German court suspends diesel scandal trial of former Volkswagen CEO Winterkorn
The regional court in Braunschweig on Tuesday cited an unspecified health issue that meant Winterkorn, 78, was not in a condition to face trial.
The court said in a statement that it had "provisionally terminated' the proceedings. It said the health issue represented a 'temporary impediment' and would continue to be reviewed with the help of an expert so that proceedings could resume if Winterkorn recovers.
Winterkorn went on trial in September, 2024 but the proceedings were suspended a few days later after Winterkorn had an accident.
Germany's code of criminal procedure allows for a court to provisionally terminate proceedings 'if the absence of the indicted accused or some other personal impediment prevents the main hearing being held for a considerable time.'
Prosecutors say Winterkorn knew about the illegal software well before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its discovery of the violation in September 2015. He resigned days later. He has said he learned about the practice only shortly before the announcement and earlier testified during civil proceedings that the allegations against him 'are not correct.'
In May, four former Volkswagen managers were convicted of fraud and two of them given prison sentences for their part in the manipulation of emissions controls.
The former head of diesel development was sentenced to four and a half years in prison, and the head of drive train electronics to two years and seven months by the court in Braunschweig. Two others received suspended sentences of 15 months and 10 months.
The company has paid more than $33 billion in fines and compensation to vehicle owners. Two VW managers received prison sentences in the U.S. The former head of the company's Audi division, Rupert Stadler, was given a suspended sentence of 21 months and a fine of 1.1 million euros ($1.25 million). The sentence is still subject to appeal.
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The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
German police are investigating a €0.15 water butt theft – and I fear they're on the right side of history
Here's a silly season story for you: a 51-year-old woman in the German town of Spaichingen in Swabia is under criminal investigation on suspicion of filling watering cans from her neighbour's water butt. The total estimated value of the purloined water: €0.15. It's wonderfully daft. She allegedly hid behind a bin to evade detection and, according to reports, the police declared, with Solomonic gravity: 'Once it is in the barrel, [the water] no longer belongs to the heavens.' Who knows what motivated this nano-crime: a moment of midlife madness? Some kind of grudge? But water is metered in Germany so there might a kind of extreme parsimony at work (Swabian housewives are legendarily thrifty, apparently). Extreme frugality can be quite funny. Not the kind motivated by financial hardship, which is as unfunny as it gets (and deepening and widening in the UK, with 'Dickensian levels' of child poverty being reported by the children's commissioner). But the other kind – the Uncle Scrooge variety, where people choose the teabag-redunking, loo-roll-square-counting life – is presented as an entertaining personality type, the kind you might see spotlighted on a Channel 5 show (perhaps set in Yorkshire; after all, my people aren't famous for their largesse). It's probably too late to pitch Channel 5, though, because 'Extreme Cheapskates' – a US import – already exists. I watched a bit, while thinking about the Swabian butt theft, and some of these people are, to put it mildly, exceptionally dedicated to thrift. There's a woman who flosses with her own hair (it must be freakishly strong, what does she use on it?) and keeps chewed gum in the freezer to reuse multiple days, another – apparently a millionaire! – who pees in jars to keep her water bills down, and a man who does the washing up and warms soup in his hot tub. Other so-called cheapskate tricks, though, seem perfectly reasonable. Using roadkill for its fur sounds sensible (it's dead anyway), as does reusing bathwater or keeping jeans in the freezer instead of washing them. Over time, I have started to find frugality more appealing myself, albeit inconsistently: I will place a leftover half potato on a saucer in the fridge with a reverence usually reserved for holy relics, but spend £4 on a basic cake I could make for pennies. But I certainly get more and more pleasure from minor domestic acts of meanness: I hoard and reuse plastic food bags and boxes eternally (microplastics be damned; I'm sure something else will kill me first) and redunk teabags, though purely for my own consumption and mostly camomile, which tastes of nothing in the first place, so no harm done. I even dunk myself in my husband's bathwater occasionally. Does that sound weird and gross? Maybe, maybe not – there's a spectrum, from last days of Rome profligacy to making lasagne in the dishwasher (another Extreme Cheapskate trick), and we are mostly somewhere in the middle. The extremely frugal by choice, though, measuring out their lives in coffee spoons pinched from the work canteen, are mostly seen as comical, silly and slightly sad. We have internalised an idea that lavishness is life-affirming – live a little, use the good bath oil, as Nora Ephron said (impossible: I'll die with the good bath oil dusty and unopened, taking a grim last satisfaction at having saved it). But isn't the opposite true? Aren't the real sad weirdos the ones throwing yacht foam parties and sending Katy Perry into space? Appreciating every drop and crumb and being careful can be life-affirming, and life- (on Earth, in the wider sense) prolonging. We're not facing the kind of horror we are seeing in Gaza, but this summer, UK farmers are sounding alarm bells at the prospect of poor harvests and the difficulties they are facing feeding livestock, and I have just read a bleak French news story about the effect of extreme heat on poultry farms (apparently 750,000 chickens died there as a result of 2023's less dramatic heatwaves; worse is predicted this year). Nicking your neighbour's water isn't OK (and disturbingly end of days), and I'm not up for hair flossing – I don't even have hair to floss with. But when natural resources are becoming scarcer, a 'scarcity mindset' starts to make a lot of sense and the extremely frugal might have the last laugh. Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
Telegraph
7 hours ago
- Telegraph
How an Israeli arms embargo divided Merz's party
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'The even tougher military action by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip... makes it increasingly difficult for the German government to see how these goals will be achieved,' Mr Merz said, in a highly unusual public rebuke of Israel that blindsided many of his MPs, according to sources. In practice, the ban means that Germany can continue to provide Israel with around 30 per cent of its weapons – the other 70 per cent coming from the United States mainly – but they can only be used inside Israeli territory or in the occupied West Bank. Experts told The Telegraph this is an attempt to strike a delicate balance between support for Israeli security, a key pillar of the post-war German state's raison d'être, and growing public concern about the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. The announcement, however, has caused an outcry in Mr Merz's Right-wing Christian Democrats [CDU] party. And it's not because they feel the move does not go far enough, as might be the case in Sir Keir Starmer's Labour party. On the contrary, CDU members have been left 'stunned, angry and horrified' by the embargo, which they consider a betrayal of German support for Israel and, some say, a gift to Hamas. Mr Merz was this week forced to convene a 'crisis meeting' with top CDU allies, which lasted long into the night, to justify the embargo to them, the German tabloid Bild reported. There was much to discuss. Roderich Kiesewetter, one of the most hawkish MPs in the CDU, described the embargo as 'a serious political and strategic error' which risked unravelling Germany's alliance with the Jewish state. Boris Rhein, the CDU president of the west German state of Hesse, also publicly opposed the ban. 'Hamas can only be defeated in battle, not at the negotiating table. We must continue to equip Israel to fight this battle, to defeat Hamas and to end terrorism,' he said. Support for Israel linked to 'reason of state' Even the CDU's youth wing has joined the fray, with Johannes Winkel, one of its leading figures, fuming that Mr Merz had 'broken with the basic values of CDU politics'. The Christian Social Union in Bavaria [CSU], the sister party of the CDU in Mr Merz's coalition, also distanced itself from the embargo, describing it as 'questionable.' As the CDU feverishly debates Mr Merz's decision, one concept keeps cropping up: the concept of 'Staatsräson'. Germany's unwavering support of Israel, both militarily and diplomatically, is considered to be an integral part of the state's reason for existence. That policy is largely driven by Germany's guilt over the Holocaust, which is quite literally etched into the country's foundations: the streets of Berlin are dotted with 'stumble stones,' the small brass memorial blocks in memory of murdered Jewish families At the same time, some in Germany are beginning to question if their ethos of 'nie wieder [never again]' – the notion that the crimes of the Holocaust must never be repeated – requires them to oppose the death and destruction in the Gaza Strip. This is based on the argument that 'nie wieder' should be applied not only to the Nazi genocide, but to any genocide worldwide. It is a challenging area for Germans to navigate, and not just ethically; comparing the Holocaust to other historical events in a way that plays down the former's magnitude can be a criminal offence. Mr Netanyahu's new goal of fully occupying the Gaza Strip, which human rights groups fear will lead to yet more civilian deaths, therefore presented Germany's chancellor with a dilemma. 'Domestic pressure has been mounting on Merz for some time due to the deteriorating situation in Gaza,' Dr Trevelyan Wing, a fellow at Cambridge University's Centre for Geopolitics, told The Telegraph. 'At the same time, Germany considers the defence of Israel to be its Staatsräson. So it's a balancing act for Merz,' he added. Dr Wing noted that one recent survey found 66 per cent of Germans wanted the Chancellor to put more pressure on Israel to wrap up the war, which has so far killed an estimated 60,000 Palestinians. The war itself was launched in retaliation for the Oct 7 Hamas massacre which killed more than a thousand Israelis. A recent study by the Lancet medical journal estimated that around 60 per cent of the victims in the first nine months of the Gaza war were children, women and over-65s. Experts sceptical over impact Even so, Dr Wing added, Mr Merz's arms embargo has taken many conservatives by surprise in Germany. 'You now have some saying it's a break with that reason of state,' he said. There are also practical matters to consider: Germany is said to rely heavily on the Israeli intelligence services for domestic security, to compensate for decades of underinvestment in the German equivalents of MI5 and MI6. And Germany recently signed a €4bn (£3.4bn) deal to buy Israel's highly advanced Arrow 3 missile defence system. Experts are generally sceptical about the embargo having a major impact on Israel's arms procurement, due to the United States already providing the vast majority of its weapons. But the more tangible consequences may be felt in Berlin, where Mr Merz seems to have many enemies in his own party, with some of them perhaps looking for excuses to cause political chaos. Back in May, when Mr Merz's candidacy for chancellor was put before the German parliament – in what was supposed to be a mere formality – he shockingly lost the vote. It was the first time in Germany's postwar history that a chancellor lost a confirmation vote, and was widely viewed as a warning shot by CDU MPs who disliked their new leader. While he is a veteran of the CDU, Mr Merz is a somewhat divisive figure. His Right-wing populist streak on migration has alienated the liberal wing of the party, which much preferred the understated, subtle leadership style of his predecessor Angela Merkel. Significant elements of the CDU also remain deeply sceptical of Mr Merz's security policy, which envisages Germany becoming a major new military power to rival Britain and France by taking on huge amounts of public debt to rebuild the army. 'Israel is a very sensitive area for Merz to navigate as he tries to staunch the criticism,' said Dr Wing. 'And there are a lot of people in his party who don't really like him.'
Auto Express
8 hours ago
- Auto Express
It's incredible that no EV has got the full Electric Car Grant amount
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