Skip next section What you need to know
What you need to know
Here’s a roundup of the biggest stories hitting the headlines in Germany on Wednesday, August 12, 2026:
- Cabinet has approved reforms to the foreign and domestic intelligence agencies amid rising hybrid threats
- Transport ministers are set to discuss possible measures as river cargo shipping is hampered by low water levels
- The military has reported a large increase in drone overflights of sensitive sites in recent years
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Skip next section Cabinet passes controversial intelligence agency reformPublished 08/12/2026Published August 12, 2026last updated 08/12/2026last updated August 12, 2026
Cabinet passes controversial intelligence agency reform
The German Cabinet has approve a more than 700-page package of laws granting much greater powers to both the domestic intelligence agency (BfV) and the foreign intelligence agency (BND).
The package will allow the agencies more latitude in the gathering and storage of information and data, along with new options to actively combat acts of sabotage and hacking attacks.
The government says the package aims to enable the agencies to operate more effectively in the face of a myriad of hybrid security threats.
“We will not look on passively as foreign interference, sabotage and threats to the pillars of our constitution and our free society continue to grow,” chancellery head Nina Warken told the daily Rheinische Post.
“Our [intelligence] services can only take targeted action against these hybrid attacks if they have more liberties and up-to-date measures” at their disposal, she said.
However, the planned reform has also met with considerable criticism from those who see the extended powers as a threat to civil rights.
The leader of the Free Democrats (FDP), Wolfgang Kubicki, accused Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt of “breaking a taboo.”
“It can hardly be imagined that the Constitutional Court will not intervene here,” he told the Augsburger Allgemeine daily.
“I do not want any secret police in Germany,” he said. “I want full court control in the case of attacks on basic rights and a state that understands that you don’t defend liberty by curbing it.”
https://p.dw.com/p/5IfLaSkip next section Ansah has ‘no fear’ of losing bronze despite looming doping ban08/12/2026August 12, 2026
Ansah has ‘no fear’ of losing bronze despite looming doping ban
Sprinter Owen Ansah, Germany’s 100-meter record holder, delivered his country’s first men’s 100-meter European Championship medal in 40 years, despite facing a potential doping suspension.
Ansah won the bronze at the European Championships in Birmingham, England on Tuesday night, to take the biggest win of his career.
The 25-year-old posted a time of 10.19 seconds, managing to shut out the considerable noise surrounding his looming suspension by Germany’s National Anti Doping Agency (NADA), which accuses the sprinter of refusing to take a doping test on July 9.
But Ansah insists that he failed to provide a urine sample because the doping control officer arrived outside of the requested time slot and Ansah had to leave to travel to Monaco for a Diamond League event. He also says he had just used the restroom before the officer arrived.
He said he is “not afraid” of having his medal revoked. “I trust my team, which has my back. I can’t influence the other stuff. I can only influence how fast I am on the track. And I showed that well today,” Ansah said.
The sprinter is now turning his attention to the 200-meter dash on Friday, where he is eyeing a second medal at the Championships.
https://p.dw.com/p/5IfcISkip next section Drone-related security incidents on the increase — military08/12/2026August 12, 2026
Drone-related security incidents on the increase — military
Several hundred security incidents involvingdrones have been registered by Germany’s armed forces in the past years, a military spokesman has said.
“Since the start of the illegal full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, reports on drone sightings affecting the Bundeswehr have greatly increased,” the spokesman told the media outlet Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.
“Over the past few years, several hundred suspected drone overflights in Bundeswehr-related areas have been reported,” he said, adding that whole swarms of drones had been sighted on occasion.
Germany has seen a number of drone incidents in recent weeks, including one involving a drone carrying explosives at the Leipzig-Halle airport.
According to the newsmagazine Spiegel, the Hannover-Langenhagen airport was also closed several times overnight to Tuesday after a drone was sighted by employees.
Spiegel reported that the drone did not show up on police detection devices, suggesting that the object was possibly not a commercially available model.
https://p.dw.com/p/5IfXuSkip next section Transport ministers to meet over low river levels08/12/2026August 12, 2026
Transport ministers to meet over low river levels
Transport ministers from Germany’s state and federal governments are to hold a video conference on Wednesday to discuss the challenges to inland shipping as rivers across the country run low.
Federal Transport Minister Steffen Bilger said the ministers would, among other things, talk about ways to compensate potential supply shortages as ships transport less cargo.
Several states have already lifted a ban on trucks using highways on Sundays in a bid to shift some cargo transport to other routes.
Ahead of the conference, Bilger, who belongs to the center-right Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, told the daily Rheinische Post that there were currently no supply shortfalls.
However, he also said that cargo transport needed to be shifted more to road and rail to reduce the risk of supply problems to industry.
Bilger said the current river water shortages would likely continue until the end of August at least.
https://p.dw.com/p/5IfHWSkip next section Welcome to our coverage08/12/2026August 12, 2026
Welcome to our coverage
Timothy Jones | Rob Turner Editor
DW’s newsroom in Bonn wishes all its readers guten Tag on what promises to be another very warm summer day.
Amid the hot and dry weather, water levels in rivers such as the Rhine are continuing to drop, causing problems to inland shipping and to companies that rely on it for their supplies.
The situation on Germany’s waterways will thus be a main topic in today’s blog once again, as transport ministers meet to discuss how best to remedy the situation.
A planned reform granting new powers to intelligence agencies is also causing a stir, with some saying they go too far while others maintain their necessity as Germany faces ever more hybrid security threats.
One of those threats has been highlighted in a military report saying that hundreds of drone flights over army sites have been sighted in the past few years.
Read on for more on these and other stories hitting the headlines in Germany.
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