Germanys

MUNICH, Germany — Maybe you buy the 9-Euro-Ticket to travel from Saxony to Bavaria to go to the Helene Fischer concert in Munich. Maybe you buy it to go hiking, taking the train on summer weekends to villages outside Munich. Or maybe you buy it because you’re an American journalist, but also a little bit of a tourist, used to paying $2.75 to wait 15 minutes for a crowded Brooklyn Q train, like me. Because, really, why not buy it? For 9 euros a month for June, July, August, passengers could buy one ticket to travel…

Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Reading recently about Germany’s €30 billion plan for its startups, I was intrigued. Did the country start to envy La French Tech? Is it hoping to rival post-Brexit U.K.? Perhaps both, but it also has a national goal — making sure that profits from homegrown successes stay home. Let’s explore. —…

BERLIN—Hit hard by falling Russian natural gas deliveries, German energy giant Uniper SE UN01 -9.42% reported a net loss of more than $12.6 billion for the first half of the year, deepening the turmoil at one of the first corporate victims of Europe’s energy crisis. Uniper, Germany’s largest importer of Russian gas, has been forced to buy gas on the market where prices are near records after Moscow slashed deliveries to Germany from…

Cargo ships travel on the Rhine River on August 10, 2022 near Bonn, Germany. The ongoing hot weather and lack of rain have caused water levels on the Rhine to fall, which is complicating shipping.Photo: Andreas Rentz (Getty Images)A record-breaking hot, dry summer in Europe has lowered the Rhine River’s water levels so much that it has threatened shipping in the region. The Rhine is a critical commercial corridor. The river connects mega-ports in Germany’s industrial area, transporting goods to nearby landlocked…

Peel away the politics and the passion, the doomsaying and the denialism, and climate change largely boils down to this: energy. To avoid the chances of catastrophic climate change while ensuring the world can continue to grow — especially for poor people who live in chronically energy-starved areas — we’ll need to produce ever more energy from sources that emit little or no greenhouse gases. It’s that simple — and, of course, that complicated. Zero-carbon sources of renewable energy like wind and solar have seen…

EU antitrust agency raids online food and grocery delivery companies in two EU countries over concerns they may be in a cartel. Companies found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules face fines up to 10 percent of their global turnover. ()…

German supplier of chemicals and materials used in making semiconductors, KGaA , said on Tuesday it had signed a contract to open a semiconductor base in the Chinese city of Zhangjiagang, describing it as its largest single electronics business investment in the country. The company said in a statement the deal was signed with local authorities. The new 69-acre base will house production plants for thin film materials and electronic specialty gasses, warehouses, and operation centers. "China is the largest end market for…

The head of German defense contractor Rheinmetall says the company could begin sending Cold War-era Leopard 1 main battle tanks to Ukraine in six weeks if authorities in the country approve the plan. This public statement can only add to the pressure on the German government to green-light this transfer. Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reportedly been holding all this up despite growing support for giving the tanks to the Ukrainian military from within his own Social Democratic Party and others in the country's…