Germany news: Hackers release AfD party emails
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Germany's far-right AfD has launched an inquiry after the release of thousands of emails following a cyberattack. Also, investors pledged billions for Germany at a major summit in Berlin. DW has more news from Germany.
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This is a round-up of top stories from and about Germany on Tuesday, October 20, 2026: Tired of missing our real-time updates?
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Click here to add us as a Preferred Source on Google. Then tap the "Star" or "Preferred" to keep DW News at the top of your feed. More than 421,000 emails linked to Germany's far-right AfD have been published following a cyberattack (see additional entry below).
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The alleged material includes private communications, sensitive personal data and reported references to racism, antisemitism and Nazi ideology, although much of the trove has not yet been independently verified.
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Could this become one of the biggest political data leaks in modern German history?
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A German supermarket is getting attention online after responding to a customer who objected to its diverse workforce.
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Nine pro-Palestinian protesters seeking an end to Western arms exports to Israel glued themselves to the ground in front of a Berlin facility belonging to German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall.
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Berlin police responded to the incident at 5:30 a.m. (0330 UTC) with 11 protesters at the site.
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The "Peacefully Against Genocide" group was behind the action. The factory began arms production in June.
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It is involved in the production of shell casings for artillery ammunition and parts for kamikaze drones, according to local public broadcaster RBB. It is unclear how much the facility in Berlin's Wedding neighborhood is involved with weapons for Israel.
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Rheinmetall, however, is Germany's largest arms manufacturer. In the western German state of Hesse, seven people also blocked the entry to the Rheinmetall facility in the city of Kassel, according to local police.
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In addition, demonstrators against weapons exports glued themselves in front of a weapons company in the western city of Kaiserslautern.
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Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) said on Tuesday that it was looking into the theft and subsequent online publication of emails stolen by unidentified hackers during a cyberattack last month.
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An AfD spokesperson said the hackers had targeted a hosting provider used by the party and appeared to have copied data from a small number of mostly inactive email accounts.
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"The recent online publication of what is presumably a portion of this data is currently being investigated," the spokesperson said.
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"A preliminary assessment can only be provided once this investigation has been concluded." Although the spokesperson did not say how much data was stolen, an earlier report by the mass-circulation daily Bild put the number of AfD-linked emails published at more than 420,000.
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According to Bild, the material published included not only emails sent by party figures such as co-leader Alice Weidel but also bank statements, academic certificates and membership lists.
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The website hosting the material was offline by Tuesday afternoon.
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However, archived versions showed a volume of 281 gigabytes of data under the headline "The party's own records, unedited."
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The emails and other materials published have not yet been certified as authentic by any independent body.
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The AfD, several state chapters of which have been classified as "confirmed right-wing extremist" by regional branches of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, has been topping recent national opinion polls and made gains in recent state elections.
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Some politicians and civil society groups have called for it to be banned, arguing that the party is a threat to democracy, an accusation the party has rejected.
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While Berlin hosts a summit on investment in Germany, an increasing amount of US capital is flowing into Germany's traditional industrial firms and family-owned businesses.
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As many business owners struggle to find successors, more companies are becoming acquisition targets.
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Read all the details here: Why US investors are snapping up Germany's famed Mittelstand German economic confidence — like that across the eurozone in general — deteriorated in October, according to experts at the Mannheim-based Center for European Economic Research (ZEW).
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The ZEW's monthly economic confidence index fell to a three-month low on Tuesday, down to 28.1 from 34.7 in September.
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That is nearly two points lower than forecast.
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"Private consumption and investment remain weak because of high energy prices: They put real incomes under pressure, increase production costs and keep inflation higher for longer," said ZEW President Achim Wambach. "The German economy," added Wambach, "is slowly emerging from stagnation, but the recovery is not self-sustaining."
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The biggest losers in this latest index were banks, insurers, the service sector and the telecommunications industry.
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Winners were seen in the metal manufacturing and electronics industries.
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ZEW compiles its monthly surveys from interviews with banking, insurance and financial industry experts and businesses on their expectations for economic and capital market developments.
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The ZEW's index is considered a key indicator for Germany's economic development.
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Tuesday's survey was based on interviews with 178 analysts between October 12 and 19, 2026.
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Chancellor Friedrich Merzhas indulged in an abundance of the most common cliches about his country and compatriots while trying to portray Germany as the ideal place to do business at an investment summit.
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"Germans are hardworking, going to bed early, rising before dawn," he told the domestic and international guests at the Invest in Germany Summit.
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"Worst traffic is in the morning between 6 and 7," he said.
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"On holidays, we are first on the beach, spreading towels before breakfast.
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If we agree on delivery dates, we stick to it.
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If you invite friends from Germany for dinner at 7, we will arrive at 6:58. "We are reliable, predictable, precise, and unsurprising," the chancellor continued. "We are, in short, what investors like most."
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Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil also used blunt humor in his appeal to potential investors, saying in his speech simply: "I want your money." Both pitches appear to have succeeded, with investment commitments worth billions made at the summit.
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More than €225 billion ($252.5 billion) has so far been pledged in investments in Germany at a summit in Berlin attended by top business leaders, German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche said on Tuesday.
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Reiche did not give any details about the commitments made so far, but told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that the figure only included deals above a volume of €100 million.
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Among those planning to invest in Europe's largest economy is online retail giant Amazon, which said it intended to pour some €16 billion into Germany next year for various schemes.
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The company said these would include "the expansion of data centers and AI infrastructure, high-speed satellite internet through Amazon Leo, new logistics projects across the country, and a major new production slate by Prime Video."
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"Germany is a hub of innovation and one of the most attractive investment opportunities in Europe," David Zapolsky, Amazon's chief global affairs and legal officer, was quoted as saying in a statement.
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"That is why we have invested more than €100 billion here since 2010, and why we plan to invest an additional €16 billion in 2027.
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We want German businesses, communities, and creators to have the infrastructure and tools they need to compete and grow."
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More than 200 German and international executives from large corporations, investment banks and funds are attending the gathering, entitled the Invest in Germany Summit. The Left Party in Berlin, which has faced accusations of being antisemitic, is holding a meeting to discuss how to deal with its parliamentarian Vanessa Emde, who has raised controversy with pro-Palestinian statements.
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Among other things, Emde has supported the idea that there is no right to exist for states, but only for people — thus seemingly going against Germany's firm support of Israel's right to existence.
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Emde has refused to retract any of her statements.
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She has also criticized a statement on antisemitism that she had signed along with all other members of the Left's parliamentary party in which the signatories committed to upholding Israel's right to existence.
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This comes as both the Berlin Green Party and the Social Democrats (SPD) confirmed that they were ready to begin coalition negotiations with the Left Party on forming a joint government in the city-state.
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The Left Party is due to decide on the issue on October 31 at a party conference.
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The three parties held preliminary discussions on the accusations of antisemitism and links to organized crime leveled at the Left Party before beginning the exploratory talks that precede final coalition negotiations.
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The Left Party emerged from September 20 elections in Berlin as the strongest party with 25.7% of the vote.
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Both the Greens (14.3%) and the center-left SPD (12.1%) came in behind the conservative Christian Democrats (18.8%), who led a previous coalition in Berlin with the SPD.
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The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) received 16.3% of the vote, but so far, all other parties are officially refusing to enter into any form of cooperation with it at either federal or state level.
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The Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin entered its second and final day on Tuesday after opening the previous evening with a speech by Chancellor Friedrich Merz that included the words: "Germany is open for business."
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The summit has already yielded an agreement to deepen cooperation on artificial intelligence (AI) in German industry between Germany and US tech giant Nvidia.
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Merz and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the combination of Germany's engineering expertise and cutting-edge AI technology would help strengthen the country's economy over the long term.
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More than 200 German and international executives representing large corporations, investment banks and funds are attending the event, with closed-door talks scheduled for Tuesday.
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The summit aims to attract foreign investment to Germany.
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Organizers highlight the country's sound public finances, triple-A credit rating as the only G7 nation to hold one, strong rule of law and leading position in European patent filings.
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Despite these advantages, Germany has struggled to attract foreign investment in recent years, with high energy prices and labor costs acting as deterrents. Government sources say investment will be vital to help bridge gaps in public funding as the country seeks to improve infrastructure and support companies' transition to climate-neutral production.
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The summit is also being attended by Economy Minister Katherina Reiche and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, who also serves as Merz's deputy.
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Nine protesters have glued themselves to the road outside a plant run by defense contractor Rheinmetall in Berlin's Wedding district, police said on Tuesday.
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Officers have been trying since the early morning to detach the group, a police spokeswoman said.
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She said as many as 90 officers had been deployed to the site, where altogether 11 protesters were gathered.
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Rheinmetall is Germany's largest weapons manufacturer.
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The plant in Wedding, where production began earlier this year, has been the target of several protests, with climate and social justice activist Greta Thunberg among those participating.
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German industrial giant Siemens has warned against eliminating entry-level jobs that are now increasingly left to artificial intelligence (AI), saying young workers could be left without essential skills, including those needed to monitor AI-generated work.
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Judith Wiese, the company's chief people and sustainability officer, said that handing certain routine tasks to AI meant that young employees would not gain hands-on experience that could benefit them later in their careers.
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Wiese said it was necessary, for example, for software developers to be able to write their own code so they could critically examine the code produced by AI.
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"The crucial question is always: What do I need to have done, checked and seen myself to avoid being misled by AI?" she said.
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However, Wiese said AI could also help employees acquire skills more quickly, while older colleagues could learn from younger ones who had grown up using AI.
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Wiese said it was still too early to say how AI would impact employment.
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Noting that Siemens has some 30,000 software engineers, she said: "You can use the additional productivity either to do the same work with fewer people or to do more with the same number of employees."
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Wiese also pointed out that AI was speeding up work processes, enabling the exploration of new ideas and creating projects that would not have been possible without it.
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DW''s newsroom in Bonn bids a warm guten Tag to all its readers as a previously balmy October decides to move toward more wintry chill.
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As Chancellor Merz hosts an investment conference in Berlin where developments in AI is taking center stage, industrial giant Siemens has warned that the technology does not only bring advantages.
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The controversy over alleged antisemitism in Berlin's Left Party, which might well soon lead a leftist coalition in the city-state, continues, with the party itself debating what to do about a member who has expressed strong anti-Israel views.
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And people in Germany are likely to face much longer waits for doctors' appointments from next year, according to an organization managing family doctors and therapists across Germany.
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Read on here for more on these and other stories with a German slant.
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