AfD losing ground with voters, polls reveal
Far-right party AfD is losing favour with voters, according to market research group Insa's latest 'Sunday trend' survey.
Nineteen percent of people said they would vote for the party if the general election were tomorrow. That's one percentage point less than the previous week, four percentage points down on last month and the lowest level since 2023, Bild am Sonntag reported.
The strongest party remained the CDU/CSU this week with 31 percent.
The SPD stood at 14 percent (-1) and the Greens were stable at 13 percent, while the FDP and the Linke were at four and three percent, respectively.
Insa polled 1,203 people between 12th and 16th February.
US man on trial for tourist murder near Bavarian castle
An American man will go on trial in Germany on Monday for the rape and murder of a fellow US tourist near Bavaria's famed Neuschwanstein castle.
Troy Philipp B. is also charged with attempted murder of the victim's friend, also an American citizen.
The two women, then 21 and 22 years old, had been hiking in the area in June last year when they met B., who offered to take them to a viewpoint, investigators said.
At a secluded spot, the man, then 30, allegedly pushed the 21-year-old woman to the ground and proceeded to rape and strangle her.
Her friend intervened, leading to a scuffle in which the accused allegedly pushed the 22-year-old off a slope.
The accused then strangled the 21-year-old woman, and pushed her down the
same slope while she was unconscious.
When mountain rescue workers found the two women, the 22-year-old was injured but able to talk.
The rape victim was seriously injured and taken by helicopter to hospital, where she died later that night as a result of her injuries.
Built in the 19th century by King Lugwig II, Neuschwanstein castle is one of the most visited sites in Germany, attracting over a million visitors a year.
B. faces up to life in prison if convicted.
READ ALSO: US tourist charged over murder at famed German castle Neuschwanstein
Alleged terrorist sighting causes major operation in Wuppertal
An alleged sighting of a former Red Army Faction terrorist led to a major operation in Wuppertal in North Rhine-Westphalia on Saturday evening and caused widespread train delays.
Heavily armed police special forces escorted an elderly man and his companion off a train at Wuppertal main station and arrested him after an eyewitness mistook him for Ernst-Volker Staub, who's wanted for attempted murder.
Wuppertal police released the innocent gentleman and his companion after checking their identities.
The main station was cordoned off and delays and re-routings affected both long-distance and regional trains.
Ernst-Volker Staub, Daniela Klette and Burkhard Garweg are all wanted for attempted murder in connection with a series of serious robberies. They went into hiding in the 1990s.Â
More transport strikes
On Sunday the trade union Verdi called on public transport workers in the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt to go on a two-day strike.
According to Verdi, the strike in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania primarily affects transport in Schwerin, Greifswald and Rostock. The strike will run from 3 a.m. on Wednesday until 11:59 p.m. on Thursday.
READ ALSO: Why Germany is being hit by strikes almost every day
Police stop train in hunt for violent football fans
Police stopped a regional train carrying hundreds of Hamburg football fans on Saturday evening as part of an operation to find fans who were involved in the September 2023 riots with Borussia Dortmund supporters.
The police searched the RE1 train, which was travelling from Rostock to Hamburg, for six hours. Fans had to stay on the train until they had been checked.
The lengthy operation impacted other regional services, causing significant delays, Deutsche Bahn said on X, formerly Twitter.
Police identified 31 suspects on Saturday evening, a police statement published on Sunday said.
However, there were no arrests and all fans were able to continue traveling after their personal details had been checked, another police spokesman said after the control operation had ended.
Study finds children from lower-income families benefit more from Kita
A study of almost 1,000 children carried out over several years found that those from socioeconomically poorer households derived far greater benefits from attending Kita (daycare) than children from wealthier families.
The study by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) found that attending daycare helped minimise the impact of social differences in areas such as vocabulary acquisition and basic mathematical understanding.
Children who started daycare at the age of two saw very positive effects on their vocabulary by the age of five, study author Corinna Kleinert found.
But unfortunately, “the lower the education and income status of the family or if there is a background of migration, the later children tend to attend daycare,” study author Corinna Kleinert explained.
A recent analysis by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation reached a similar conclusion: children from families at risk of poverty and where German is predominantly not spoken at home are much less likely to attend a daycare centre. Â
Comments