Germany's Top Headlines: Steinmeier on Racism, Prison Incident, Nuclear Deal, and Whale DNA Results

Deutsche Bank has confirmed its headquarters in Frankfurt was searched Wednesday.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has paid tribute to the victims of a racist attack 10 years ago at a Munich shopping center.

Speaking in the Bavarian capital on Wednesday, Steinmeier spoke out against racism, antisemitism and the categorization of people based on their origin.

"Let us finally realize this: It is not just individual people who have a history of migration — our entire country does. Germany is a country with a migrant background," he said. "That is what defines us."

On July 22, 2016, an 18-year-old shot dead eight teenagers and an adult woman at Munich's Olympia shopping center — people who fitted his racist stereotype. Others were injured.

When cornered by police officers some two and a half hours later, he shot himself.

"This racist act affects not only the victims and their families and friends, not only the city of Munich, not only the state of Bavaria; it affects our entire country, and it concerns all of us in this country," Steinmeier said. "The victims of Munich will remain in our memory."

As president, Steinmeier has in a largely ceremonial role but one that traditionally is seen as a moral compass for the country. He harkened the Munich attacker's beliefs back to the racist ideology of the Nazis.

"We are familiar with this ideology," Steinmeier said. "Throughout history, Germans have murdered millions of people in the name of this ideology.

"We must never accept that such thinking gains ground in our country again. Not among those who have lived here for generations; not among those who have immigrated more recently," he warned. "Antisemitism and racism must have no place in our society. It is the duty of us all to ensure this."

No one is superior to anyone else on the basis of their background, the German head of state stressed. "We must all fight against it, each in their own way and in their own place; We must combat a climate that is hostile towards people with a migrant background."

North Rhine-Westphalia's Justice Ministry says the situation is under control at the JVA Siegburg penitentiary not far from Bonn, after a large police operation late on Tuesday evening.

More than 100 officers were deployed to the prison after a tip-off from an inmate about a possible attempted riot by prisoners.

A spokesman for the state Justice Ministry said the operation was completed by around 10 p.m. and that nobody was injured.

Four mobile phones and small quantities of narcotics were seized during searches. No weapons were located, but the investigations were not concluded, the ministry said, with investigators and canine units still searching the premises.

"The threat of armed violence in our correctional facilities is an absolute red line," state Justice Minister Benjamin Limbach said, having broken off his summer holiday to rush back from France. If the allegations were to be substantiated, ringleaders would face the full force of the law, he said.

The Justice Committee in the state parliament will also convene for emergency talks on Thursday, following a series of issues this summer concerning penitentiaries in Germany's most populous state. The state's opposition Social Democrats and Free Democrats called for the session.

The SPD's judicial policy spokeswoman Sonja Bongers said the question would be "how prisoners were at all able to prepare and decide upon an uprising of this kind, without the justice system becoming aware of it on its own initiative," referring to regional media accounts of some of the alleged details that prompted the raid.

The FDP's Werner Pfeil, meanwhile, lamented that the "negative headlines from correctional facilities in North Rhine-Westphalia are not stopping," saying the frequent problems were leading to "uncertainty about the condition" of the state's prisons.

This follows two major investigations of suspected bribery at prisons in Euskirchen in May and Rheinbach earlier this month, both within fairly close proximity to the Siegburg penitentiary.

In Euskirchen, officials are suspected of selling prisoners information on the timing of spot checks in exchange for a regular fee. In Rheinbach, they are suspected of helping smuggle in contraband — like mobile phones or even narcotics — in exchange for payment. Those investigations against staff and present and former inmates are ongoing; so far they have resulted only in news of searches, raids and employees being suspended from duty.

A German state regulator has cleared the way for a Germany-based subsidiary of a French nuclear fuel company to do joint work with Russia's state-owned Rosatom.

Despite banning nuclear power plants in 2011, Germany is still home to facilities producing nuclear fuel rods, which use fission — different from the fusion process used in traditional nuclear power stations.

The research is aimed at producing fuel rods for use in Russian-designed reactors.

A subsidiary of France's Framatome called ANF (Advanced Nuclear Fuels) applied for permission for the project in March 2022, weeks after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The decision underscores how nuclear energy has largely remained exempt from the EU's sanctions against Russia following its war against Ukraine.

The Environment Ministry in the state of Lower Saxony expressed regret at giving the go-ahead, indicating that it did not have much choice as the venture does not fall under any ban.

It did, however, say the approval could be revisited "if new risks are identified", particularly in "national security."

The EU has so far been unable to come to an agreement as to how to extend sanctions to include Russia's nuclear sector.

The dramatic tale surrounding the humpback whale known as "Timmy" is set to continue today.

Experts are expected to provide DNA results on whether a dead humpback whale found floating off Denmark’s coast on May 14 match samples taken from Timmy. The findings will be presented at a press conference in Hamburg this afternoon.

Danish authorities previously identified the dead whale as Timmy based on a tracking device attached to its fin.

The story of Timmy captivated Germany for months earlier this year.

After repeatedly stranding along Germany’s Baltic Sea coast, the whale spent weeks trapped on a sandbank in Wismar Bay in April, before being rescued by a private rescue initiative which guided the marine mammal out to sea in a specially converted freight barge.

The rescue effort was accompanied by heated debate among scientists, government officials, the public and the private initiative behind the rescue operation over whether the weakened and ailing whale should be left to die in peace or whether rescuers should continue their efforts to save it.

German Economy and Energy Minister Katherina Reiche Reiche has announced that there were no additional measures planned to combat high gas prices in the wake of the Iran War, after a tax relief expired at the end of June.

Germany's Foreign Minister Wadephul is traveling to the Nigerian capital Abuja today, as talks in Africa's most populous country center on business, resource and security cooperation.