Germany and other parts of Europe took tentative steps to ease lockdown measures on Monday but officials warned the battle against the coronavirus pandemic was far from over. Some shops reopened in Germany and parents dropped their children off at nurseries in Norway as tight restrictions in place for weeks were lifted in parts of the continent.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday urged China to be as transparent as possible about the coronavirus outbreak, as Beijing faces mounting pressure over its management of the crisis.
Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her frustration in a party meeting on Monday that moves to edge Germany out of lockdown had led to discussion orgies in some regions that risked higher rates of coronavirus infection, German media reported.
European Union finance ministers have agreed on a massive emergency package designed to ensure that member-states hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic will have the necessary resources to rebuild their economies.
The German foreign ministry has restricted use of the video conferencing service Zoom, saying in an internal memo to employees that security and data protection weaknesses made it too risky to use, newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday.
Authorities in Germany have fallen victim to a multi-million-euro fraud involving masks much needed in the coronavirus pandemic, prosecutors said on Tuesday. North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state and one of the hardest hit, paid 14.7 million euros for some 10 million masks in March only to discover they did not exist, according to prosecutors in Traunstein, Bavaria.
Germany's 750 billion euro (US$834 billion) package to soften the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak on Europe's largest economy will last for about two months, an independent economic think tank told a German newspaper group.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that up to 70% of the country's population - some 58 million people - could contract the coronavirus. Mrs Merkel made the stark prediction at a news conference on Wednesday alongside Health Minister Jens Spahn.
A consortium formed by Germany's Thyssenkrupp AG and Brazilian plane maker Embraer SA signed a deal to deliver four frigates to Brazil's navy between 2025 and 2028, the companies said in a statement.
Montreal on Wednesday called a halt to its electric scooter scheme, saying that riders broke rules and almost always parked illegally. The Canadian city launched a pilot project in June with 680 scooters and electric bikes, but authorities judged that the test period had been a failure.