Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned that Ireland “cannot contemplate” a hard Brexit situation which will create a physical border with Northern Ireland amid growing fears Britain could crash out of the EU without a deal.

Germany’s justice minister has proposed fines of up to €50m for social networking sites that fail to swiftly remove illegal content, such as hate speech or defamatory "fake news".

Update 10.38pm: A truck has rammed into a crowded Christmas market in central Berlin, killing at least nine people as it tore through tables and wooden stands.

Gunmen attacked a busy shopping centre in the German city of Munich yesterday evening, spraying bullets as people fled in horror from what police said was a terrorist attack.

A top member of a rising nationalist party has been criticised after reportedly saying many people would not want Jerome Boateng, a German international footballer whose father was born in Ghana, as their neighbour.

Germany’s wifi crunch looks set to ease after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition agreed to remove legal quirks that have held providers of public hotspots liable for what users do online through their networks.

Germany’s justice minister has vowed to work with Facebook to thwart racist and hate posts, acting on worries about a rise of xenophobic comments in German on social media linked to Europe’s refugee crisis.

Germany’s top public prosecutor has launched an investigation into the bugging of Angela Merkel’s mobile phone by US intelligence in the light of revelations by former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, authorities announced last night.

A leading German conservative today said he was confident the country’s two biggest parties would succeed in forming a governing coalition, but he pressed Angela Merkel’s claim to replace Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.