Germany

Government announced Russia was responsible for an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport last month and ordered a series of countermeasures in response, including the closure of a consulate and a Russian cultural center

Repeated drought is reducing harvests, shrinking cattle and increasing expenses for farmers; experts say adapting to the changed summer conditions is essential, flanking farmers in exploring new water-management strategies and drought-resistant crops

New law significantly expands powers of federal police, providing the scope to use drones, AI, increased surveillance of telecommunications and making it easier to incarcerate immigrants due for deportation; experts point out to constitutional challenges

Former Chancellor Merkel presented the painting for the official portrait gallery of Germany's postwar heads of government; the portrait will be displayed at Bode Museum in Berlin from 1 July before being added to the Federal Chancellery gallery

A 33-point plan to reform the pension system has drawn praise and criticism in equal measure, as centrist politicians consider it a good compromise and opposition parties on both the left and the right don't find it satisfactory

Tennis player Alexander Zverev shed his unfortunate spell as the best player never to win a major as, at 29, he claimed his maiden Grand Slam title by winning the Roland-Garros, or French Open, Paris

Alevis make up around 13% of Muslims living in Germany today; this religious community, now the fourth largest in the country, once predominantly lived in rural Turkey, passing on their spiritual beliefs and rites orally

Marie-Louise Eta became the first woman to coach a match in the top five European men's leagues: her Union Berlin's defeat 2-1 gave way to misogynistic reaction online, condemned by German Football Association as contrary to values of fairness, equality

Gerd Faltings, a number theorist at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, has won the 2026 Abel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in mathematics, for his work on proving that Diophantine equations can have a finite set of solutions

State elections in Baden-Württemberg, Germany's third-most populous state, ended with a win by the center-left Greens in contrast with Berlin's coalition government, that downplayed the defeat

Director Ilker Catak, German with Turkish origins, won the Golden Bear in Berlin's film festival for his "Yellow Letters", a drama set in Turkey about creeping authoritarianism, in an event overshadowed by a row over politics in cinema