German biotech company BioNTech, which rose to global prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic after developing an mRNA vaccine with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, has announced it will close three sites in Germany after failing to find buyers. The facilities are located in Marburg, Idar-Oberstein and Tübingen. The Mainz-based company is also shutting down operations in Singapore. BioNTech had announced plans in May to sell the facilities as part of a restructuring of its manufacturing operations, but said its efforts to find buyers had been unsuccessful, citing a difficult market and investment environment.
The three German closures affect around 1,800 employees. BioNTech said it had reached agreements with its works council on additional redundancy terms for affected employees. Demand for COVID-19 vaccines has fallen sharply since the pandemic, leaving the company with excess manufacturing capacity. BioNTech is increasingly focusing its resources on its oncology pipeline and has said the restructuring could eventually generate annual savings of around €500 million ($587 million).
Meanwhile, water levels on the Rhine, Western Europe's busiest inland freight waterway, have fallen to record lows after an unusually dry September. On Monday morning, the reading in Cologne dipped to 40 centimeters (just under 16 inches), the lowest ever recorded. The previous record low in Cologne was 69 centimeters in 2018. In Koblenz, Andernach and Düsseldorf, the readings even moved into negative territory, meaning the gauging stations were completely dry. The Rhine, which links the Netherlands and the vast port of Rotterdam to much of western Germany, is used for transporting coal and fuel. Germany's WSV river agency also had low water level warnings in place on stretches of most of the country's major rivers, including the Elbe, Danube, Weser, Ems and the Oder.
Germany marked the 75th anniversary of its Federal Constitutional Court with a ceremony attended by some 1,000 guests in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in a speech released in advance, stressed the importance of the court at a time when liberal democracy in Germany was increasingly threatened by "forces at the political margins." He called a strong Constitutional Court "part of the resilience of our democracy." Founded on September 28, 1951, the court had dealt with almost 274,000 cases by the end of 2025.
Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV) has warned that cooperation between German research institutes and Chinese universities could open the door for Chinese espionage. The BfV told the daily Handelsblatt that China has been building up a "comprehensive system of technology and know-how transfer" for years to gain the edge politically, economically, technologically and militarily. It named quantum technologies, AI, hypersonic technology, and biological and surveillance technologies as being particularly sensitive, as they can be used both for civilian and military purposes.
Left Party politician Elif Eralp, who could become Berlin's next mayor after an election win last week, has filed a criminal complaint against conservative Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt over a remark referring to her as an "antisemite." Lawyer Jasper Prigge told the DPA news agency the complaint argues that Dobrindt endorsed a statement describing Eralp as an "antisemite" in what amounted to a criminal act of defamation and insult. The incident occurred in a talkshow on German television on Thursday. Eralp herself has repeatedly condemned all forms of antisemitism and reaffirmed Israel's right to exist.
Source: www.dw.com