Germany

BERLIN (AP) — Consumers and businesses in Germany will receive subsidies to soften the blow of higher natural gas and electricity prices starting in January, two months earlier than originally planned, officials said Tuesday.

The move is part of a larger pot of almost 300 billion euros (dollars) in subsidies that the German government is cooking up to address the energy crisis resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

BERLIN, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Germany has offered Warsaw the Patriot missile defence system to help it to secure its airspace after a stray missile crashed in Poland last week, Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht told a newspaper on Sunday.

The German government had already said it would offer its neighbour further help in air policing with German Eurofighters after the incident, which initially raised fears that the war in Ukraine could spill across the border.

BERLIN/PARIS, Nov 18 (Reuters) - France, Germany and Spain have reached agreement on starting the next phase of development of a new fighter jet dubbed FCAS, Europe's largest defence project at an estimated cost of more than 100 billion euros ($103.4 billion), Berlin said on Friday.

Germany's Defence Ministry said in a statement that an industrial agreement was achieved after intense negotiations, confirming an earlier Reuters story saying the three countries and their respective industries had struck a deal.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s biggest industrial union agreed with employers Friday on a pay deal that will see millions of workers get raises totaling 8.5% over two years as well as one-time payments meant to cushion the effect of sky-high inflation.

The IG Metall union and employers reached a compromise in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, a key industrial region. In Germany, wage deals are typically hammered out in negotiations between employers’ organizations and unions that cover a whole sector, and an agreement reached in one region is generally applied nationwide.

BERLIN, Nov 16 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden told G7 and NATO partners that a missile blast in eastern Poland was caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile, a NATO source told Reuters on Wednesday.

The blast, which killed two people, raised global alarm that the Ukraine conflict could spill into neighbouring countries.

Ukraine blamed Russia. Russia denied its missiles struck Poland.

Biden told reporters in Indonesia on Wednesday that the missile was unlikely to have been fired from Russia.

SHENYANG, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- BMW Group's joint venture in China, BMW Brilliance Automotive Ltd. (BBA), will invest 10 billion yuan (about 1.4 billion U.S. dollars) into a new battery production project in northeast China's Liaoning Province.

The signing ceremony of the project was held Friday in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning. The signed agreement will see BBA expand battery production capacity at its Shenyang production base.

BERLIN, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Germany has made it clear to Hungary that there is no grey area when it comes to the ratification of Sweden and Finland's accession to NATO, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in Berlin on Thursday.

"With regard to the question about Hungary: I would like to underline this clearly ... there is no grey area," Baerbock told a joint news conference with her Swedish counterpart, Tobias Billstrom.

FRANKFURT, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- German business leaders have expressed optimism about the prospect of China-Germany business cooperation.

Over the past five decades, bilateral practical cooperation between the two sides has deepened, with two-way trade growing almost 1,000 times, serving economic and social development in both countries.

Cooperation in the automotive industry has long been a bright spot.

BERLIN, Nov 8 (Reuters) - A Qatar World Cup ambassador has told German television broadcaster ZDF that homosexuality was "damage in the mind", as the Gulf state prepares to host the global tournament in less than two weeks.

In an interview filmed in Doha and to be screened later on Tuesday, former Qatari international Khalid Salman addressed the issue of homosexuality, which is illegal in the conservative Muslim country.

BERLIN, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Qatar's foreign minister has accused Germany of "double standards" over its criticism of the World Cup host's human rights record and has defended its summoning of the German ambassador, in a newspaper interview published on Monday.

Qatar has faced intense criticism from human rights groups over its treatment of migrant workers, who along with other foreigners comprise the bulk of the country's population.