Germany news: 2 men charged with planning attacks for Russia

US planemaking giant Boeing has reported more orders for new planes in 2025 than its European rival Airbus for the first time since 2018. 

According to annual figures released on Tuesday, it booked 175 orders in December, taking its full-year total to 1,173. 

Airbus on Monday disclosed net orders of 889 aircraft for the year. 

The recovery followed a difficult 2024 for Boeing, starting with an Alaska Airlines door blowout and emergency landing and also punctuated by a lengthy strike in the Seattle region impacting production. 

"Our team did great work throughout 2025 to improve the on-time delivery of safe, quality airplanes to our customers to support their growth and modernization plans," said Boeing commercial plane chief Stephanie Pope.

Airbus still outperformed Boeing in terms of deliveries in 2025, providing 793 completed planes to customers compared to Boeing's 600.

Boeing's had been struggling against Airbus for several years, partly as a result of a pair of fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019.

Germany's DFL football league confirmed on Tuesday that the evening Bundesliga match between Hamburg and Bayer Leverkusen had to be canceled at short notice. 

The northern city of Hamburg, which was to host the game, was particularly hard hit by the snow and cold weather of recent days. 

The DFL attributed the decision to "weather-related risks in the area of the stadium roof," after staff and external contractors had been "working day and night" in a bid to clear ice and snow from the stadium ready for the midweek game. 

Although the club had voiced cautious optimism on Monday, speaking of "great hopes that we will be able to play," by Tuesday afternoon it had already warned fans that the stadium car park would not be able to open even if the game could go ahead.

"The situation changed because of the extreme thaw late on Tuesday afternoon," Hamburg said in a statement online. It said that large quantities of water started gathering at certain points and could not drain properly, leading to excess weight and strain on the structure of the stadium. "An expert called in for their opinion considered the situation to be a safety hazard, at which point the match was called off in consultation between the DFL and those responsible for safety on site." 

Over the weekend, two other Bundesliga matches had to be postponed. Hamburg's other top-flight club, St Pauli, was not able to entertain RB Leipzig, and not far to the west, Werder Bremen could not host Hoffenheim. 

Germany's organ transplant foundation announced on Tuesday that a total of 985 people in Germany donated one or several organs after their death in 2025. That's the highest figure since 2012, albeit in a country that has long struggled with donor shortages. 

For orientation, roughly 8,200 people in Germany are waiting for a replacement organ. 

In total, 3,020 organs could be extracted and successfully implanted, either in Germany or elsewhere via the Eurotransplant cross-border distribution system. That's a 5.8% increase on 2024's total. 

This included 1,495 kidneys, 823 livers, 315 hearts and 308 lungs.

A slightly higher total, 3,265 organs, were successfully sourced via Eurotransplant and implanted at German transplant centers, highlighting the supply issues inside Germany.

Axel Rahmel, the medical chair of the organ transplant foundation, said the higher 2025 totals were a positive signal, but that Germany's figure of 11.8 organ donors per million inhabitants was one of the lowest in Europe.

"The majority of people in Germany are fundamentally positively disposed towards organ donation, but have not made their decision official," Rahmel said. In the absence of an explicit will or registration as a donor, he said, next of kin often have to decide under considerable time pressure and emotional strain. 

You know what they tell children and Sesame Street fans everywhere: "Stop for Bert, go for Ernie." 

Ok, perhaps that's yet to catch on as a maxim, but city authorities in Hamburg are now working on it, in conjunction with regional public broadcaster NDR. 

Actors playing the Sesame Street odd couple attended the unveiling of special traffic signals for pedestrians using silhouettes in their likeness for the red and green lights on Julius-Vosseler Strasse in the northern German city.  

Thieves were able to enter a Sparkasse bank in the western city of Gelsenkirchen over the Christmas period using a "manipulated" emergency exit linking the branch to the car park, which it should not ordinarily have been possible to open from the outside. 

This allowed unhindered access to the bank from the car park, police said on Tuesday.

Police and the state interior minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, Herbert Reul, both issued updates on the investigation on Tuesday. 

The elaborate heist in late December grabbed headlines and raised eyebrows, not least because the thieves' presence in the bank's vault went undetected for two days.

They were able to drill a large hole directly into the vault and force their way into thousands of customers' safe deposit boxes without triggering the alarms.

You can read our full story on the state of the investigations here. 

Prosecutors in Germany on Tuesday charged two Ukrainian nationals for allegedly plotting arson and explosive attacks on behalf of Russian intelligence services.

The two men — identified only as Daniil B and ⁠Vladyslav T as per German privacy laws — are accused of sending parcels with tracking devices inside them from Cologne to Ukraine as part of plans for a sabotage operation, the indictment brought by the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court said.

According to federal prosecutors, the men allegedly planned to post packages containing explosive devices that "ignite in Germany or elsewhere on their way to parts of Ukraine not occupied by Russia" to cause "as much damage as possible in order to undermine the population's sense of security."

The men were arrested in May along with a third Ukrainian, Yevhen B, who is believed to be an accomplice and who was arrested in Switzerland. 

The third man was recently extradited to Germany and is expected to be charged soon, the Federal Prosecutor's Office said.

The men's arrest came after multiple incidents involving detonating parcels at European mail depots in 2024. 

European officials have pointed to those cases and other examples of sabotage as evidence of a growing threat of hybrid attacks from Russia in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russia has denied any involvement.

German car manufacturing giant Volkswagen (VW) reported a drop in sales of 1.4% for 2025, with low demand in China and the US being the main reasons, the company said on Tuesday.

Sales in China fell 8.4% — with a total of 2.02 million vehicles sold — amid what VW called "challenging market conditions" as it faces competition from domestic electric car production.

Sales were similarly down in the US, by 8.2% — 544,000 vehicles sold — thanks to US tariffs leaving a "marked impact."

At the same time, sales were up in Europe (5.1%) and South America (18.5%). The total number of vehicles sold from the VW core brand was 4.37 million.

Other brands belonging to the Volkswagen Group, including Audi, Skoda and Bentley, among others, also saw a slight fall in sales, down around 0.5% in 2025.

Police in the eastern German town of Sömmerda were left baffled after being called to the scene of a robbery, only to find that a grand total of one jar of sausages had been pilfered after thieves broke into an apartment.

Hailed by the German press agency DPA as the "Wurst heist ever," police said on Tuesday the value of the missing jar of Knackwurst was around €3 ($3.50).

The incident took place last Thursday, not far from the city of Leipzig, with the 29-year-old victim left wondering why the thieves had even bothered to break in.

Police said the damage caused to the door will likely "far exceed" the value of the sausage swag.

An investigation is already underway.

Sondervermögen, which means "special fund," has been picked as the worst German word of the year by a jury at Marburg's Philipps University.

The panel said the word was "misleading" after being bandied about in the Bundestag.

The word had its time in the limelight thanks to a deal between the now co-ruling conservatives and Social Democrats to set up a €500-billion ($583-billion) special fund to invest in infrastructure and climate protections over the next decade.

The jury argued that the euphemistic way the word has been used hides the fact that it means taking on debt.

Four linguists, a journalist and one rotating member are responsible for picking the worst word.

The criteria for this "non-word" are terms and expressions that violate the princples of human dignity or democracy, discriminate against social groups, or are considered to be misleading or euphemistic

A majority of 62% of respondents said that Germany should offer military support to NATO ally Denmark, if the US were to attack Greenland, according to a survey published in Stern magazine on Tuesday.

Around a third of respondents were against military support for Denmark.

The most support was seen among voters of the Greens, the CDU/CSU, the Left Party and the Social Democrats (SPD).

Among supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), a majority (59%) were against military support in the case of a US attack.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul met with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in New York on Monday evening.

Wadephul said Germany wants to secure more senior positions within the United Nations, saying the representation it currently has does not reflect Germany's influence and level of financial and international engagement.

The foreign minister was careful not to make his comments sound like an ultimatum, saying that German engagement in the UN would continue even when decisions are made that don't align with German interests.

"But it must be clear for the future that Germany wants to have a place at the UN table," he said.

Wadephul also suggested Germany could host more UN agencies. Several are already located in the former West German capital, Bonn.

Guterres was receptive to Germany's concerns, Wadephul said, and was confident its position would also be well received by the wider organization.

Before his meeting with Guterres, Wadephul met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Despite having warm words for his US counterpart, Wadephul was critical of the US position on the UN.

"The United States has been crucial in shaping and building the international order for decades," Wadephul said. "That they are now withdrawing from several organizations is regrettable."

The German chancellor considers the current Iranian leadership to be facing its end amid the mass protests that have shaken Iran since late December and which have been met with deadly repression from the state.

"If a regime can only stay in power through the use of violence, then it is effectively finished," Merz said on Tuesday during a visit to Bengaluru in India.

"I assume that we may now be witnessing the final days and weeks of this regime."

Merz has made no secret of his hope for an end to the regime in Iran, saying last June during its bombing campaign on Iran that Israel was doing the "dirty work for us."

Friedrich Merz is due in Bengaluru, often called India's Silicon Valley, after meeting PM Modi in Ahmedabad.

The visit comes just weeks ahead of plans to sign a long-awaited free trade agreement between India and the EU.

Follow DW's live blog on the second day of Merz's trip to India.

Heavy snows last week brought German trains to a halt in large parts of the country's north.

Lawmakers from across the spectrum have called for Germany's rail network operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) to be held to account.

For its part, DB said it was well prepared for such extreme weather, with more than three-quarters of rail switches being heated to prevent freezing up, German public broadcaster Tagesschau reported.

The problem, the company said, is that northern Germany is so flat that it is hit worse by cold weather and even heated switches cannot function when covered in snow.

Hundreds of DB employees were sent out to manually clear tracks of snow, but the rail passenger association Pro Bahn told the Spiegel magazine there were not enough employees for this job, and fewer than there used to be.

Dirk Flege, the head of the interest group Allianz pro Schiene, said the main reason for the widespread cancellation of trains was the focus on punctuality figures, since cancelled trains aren't included in the statistics and therefore don't bring down the overall punctuality score, something DB has struggled with for years.

Flege also criticized, as quoted by Tagesschau, that DB is expected to make a profit. Under the pressure to cut costs, the vehicle fleet is not expanded enough to meet the needs of extreme weather.

He also pointed to countries like Austria and Switzerland, where the kind of travel chaos seen last week rarely happens. But DB says this argument doesn't hold up since the impacted rail network in northern Germany alone is almost as big as Austria's entire rail network.

Strict protocol normally governs trips like this. Schedules are choreographed to the minute, printed in advance, and rarely adjusted—except in moments of acute geopolitical turbulence, as during the recent Middle East escalation. The structure provides predictability for everyone involved: diplomats, advisers, drivers, logisticians, journalists, and their newsrooms at home.

But keeping the US engaged—and ensuring Germany stays engaged with the US—demands a different approach. For a German foreign minister, representing the world’s third-largest economy, and his team, flexibility becomes the currency of access. And in Washington, one thing is unmistakable: the Germans want something from the Americans. Some would say more than the Americans want from them. So they take whatever slot, however small, is offered.

On Sunday, word comes that Secretary of State Marco Rubio won’t make the planned Monday morning meeting. Schedules are tossed, security checks reshuffled, driver logistics reworked for the afternoon. At least that frees up time for the World Bank president. Rubio ends up talking slightly longer with Wadephul than planned? No complaint—they grab every minute, skip their train to New York, and rebook everything for a later departure. A potential opportunity for further political talks on Tuesday? The entire trip is extended.

Until the final hours, the German foreign minister keeps his schedule open, determined to stay responsive to Washington’s shifting priorities and messaging. Wadephul wants to wring every drop of political value out of his US visit.

Substantively, his message remains steady: both sides need each other. Disagreements—whether over Venezuela, Greenland, or Russia—are normal among partners. What you won’t hear from him is the German finance minister’s phrase “alliance in dissolution.”

The dynamic is clear: the Germans are seeking something from the Americans, perhaps more than vice versa. After meeting Rubio, Wadephul appears alone before the press and spends 15 minutes describing the shared interests binding the transatlantic partners. Two hours later, the State Department releases a 14-line readout.