States of Germany

Volkswagen used devices to cheat air pollution tests in diesel luxury vehicles, U.S. environmental regulators said on Nov 2, in a new blow to the automaker already reeling from similar allegations regarding millions of smaller diesel engines. 

Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy towards refugees and embrace of Turkey drew criticism on Oct. 19 from conservative allies, with one senior Bavarian politician warning against any consideration of European Union membership for Ankara. 

The owners of 5700 new cars of the Volkswagen and Audi brands in Bulgaria will have to have their cars refitted due to the presence of illegal emission-control software.

The scandal broke out on September 18, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Volkswagen had to refit nearly half a million cars equipped with illegal software to bypass diesel emissions tests.

Europe's top human rights watchdog on Oct.1 voiced concern at mounting racism in Germany, citing a wave of far-right, anti-Islam demonstrations at odds with the more recent image of a country ready to open its doors to hundreds of thousands of refugees.

German car manufacturer Volkswagen (VW) will replace 11 million vehicles that are fitted with the ‘guilty’ software responsible for distorting emissions, according to a statement by the company’s new CEO Matthias Muller.

The number of attacks and other criminal offences committed against refugee shelters in Germany has more than doubled this year compared to 2014, police said on Sept. 28.

Volkswagen?s top-of-the-range automaker Audi said on Sept. 28 that 2.1 million of its diesel cars worldwide are fitted with the sophisticated software enabling them to cheat emission tests.

In Germany alone, 577,000 vehicles were affected and 13,000 in the United States, an Audi spokesman said. In western Europe as a whole, the number was 1.42 million.     

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel says Europe has again made a fool of itself in the migration crisis, and is calling for a summit of the 28-nation bloc’s leaders in the coming period.

EU interior ministers did not reach a decision during yesterday’s meeting on the relocation of 120,000 refugees.

Two Bulgarian nationals have died in a car crash on the road Nis-Dimitrovgrad, southeastern Serbia.

Four people were injured in the accident, all of them Turkish nationals.

A six-year-old is among the injured, according to reports of the BGNES news agency.

Serbian PM Aleksandar Vucic's proposal to provide false asylum seekers with smaller financial support "is more applicable in practice than some others."

This is what Bavarian Minister-President Horst Seehofer said on Monday after his meeting with Vucic in Munich, speaking about other proposals that emerged in Germany in the ongoing debate on migrants.