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There is still a wide gap between East and West Germany, writes Marcel Furstenau on the website of the German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. There is still a wide gap, even amongst young people who have only ever lived in a unified country. The new commissioner for eastern Germany, Elisabeth Kaiser, attempts to explain why. Elisabeth Kaiser is from Gera, in the eastern state of Thuringia. When the federal commissioner for eastern Germany was born in 1987, Germany was still divided. Two years later, the  Berlin Wall fell, and on October 3, 1990, the communist GDR  became history. "I did not consciously experience the period of reunification, but the stories of my parents and grandparents have shaped me," Kaiser wrote in an annual report presented in Berlin just in time for the 35th anniversary of German Unity Day. For the 38-year-old member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) this is a first, as she has only been in office since May 2025, when the new federal government was formed.

Denmark said on Wednesday that it would for the first time acquire "long-range precision weapons", citing the need to deter Russia, as Moscow's ambassador to Copenhagen called the move "pure madness". Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a press conference that the move was "a paradigm shift in Danish defence policy". "For the first time, Denmark is to build up military capacity in the form of long-range precision weapons," she told reporters.Frederiksen added that Russia would constitute a threat to Denmark and Europe "for years to come" and a decision was made to create a "credible deterrence".