The AfD uses second-generation members to overhaul its xenophobic image – and some are willing to buy into their message

Like many here in Germany, my home country, I have been following the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland obsessively, expecting it to dominate the state elections in eastern Germany this September: polls put it ahead in all three states that are set to vote. Imagine Reform UK winning the north of England by promising to target and deport refugees and immigrants. It feels threatening to people like me.

I guess my alarm is no surprise, given that I come from a Vietnamese family. But I have been shocked to learn that even immigrant Germans are considering voting for the AfD. There are no numbers on this yet, but still, I cannot help but feel a personal sense of disappointment. How can people like me side with them ?

Khuê Phạm is a German journalist and writer. Her debut novel, Brothers and Ghosts, which is inspired by her Vietnamese family, has just been released

Amateur archaeologists discover remains missing hands and feet at former Nazi military headquarters

Amateur archaeologists have unearthed five human skeletons missing their hands and feet under the former home of the Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring at Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair military headquarters in present-day Poland.

The remains, believed to be that of a family, were discovered as part of a dig at the site near the north-eastern town of Kętrzyn, where Nazi leaders spent large stretches of the second world war.

Nicaragua brought plea to court, arguing sales of weapons make Berlin complicit in alleged war crimes

The International court of justice has rejected a request by Nicaragua to issue Germany emergency orders to desist selling arms to Israel, by 15 votes to one.

The decision, according to the judgment read in court in The Hague, is largely based on a significant decrease in recent German arms sales to Israel, the largely defensive nature of arms recently sold, and the extensive internal German government processes to consider if arms would be used to prosecute war crimes or genocide.

Politicians fear perceived costs of green transition are driving poor and rural voters to parties such as AfD

Raising his voice above the pounding drums and honking tractors, Lutz Jankus, a city councillor from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), distanced himself from the furious protest unfurling before him.

“They’re rightwing extremists,” he said about Free Saxony, a loose political movement that includes neo-Nazis and skinheads, as his colleagues began to pack up their tent on the side of the square in the centre of Görlitz.

The far right are on the march in Germany and the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany has become the most popular party in several states. Immigration and a sense of being economically left behind have been driving factors in the rise in popularity but the Green party and the federal government’s climate policies have also borne the brunt of public anger. The Guardian travelled to Görlitz, on the German border with Poland, to find out to what extent Germany’s green policies are fuelling the far right

Eponymous hero tackles a pooch-pinching operation by getting captured in this old-fashioned production

In some ways, the Lassie films are like the canine answer to the James Bond series. Both have literary antecedents, both have been big screen successes for MGM, and the basic formula remains essentially the same: a hero saves the day. The equivalent of Sean Connery is probably Pal, the rough collie dog who portrayed Lassie in seven feature films in the 1940s and 1950s. In Lassie: A New Adventure, Lassie is played by Bandit, who brings what is needed to the role, in a slick, handsome, functional way that suggests the Lassie franchise is perhaps in its Pierce Brosnan era, though unfortunately more Die Another Day doldrums than GoldenEye high point.

It bears mentioning at this point that the film is more properly titled Lassie – Ein Neues Abenteuer; this is a German production which has been fairly obviously dubbed into English, with the same director (Hanno Olderdissen) and human lead actor (Nico Marischka) as Lassie Come Home from 2020, also a German production. The premise is simple and straightforward: a nefarious couple have been pinching pooches, the aim of their dognapping operation being to auction off the luckless hounds to the highest bidder. When Lassie’s pal Pippa is snatched, Lassie deploys the time-honoured strategy of deliberately getting captured, and everything works out exactly as you might expect; this is not a film interested in surprising the viewer, and is very much made with younger audiences in mind.

Commission president, who is seeking another term, took aim at group that includes AfD and National Rally in pre-election debate

The European Commission’s president, Ursula Von der Leyen, has criticised the far-right as “Putin’s proxies”, while refusing to rule out working with other rightwing nationalists, as campaigning began ahead of June’s European elections.

Von der Leyen is seeking a second five-year term leading the commission, in the looming reshuffle of EU top jobs that follows the European elections.

People want more seafood than the oceans can sustainably supply, so a German firm aims to plug that gap with cultivated fish – but are consumers ready to buy it?

The redbrick offices, just north of Hamburg’s River Elbe and a few floors below Carlsberg’s German headquarters, are an unexpectedly low-key setting for a food team gearing up to produce Europe’s first tonne of lab-grown fish.

But inside Bluu Seafood, past the slick open-plan coffee and cake bar, the rooms are dominated by gleaming white tiles, people bustling about in lab coats, rows of broad-bottomed beakers and pieces of equipment more at home in a science-fiction thriller. A 50-litre tank (a bioreactor) is filled with what looks like a cherry-coloured energy drink. The liquid, known as “growth medium”, is rich with sugars, minerals, amino acids and proteins designed to give the fish cells that are added to it the boost they need to multiply by the million.

Ex-soldier, conspiracy theorist, astrologer and anti-vaxxer among the first of 27 people on trial for trying to violently topple the German government – led by Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss

One of the largest legal proceedings in German history is due to start on Monday with the first of three trials of a group of far-right conspiracists who planned to violently overthrow the country’s parliament.

So sprawling is the network, so extensive their plans, that for a mixture of logistical and security reasons, the 27 people due in the dock have been split into three separate groups.