If you’re affected by the outage, follow the guidelines at the Deutsche Bahn website here. German rail company Deutsche Bahn is halting trains across the country due to an IT disruption, a spokesperson for the company told German news agencies.   Trains are being held at stations and travelers are staying in their seats amid the tech meltdown.  Deutsche Bahn said the outage was stemming from a nationwide problem with the so-called Global System ⁠for ​Mobile ​Communication for Railways (GSM-R)communication system, which is used for international communication on the railway network. All trains are suspended in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. Berlin’s public transport authorities say that municipal, regional and long-distance trains run by Deutsche Bahn are impacted by the outage.  Problem identified and technicians working to resolve issue The disruption that led to the internal communications outage has been identified meaning technicians can solve the issue in due time. Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla a little earlier...

Former German international footballer Bastian Schweinsteiger has been accused of employing racist stereotypes in his analysis of Germany‘s most recent World Cup opponents, Ivory Coast, at the weekend. Ahead of the Group E clash in Toronto, which Germany won 2-1, Schweinsteiger said in his role as a pundit for German public broadcaster ARD that the Ivorians played “African football” which he characterized as “a bit unorthodox sometimes, a bit wild, not quite as tactical.” The 2014 World Cup winner said Germany needed to be “prepared for it to be unpredictable at times.” Why were Schweinsteiger’s comments problematic? Schweinsteiger’s comments prompted reactions on social media and in German mainstream media accusing him of using racist and colonial tropes which reduce Black people to supposed physical attributes rather than crediting them with intellectual ability. The former Bayern Munich and Manchester United midfielder has yet to publicly comment on the matter. “Behind attributions like ‘wild’...

The 33 pension reform proposals put forward by a specially-convened commission of experts and politicians have met with praise from conservative political groups and outcry from opposition parties and trade unionsin Germany. The 13-person commission’s detailed report was officially released on Tuesday. Presenting the plan in Berlin on Tuesday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the entire package would be implemented, and showed confidence that his coalition partners in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) would agree to pass the reforms soon. “All elements of this reform package must now be implemented quickly,” the chancellor said. “They form a complete concept that only works as a whole.” Labor Minister Bärbel Bas, of the SPD, was equally confident, saying that the reform package was a “total work of art” that could not be picked apart. Germany’s coalition government split over reform agenda To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a...

Fourteen years on from the moment Nadiem Amiri joined Hoffenheim’s youth teams and played for a young coach called Julian Nagelsmann, the pair are together in the USA, Canada and Mexico representing Germany at the World Cup. “If you have a youth coach and you know each other early and for a long time, then it’s always a special relationship,” said Amiri. “There were so many amazing moments together and that shapes us. We have a good connection, and he was always in touch even when he wasn’t my coach. I have a lot of respect for Julian and am grateful to him.” And after just the second game at this tournament, Nagelsmann can be grateful that Amiri delivered what he wanted from the midfielder exactly when the team needed it. After all, it was the 29-year-old’s perfectly delivered cross that set up Deniz Undav for Germany’s equalizer in Toronto on...

06/22/2026June 22, 2026 France set to break June temperature record, with some areas topping 40C A vineyard in Quincie-en-Beaujolais near Lyon on Monday bakes in temperatures commonly seen in North AfricaImage: Romain Doucelin/NurPhoto/picture alliance Temperatures in France on Monday have shattered records, according to weather service Meteo-France. Meteo-France, citing provisional data, said France’s national heat index, the average of the day and night-time highs measured at 30 weather stations around the country, hit 29.2 degrees Celsius (84.5 F) on Monday, the highest level ever recorded in June. The previous high was reached June 30 of last year.  All-time heat records were also shattered on Monday, with the temperature in Bordeaux, located in the southwestern wine country, hitting 41.9 degrees Celsius (107.4 F), breaking a record set last ‌August. Poitiers in ⁠central ⁠France reached 41.2 C, beating a previous high set in 1947. Paris sweat through its hottest-ever night for June, with the temperature not getting below...

“We are fighting in Berlin to turn the city red,” read the lead motion presented to the delegates at the Left Party‘s federal party convention. Red is the color of the Left Party, but also of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD). According to latest polls, a three-way coalition of both alongside the Greens could secure a majority in the September election for the city state’s parliament. Berlin has been “red” in the past. From 2016 to 2023 it was governed by such a three-way coalition — under the leadership of successive SPD mayors. This time, the Left Party is dreaming of winning the election and taking over the mayoralty itself with its candidate Elif Eralp. The 45-year-old has a remarkable background: Her parents were active in politics and trade unions in Turkey before fleeing to Germany in 1980 as asylum-seekers following a military coup, just weeks before Eralp’s birth.  Elif Eralp...

And then, all of a sudden, Deniz Undav had disappeared into a sea of Germany shirts. The striker was lost in the jubilant crowd of his teammates celebrating after the Stuttgart forward had scored an injury-time winner for Germany against the Ivory Coast in Toronto. At first, it seemed as though Undav himself hadn’t quite grasped what he had just accomplished. “How do I do it? No idea. I’m just in the right spot,” the 29-year-old said afterwards, showing off that now familiar smile of his. Head coach Julian Nagelsmann, who showed a knack for making the right substitutions at the right time, was full of praise for his supersub.  “Deniz has an incredible striker’s instinct. As soon as spaces open up, he’s just super smart,” Nagelsmann said afterwards. With nine goals in his last eight international matches and three goals and two assists at this World Cup, Undav is not only the in-form player...

“For our newsroom, AI is a tool that helps us simplify and also improve certain steps in the editorial process. It is, however, definitely not a tool that is allowed to take over the core of our work.” This was the explanation published last weekend in the Berlin-based newspaper Tagesspiegel, as it hoped to contain a scandal that shook the German media world. In the same text, the editors laid out their reasoning for taking the drastic decision to stop publishing columns by one of their most famous political commentators until further notice, after it emerged that Stephan-Andreas Casdorff, the newspaper’s former publisher and editor-in-chief, had used AI to compose opinion pieces.   The 67-year-old said he was aware of the magnitude of his misconduct: “I have made a huge mistake, damaged the publication’s reputation and my own,” Casdorff said. “For that I make a heartfelt apology. I used AI in the texts. I should have made...

Germany is considering scrapping a special law that prohibits insulting politicians following a series of high-profile cases in which private citizens found themselves under investigation by the police for publicly calling politicians “Schwachkopf” (idiot), “Lügenfritz” (lying Fritz) or “Pinocchio” on social media. Section 188 of Germany’s Criminal Code states that anyone found guilty of defamation “against a person involved in the popular political life” can theoretically be imprisoned for up to three years if the offense makes the politician’s public activities “substantially more difficult.” In practice, however, most prosecutions have ended with fines. The law was toughened in 2021, partly in response to the murder of the conservative Christian Democrat Walter Lübcke in 2019, to allow state prosecutors to pursue such offenses even if the politician in question does not press charges. Insults and attacks on politicians have been on the rise in Germany in recent years: According to statistics reported by...