States of Germany

It was his girlfriend's idea. Valentine's Day was coming up and she wanted to see Fifty Shades Darker over the weekend. Koscielnik was not so keen. His exams were coming up and he would rather have been revising. He was 20 years old, a student at a technical college in his hometown of Oswiecim, in southern Poland.

A Turkish national who went missing after a recent explosion at a chemical site in Germany has died, his family confirmed on Aug. 1.

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Erdoğan Sarıkaya is among the five victims of the July 27 blast in western German city of Leverkusen.

According to world media, witnesses said they saw smoke, and the German Civil Protection Agency was declared an "extreme danger" alert.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is to visit flood-ravaged areas in Germany on July 18 to survey the damage and meet survivors, after days of extreme rainfall in western Europe left at least 183 people dead and dozens missing.

Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her condolences to the victims of "the catastrophe, the scale of which will only be seen in the coming days."
More than 1.000 rescuers are helping the area, while authorities say it is too early to determine the extent of the damage.

 The death toll from floods caused by heavy rains in the western German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia rose to 45, media reported.

German emergency responders were on July 16 still searching for hundreds of missing people after the worst floods in living memory killed more than 80 in the country's west.

"I fear that we will only see the full extent of the disaster in the coming days," Chancellor Angela Merkel said from Washington, where she met with President Joe Biden.

A final warning has been sent by European Commission for fees collected by planes at Sofia Airport, which is without legal grounds, according to the Commission.

A German-Turkish lawyer, who represented families of the Turkish victims killed by the NSU, a neo-Nazi terror group, was awarded the "Ludwig Beck Award for Civil Courage" on July 2.

Seda Başay-Yıldız, a prominent lawyer at Frankfurt Bar Association, received the award from the mayor of Wiesbaden, the state capital of Hesse, Germany.

Turkey's first spotter area has been established for those who have interest in aircraft photography and aviation at the Istanbul Airport, officials announced on June 25.

Those who like to take photos of the aircrafts while landing or taking off are called "spotters" and the spotter area is a place a little far from the runaways serviced to the spotters only.