. 

The case comes amid an online trend of so-called "pedo hunting" circulating on social media. But police have alleged that the defendants were only trying to use this as justification to attack people who, in most cases, had not done anything to attract police attention. 

"The suspects have simply made use of this scam in order to attack and rob these men," police said. 

The trial is thought to target only part of a larger group. Searches took place late last year in and around Stuttgart, Esslingen and Waiblingen. At the time, police said that a further 15 men and three women were suspected of involvement of various types. 

In total at present, 20 trial days are scheduled between Friday and mid-July. 

Lufthansa said on Thursday that it had been able to limit the damages of the pilots' strike better than last time, with more than 50% of scheduled flights still operating on the first of two strike days. 

"The reduced flight plan is operating as announced," a company spokesman said. 

However, the pilots' trade union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) offered different estimates, saying that around 70% of scheduled flights were grounded as of 3 p.m. in Germany.

"Our estimation is based on a solid foundation;" union spokesman Arne Karstens said. "That the company likes to portray slightly polished figures is a known approach."

Airport operator Fraport logged 426 canceled flights out of 1,168 planned takeoffs, a cancellation rate of 36%, with most of the cancellations attributable to Lufthansa.

In Munich 230 of 800 flights were canceled. Other operators of course use these airports, but in much smaller volumes than Lufthansa.

What's certain is that the disruption was considerably less comprehensive than on the previous strike day in February, when VC said that 93% of Lufthansa planes were grounded, with around 100,000 passengers affected. 

Lufthansa's sister airlines Discover and City Airlines were able to jump in to cover some potential cancellations. In some cases it also deployed larger planes than necessary because those were available.

But the Lufthansa spokesman also said that several hundred pilots had voluntarily showed up for work, and that some of those must statistically have been VC members, given that the level of unionization at Lufthansa is high. 

The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court sentenced a 34-year-old Syrian man to four-and-a-half years behind bars due to his past involvement in the so-called "Islamic State" (IS).    

The man, Ahmad A, had been arrested in January 2025 in the town of Monheim am Rhein, which lies near Düsseldorf, and remanded in custody. He came to Germany in 2023 via the Balkan Route. 

Germany's Federal Public Prosecutor General had charged Ahmad A. with belonging to a terrorist organization along crimes against humanity and war crimes. The office was seeking a term of five years and 10 months in prison for Ahmad A.  

Ahmad A. was accused of joining IS in Syria in 2014, where he is suspected of involvement in the torture and execution of IS prisoners in a schoolyard. One witness, who was 13 years old a the time, said he saw Ahmad A. at the schooyard but this was not considered to be enough to convince the court that the suspect took part in those acts. 

The legal defense for Ahmad A. was seeking an acquittal for the suspect. In its verdict, the Düsseldorf court took into consideration that Ahmad A. had no prior convictions and that he had left IS over 10 years ago, in 2015.  

A new report on child sex abuse in the Catholic archbishopric of Paderborn released on Thursday lists 210 suspected perpetrators and 489 victims between 1941 and 2002, roughly twice as many as had previously been identified in a nationwide study in 2018.

Researchers at the University of Paderborn, commissioned by the Church as part of efforts to investigate the wrongdoing, had spent six years poring over old documents and interviewing witnesses from the time. 

Although the report does not include concrete evidence implicating the former Archbishop of Paderborn Johannes Joachim Degenhardt, he did face allegations from a victims' group on the day of the launch. 

Spokesman Reinhold Harmisch told regional broadcaster WDR and the Catholic KNA news agency that Degenhardt was accused not just of covering up, but of committing sexualized violence against young boys in testimony voiced in late 2025 by a man who was a minor at the time of the allegations. Harmisch stated that his organization considered Degenhardt a perpetrator based on the available information.

It wasn't clear whether this was a reference to allegations that the Paderborn archbishopric had itself made public last October, albeit while also saying that it did not deem the allegations credible.

Church historian Nicole Priesching declined to comment on Degenhardt's case when presenting the wider report on Thursday, saying "I could not reach an evaluation with the current available material." 

Degenhardt was archbishop of Paderborn from 1974 until his sudden death in 2002.

The case is not the first of its kind; former Essen Cardinal Franz Hengsbach, who died in 1991, is suspected of multiple cases of sexualized violence, including during his stint as archbishop of Paderborn that began in 1958. 

The rising costs of energy amid the war in the Middle East will impede the recovery of Germany's ailing economy, an economic institute warned on Thursday.

The Munich-based Ifo Institute said in its spring economic forecast that the recovery, though likely to continue, "will be dampened by the sharp rise in crude oil and natural gas prices."

If the war grows in scale, output in Germany will be reduced by 0.4 percentage points in 2026 and by the same amount again in 2027, compared with a non-conflict scenario, it forecast.

GDP growth would be just 0.6% this year and 0.8% next year, it said. 

If the war ends quickly, output will still be lower, although the impact would be less severe, Ifo said.

The rise in the price of oil is also likely to bring an increase in prices for consumers, it said.

"At the moment, we are assuming a rise in the rate of inflation to almost 2.5% if oil and gas prices sink again in the coming weeks," said Timo Wollmershäuser, Ifo's head of business cycle analysis and forecasts.

"But if the prices for fossil energy remain very high at the current level for a longer period of time, top inflation could climb to almost 3%," he said.

 The German economy is still fighting to regain its equilibrium after numerous blows in recent years, including the coronavirus pandemic, energy supply problems associated with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a tariff conflict with the US and strong rivalry from China.

A German lawmaker is urging Europe to seize a "once‑in‑a‑lifetime chance" to attract AI giant Anthropic after the company was blacklisted by the US government.

Washington banned Anthropic from its federal supply chain when the firm refused to allow its AI models to be used for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.

Matthias Mieves, the SPD's digital policy spokesperson, argues Europe should court the $380‑billion company to boost digital sovereignty

Click here to read more about his plan. 

A 7-year-old pupil at a school near the northern city of Osnabrück treated his classmates to a very special "show and tell" activity on Wednesday when he invited them to touch and smell the €5,000 ($5,700) in bills he had brought with him in his backpack, police said on Thursday.

The incident made the boy "the most popular pupil of the morning," police said.

The police said he had found the cash — which his parents had withdrawn to buy a car — in an envelope at home.

A teacher called the police when she noticed what was going on.

The cash has since been returned to the parents, police said.

The average fuel price in Germany went down on Wednesday from a day previously, the first time this has happened since the US and Israel launched their ongoing offensive against Iran on February 28.

E10 gasoline and diesel were respectively 3.4  and 5.4 euro cents (3.946 and 6.2 US cents) cheaper per liter on average across Germany on Wednesday compared with Tuesday, according to the automobile club ADAC

However, E10 —  a mixture of 10% anhydrous ethanol and 90% gasoline — was, at €2,011 per liter ($2.32 per liter, $8.78 per gallon), still around 23 cents more expensive than on the day before the war erupted.

Diesel, which on average cost €2.134 per liter on Wednesday, was a whole 39 cents more expensive than on February 27.

It is not clear whether the reduction in prices, possible caused by a drop in the barrel price for crude on Tuesday and Wednesday after highs of more than $100 a barrel on Monday, will be temporary or not, with prices for crude rising once again on Thursday amid an uncertain conflict situation.

On Wednesday the International Energy Agency anounced that its 32 member states would release 400 million barrels of crude from their emergency reserves in a bid to bring down prices.

The German government is also planning to stop gas stations raising fuel prices more than once daily, but it is unclear whether this will stop the escalation.

 

Prosecutors in the Bavarian city of Bamberg are carrying out investigations into a 33.year-old man suspected of sexually abusing disabled children and young people in his care at a special facility in 2025 and 2026.

The investigation was launched after a tipoff from the US, where videos showing images of child sexual abuse were reportedly uploaded to a cloud server by the man.

The man, who prosecutors said was currently in pre-trial detention, is also said to have undressed and inappropriately touched several of his victims.

Properties in the districts of Kulmbach and Hof have been searched by police in connection with the case.

Carmaker BMW has reported a drop in net profit of about 3% to just under €7.5 billion ($8.7 billion) for 2025, a smaller decline than analysts had predicted and much less than the fall experienced by major domestic rivals.

The new figures, which come among a broader downturn in Germany's vital car industry, showed BMW's revenue declining by 6.3% to €133 billion, while the company issued a negative outlook for 2026.

The results put BMW at the head of the profits table for 2025 among Germany's major carmakers, with Mercedes-Benz reporting a net profit of €5.3 billion and the much larger Volkswagen Group €6.9 billion — in both cases approaching half that of 2024.

BMW has several advantages over its rivals in the current economic conditions. They include having a large manufacturing plant in the US, which mitigates the effect of the US tariffs currently affecting all European carmakers.

It also possesses flexible production lines capable of assembling electric vehicles, hybrids and combustion-engine cars on the same line.

This means it can cope better with the uncertainty regarding the timeline of the transition from combustion engines to electric motors.

 "We are tackling the challenges in global markets head on, leveraging our strengths and implementing our long-term strategy," chief executive Oliver Zipse said.

"We have made significant investments and have created the right operating framework to deliver continued success."

BMW stands before an imminent change of leadership, with Milan Nedeljkovic, the company's current head of production, set to take over from Zipse on May 14.

 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is set to travel to northern Norway on Thursday, with talks planned with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store in the evening.

On Friday, the two leaders are scheduled to visit the Andoya Space Port in Andenes, which has provided facilities, among other things, for German and European space operations.

Merz and Store, together with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, are then to observe the Cold Response military exercise at the Bardufoss military base.

Some 1,600 members of German armed forces are taking part in the exercise in Norway and Finland, alongside tens of thousands of other soldiers from 13 other NATO countries, including the US.

The drill began on March 9 and is to run until March 19.

Merz's visit is expected to focus on cooperation in the fields of space and arms but also on energy supply — a topic that has taken on added importance amid the Middle East war, which has led to stoppages of oil and gas transports.

Norway accounts for some 48% of Germany's natural gas imports and 9% of its oil imports, with just 6.1% of crude oil coming from the Middle East last year.

A two-day strike by pilots from the airlines Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo and Lufthansa Cityline began on Thursday morning, with flights to and from Munich and Frankfurt set to be affected the most.

According to Lufthansa, however, at least half of scheduled flights will still run over the two days, with up to 60% of flights on long-haul routes expected to operate.

The pilots' union behind the strike, Vereinigung Cockpit, has said the strike, which began at midnight, will be on a smaller scale than a walkout a month ago that also included cabin crew.

The head of the union, Andreas Pinheiro, said he expects around 300 flight cancellations per day, compared with what Lufthansa said were 800 flight cancellations during the previous walkout on February 12.

The airline has condemned the strike as an unnecessary escalation, highlighting its particularly negative impact at a time when the war in Iran has already affected passengers worldwide.   

Flights to the Middle East have, however, been excluded from the strike action.

The union, for its part, is calling for pay increases at the regional subsidiary CityLine and for higher company pensions for pilots at Lufthansa Cargo and the core Lufthansa airline.
 

Guten Tag from the DW newsroom in Bonn!

You join us as air passengers in Germany are set for two days of travel disruption amid a strike by Lufthansa pilots, which comes at a time when world aviation is anyway in turmoil amid the war in the Middle East.

That conflict and Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine are both likely to overshadow a visit by Chancellor Friedrich Merz to Norway, which is to focus on cooperation between Germany and the Nordic country on space projects, arms and energy.

Norway is particularly vital to Germany in the latter regard, with some 48% of Germany's natural gas imports and 9% of its oil imports coming from the country.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul is to wrap up a tour of the Middle East prompted by the ongoing conflict there with a visit to NATO partner Turkey, which has also been targeted by Iranian missiles in the past few days.

Read on for more on these and other stories on Thursday, March 12.