Basketball – FIBA World Cup 2023 – Final – Germany v Serbia – Mall of Asia Arena, Manila, Philippines – September 10, 2023 Germany players celebrate with the trophy after winning the FIBA World Cup 2023 Final REUTERS/Lisa Marie David
Germany won their first-ever FIBA Basketball World Cup title by beating undermanned Serbia 83-77 in a slugfest of the two European powerhouses on Sunday in Manila.
Germany leaned on a 22-10 surge in the third quarter, orchestrated by brothers Franz and Moritz Wagner, to build a cushion and win the World Cup’s first all-European final since 2006.
The tournament most valuable player Dennis Schroder carried Germany with a game-high 28 points, way above his average of 17.9 points per game, and added two rebounds and two assists.
“This is an unbelievable group… coach did a great job bringing us together,” Schroder told a press conference. “Our defence and how we play as a basketball team is just special.”
Germany, who won all eight tournament games, became the first team since 2006 to win a FIBA World Cup crown while debuting in the final.
Serbia absorbed another heartbreak after losing to the United States 129-92 in the 2014 final, but finished better than their quarter-final exit in 2019.
People walk the grounds of the former concentration camp at the Sachsenhausen Memorial, April 2023. Fabian Sommer/picture alliance/Getty Images
A 98-year-old former Nazi concentration guard has been indicted on charges of aiding and abetting the murder of more than 3,300 people during the Holocaust, German authorities said on Friday.
The man’s name was not made public by prosecutors, in accordance with German privacy laws.
The public prosecutor in the western city of Giessen, near Frankfurt, said in a statement that the man worked at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp between 1943 and 1945.
The man, who was a minor at the time of the alleged crimes, is accused of “having assisted in the cruel and insidious killing of thousands of prisoners,” prosecutors said.
The man will face a juvenile court because he was under the age of 18 when he served at Sachsenhausen. The statement added that the trial is expected to be in Hanau, close to the man’s home, in accordance with juvenile law.
A psychiatric assessment of the suspect in October 2022 found that he is fit to stand trial within certain limits, the statement concluded.
The Berlin skyline, April 1, 2020. REUTERS/Michele Tantussi/File Photo
Police in Germany, reported on Saturday that they found the body of a 24-year-old Mexican woman who disappeared in Berlin at the end of July and whose case has caused garnered widespread attention in Mexico.
Authorities said the body of Maria Fernanda Sanchez, for whom Interpol had issued a yellow search notice, was found floating in a canal by a person walking along a bridge in Berlin’s Adlershof neighborhood.
“No third-party blame can be assumed,” police said in a statement, but added that “the police investigation continues.”
The Mexican Foreign Ministry communicated on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that German authorities reported the discovery of a deceased woman that fit Sanchez’s description.
Earlier in the week, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that he would ask the German president to bolster the search for Sanchez, who, according to local media, was a masters student in Germany.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gives the keynote address for the 20th IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore June 2, 2023. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo
Trade and security will be priorities for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on a trip this week to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and attend a NATO summit in Lithuania, Albanese’s office said.
He will meet Scholz on Monday to discuss “deepening cooperation between Australia and Germany” in “trade and investment, the clean energy transition, and defence”, the Labor leader’s office said in a statement late on Saturday.
At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on Tuesday and Wednesday, Australia will advocate for “our region’s strategic priorities and advance Australia’s security, economic and trade agenda,” the statement said.
Australia is not a member of NATO but has a decades-long relationship with the Western alliance and attended last year’s summit in Madrid as a non-member participant.
“Alongside our NATO allies, Australia continues to demonstrate our unwavering support for Ukraine, and our condemnation of Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion,” Albanese said in the statement.
Australia, one of the largest non-NATO contributors to the West’s support for Ukraine, has supplied aid and defence equipment and banned exports of alumina and aluminium ores, including bauxite, to Russia.
Last month, Australia promised a new A$110 million ($74 million) package to Ukraine, including 70 military vehicles to defend against Russia’s invasion, taking Australia’s total contribution for Ukraine to A$790 million ($530 million).
Nancy Faeser, German Ministry of interior, attends the news conference following the refugee summit at the German ministry of interior in Berlin, Germany, February 16, 2023. REUTERS/Michele Tantussi
Germany’s Interior Ministry is examining all Chinese components that are already installed in the country’s 5G network, Minister Nancy Faeser was quoted as saying on Sunday, as Berlin re-evaluates its relationship with top trade partner China.
“We have to protect our communication networks,” Faeser told Bild am Sonntag newspaper, adding that the examination’s three priorities were identifying risks, averting dangers and avoiding dependencies.
“This is especially true for our critical infrastructure,” she said.
Germany has been considering banning certain components from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE in its telecoms networks, a government source told Reuters last month, in a potentially significant move to address security concerns.
Sharp declines in banking shares in Europe have renewed concerns the panic triggered by the collapse of two US banks and rushed takeover of Swiss giant Credit Suisse may not be easily contained.
Shares in Germany’s Deutsche Bank fell by 14% at one point on Friday, with other lenders also seeing big losses.
London’s FTSE 100 ended the day down 1.3%, while stock markets in Germany and France dropped even more sharply.
But US fears did not materialise.
After falling early in the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.4% and the S&P 500 rose almost 0.6%, while the Nasdaq ended 0.3% higher.
The rise came despite declines in shares of big banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.
In Europe, the banks hit by a sell-off from worried investors included Germany’s Commerzbank, which saw shares fall about 5%. France’s Societe Generale ended down about 6% while in the UK, Standard Chartered was the biggest faller, down more than 6%.
Deutsche recovered from its steepest losses but still closed more than 8% lower.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, told the BBC the drop in Deutsche Bank’s share price, and a sharp jump in the cost of insuring against a possible default by the bank, was “indicative of a wider loss of confidence in the banking sector”.
“There’s a gathering fear that central banks may have overdone it with interest rate increases, having left them too low for too long,” he said.
Central banks slashed interest rates during the 2008 global financial crisis and again when the pandemic hit in 2020 as part of efforts to encourage economic growth.
But over the past year or so authorities have been raising rates sharply to try to tame soaring price increases.
These rate rises have hit the value of investments that banks keep some of their money in, and contributed to the bank failures in the US.
Share prices have fallen across the sector, as high-profile investors warn the collapses are symptoms of deeper problems in the system, with other pockets of distress yet to emerge.
Higher interest rates have also raised the possibility of recession, Mr Mould said, and if that happens, “banks will generally find it pretty hard going”.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank helped to trigger the recent loss of confidence
Central banks and governments have been trying to calm market worries.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz defended Deutsche Bank at a news conference on Friday, noting that it had “thoroughly reorganised and modernised its business model” and was “very profitable”.
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey also told the BBC that the UK banking system was “safe and sound”.
But mixed messages from US authorities as to whether they were prepared to guarantee all bank deposits have led to confusion and hopes that calm had been restored to the sector appear to be have been premature.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen convened an unexpected Friday meeting with regulators on financial stability, while use of an emergency lending programme for banks that the US central bank created this month has increased over the past week, the Federal Reserve reported.
Bloomberg News also reported that UBS and Credit Suisse were being investigated by the US Department of Justice into whether they had helped Russian oligarchs avoid sanctions.
