BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday that he does not expect the United States to halt military aid to Ukraine after President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

Germany's economy shrunk for a second consecutive year in 2024, continuing its struggle with internal and external challenges.

The German economy shrank for the second straight year in 2024 as worried consumers held back on spending and Chinese competition ate into the country’s traditional exports of cars and industrial machinery.

Friedrich Merz, the chancellor candidate for the conservative Christian Democratic Union, acknowledged the need for a “major effort” to revive the economy as his party pledges to return German growth to 2 percent over the next five years through changes to the welfare and tax systems.

It was a defining image of the Merkel years: the German chancellor leaning across a table at the G7 summit in 2018, looming over Donald Trump as the rest of the world’s leaders looked on. Angela Merkel, the photo seemed to indicate, was the adult in the room.

German police are investigating an election campaign flyer by a far-right party that looks like a plane ticket and calls for the deportation of “illegal immigrants.”

Germany's cabinet has decided to authorise the army to shoot down suspicious drones seen near military sites or other critical infrastructure. A statement from Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that,

Even the former Crown Prince’s son, young Prince Louis Ferdinand, later a popular figure in the US and postwar West Germany wrote, on the Day of Potsdam to one of the advisers of the automaker and antisemite Henry Ford why he had voted for the Nazis. One could go on, and Malinowski does, at length, but the point is clear.

Germany has no new cases of the livestock illness foot-and-mouth disease with a suspect case on Thursday not confirmed, German agriculture minister Cem Oezdemir said on German radio on Friday. Germany has only one case of the disease,

Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday laid out his vision to secure the future of Germany's ailing economy at a campaign event in the historic home base of the crisis-hit auto titan Volkswagen. The embattled chancellor,

An eastern German region says it is lifting a ban on the transport of animals that was imposed last weekend after foot-and-mouth disease was detected in a buffalo herd.