Friday's top story: German railways to cut 6,000 jobs at cargo subsidiary
Germany's state railway Deutsche Bahn said Thursday that it would cut about 6,000 jobs at its cargo subsidiary in a bid to boost profitability and reduce dependence on government funds.
"The current restructuring plan envisages a reduction of approximately 6,000 jobs at DB Cargo," Deutsche Bahn said in a blog post.
"The plan is to implement this in a socially responsible manner."
Loss-making DB Cargo is facing an EU investigation under state aid rules, with an official decision due in October.
Cutting 6,000 jobs – equivalent to roughly half the firm's workforce in Germany – would help the cargo division stand on its own two feet, Deutsche Bahn said.
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Iranians' resistance and double lives on screen at Berlinale
Against the real-life backdrop of Iran's deadly crackdown on anti-government protests and threats of military action from the US, contributions from Iranian filmmakers at the Berlinale film festival feel particularly timely.
A number of films screening at the festival, respectively titled "Roya", "Fruits of Despair" and "Cesarean Weekend" all depict modern lives within the Islamic Republic.
Government repression is tackled head-on in Mahnaz Mohammadi's "Roya", which follows the traces left on the psyche of the eponymous political prisoner by her time in Tehran's feared Evin prison.
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Nima Nassaj's short documentary "Fruits of Despair" chronicles his experience of living through Israel's 12-day war with Iran in June 2025. Like many in Tehran, he and his family left for relative safety elsewhere -- in their case, a village on the outskirts of the Iranian capital.
Nassaj calls the film an impressionistic "time capsule" of those 12 days and the "devastated" state of mind he was left with.
Meanwhile Mohammad Shirvani's "Cesarean Weekend" is on the face of it a less overtly political film, billed as an "intense, wild and philosophical" depiction of contemporary Iranian society.
Shirvani, born in 1973, says that his generation's approach to the system was to "somehow manage and go around the limitations".
Charitable donations in Germany fall sharply
The willingness to donate in Germany declined significantly in 2025, with total private donations falling to €4.65 billion, according to figures from the German Donations Council.
This represents a drop of nine percent compared with the previous year and marks the lowest donation volume since 2013.
The number of donors also fell, decreasing by around 848,000 to 15.8 million people, or almost one in four adults. Despite this, those who did donate gave more on average. The mean donation rose by three euros to a record €46, reflecting a trend towards fewer but higher individual contributions.
The Donations Council attributed the decline to a “noticeable sense of uncertainty” among the population, prompting people to weigh their spending more carefully despite rising nominal incomes.
Donations increasingly focused on local causes, which accounted for 35 percent of all contributions, while funding for national and international projects declined.
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Social causes such as poverty relief, homelessness and support for senior citizens saw increased donations, as did environmental and climate protection initiatives, which recorded particularly strong growth.
By contrast, contributions to church-related projects, cultural preservation and refugee aid fell noticeably. Older people remained the most generous donors overall, although donation income also declined in this group.
Steinmeier rules out German Olympic bid for 2036 over historical concerns
German President Frank‑Walter Steinmeier has entered the debate over a possible German bid to host the Summer Olympics, voicing clear opposition to targeting the 2036 Games.
Speaking after attending the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Steinmeier said that while he supports the idea of Germany hosting the Olympics again, 2036 is “historically problematic” for the country.
The year would mark exactly 100 years since Nazi Germany hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, which Adolf Hitler’s regime exploited for propaganda purposes. According to the Office of the Federal President, this historical context makes a German bid for 2036 inappropriate.
READ ALSO: Munich voters approve plan to bid for Summer Olympics
Instead, Steinmeier has expressed a preference for Germany to pursue the Games in 2040 or 2044. These options are also seen as more realistic, with India and Qatar currently considered frontrunners for 2036.
Germany is currently discussing potential bids involving cities and regions including Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and the Rhine‑Ruhr area. The country last hosted the Summer Olympics in Munich in 1972.
A later bid for the 2000 Games, centred on Berlin, reached the second round but ultimately lost out to Sydney.
Millions of residents in Germany regularly use a mix of languages
German is still the main language spoken at home in most households across Germany, but millions of residents regularly use other languages or a mix of languages in their daily lives, according to new figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
The data show that German is the predominant home language in 77 percent of households. In a further five percent, German is spoken alongside another language but remains dominant, while in 13 percent of households another language is used more frequently than German.
Overall, 15.5 million people in Germany primarily speak a language other than German at home.
Among these households, Turkish is by far the most common non‑German language, reflecting Germany’s large population with Turkish roots.
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Fourteen percent of people who mainly speak another language at home use Turkish, followed by Russian at 12 percent and Arabic at nine percent.
The figures also highlight the diversity of language use among households with a recent migration background, defined as having at least one member who immigrated to Germany since 1950.
Most of these households use a mix of German and another language. However, 22 percent speak only German at home, while 23 percent use no German at all. Across all households in Germany, just six percent don’t speak German at home.
With reporting by AFP and Paul Krantz.
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