Overview
- Berlin police say three pro-Palestine activists reached the Brandenburg Gate roof within minutes on Nov. 13 using a hydraulic lift, unfurled a banner and were arrested along with two alleged accomplices after officers smashed the vehicle’s cabin windows.
- Heights teams removed the group as firefighters positioned safety cushions and a Bundeswehr ambulance stood by, with police calling the incident very serious and noting the tactic exploited a concealed approach angle that is hard to preempt.
- Opening the Junge Union’s congress in Rust, JU chief Johannes Winkel condemned the pension package’s roughly €120 billion follow-on costs as unacceptable and demanded changes, increasing pressure on CDU leader and Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
- Merz urged delegates to avoid an “undercutting contest” on pension levels and said he would back the SPD-led draft in the Bundestag, a stance complicated by a reported 12-vote governing cushion and 18 members of the caucus’s Junge Gruppe declaring the bill in its current form unsupportable.
- Separately, Berlin authorities are investigating two attempted murders after a shooting outside a Lichtenberg Döner shop wounded men aged 29 and 28, one critically, with police citing intensifying organized-crime rivalries and deploying around 100 officers and specialists to curb escalation.