Germany: Recognize Legitimacy of Ukraine Vote

germany-foreign minister

 

 

Germany’s foreign minister is stressing the importance of Ukraine’s presidential election results being recognized by all and says he doesn’t believe Russia has chosen to isolate itself internationally.

 

The West has threatened wider sanctions against Russia if Moscow derails Sunday’s vote, and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Thursday that all concerned should have an interest in the election being as fair as possible. He acknowledged that “might not be possible in some towns.”

 

Steinmeier says that after “a certain slowdown” in violence over the past nine days, he hopes the conflict won’t escalate again because of the election’s legitimacy being disputed “wantonly.”

 

 

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Corporate jet crash in Germany kills 4

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A corporate jet crash in western Germany on Sunday killed all four people aboard the aircraft, police said.

Witnesses told police that the plane burst into flames after it crashed near the town of Trier.

Authorities are investigating what caused the crash.

Local fire officials told German public broadcaster ZDF that the plane hit a power pole. There was dense fog in the area at the time of the crash, ZDF reported.

The jet had come from England and was scheduled to arrive at a small airfield in Fohren, Germany, ZDF said.

The two passengers and two crew members on the Cessna Citation jet are believed to be German nationals.

 

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Syrian Convicted of Spying in Germany

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A Berlin court says it has convicted a 37-year-old German-Syrian dual national of spying on exiled dissidents in Germany for Syria’s intelligence services and given him a nine-month suspended sentence.

The Berlin state court said Wednesday that Samer C., whose last name was not given in accordance with German privacy laws, provided Syrian intelligence with photographs of dissidents and other information. The court says he also stole two mobile telephones from a dissident at a 2011 rally and passed along the data on them.

He was alleged to have worked for Syrian intelligence from March 2011 to February 2012, through contacts in the military attache’s office at the Syrian Embassy in Berlin.

The verdict can be appealed.

 

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Germany’s Merkel in Minor Traffic Accident

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German officials say Chancellor Angela Merkel was involved in a traffic accident on a highway near Berlin but there were no injuries and only slight damage.

Police spokesman Ingo Heese said the mirrors of a Berlin man’s car and the chancellor’s vehicle hit each other on Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t clear what led to the accident.

Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said Monday that “the chancellor’s driver didn’t cause this slight accident.”

Merkel, who is to be sworn in for a third term on Tuesday, appeared unruffled by the experience when she appeared at an event in Berlin hours after the accident.

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Germany to Take in 5,000 More Syrian Refugees

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Germany says it will take in a further 5,000 refugees from Syria, doubling its current offer of shelter for people fleeing the Arab nation’s civil war.

The decision was announced Friday at a meeting of officials from Germany’s 16 states, which share responsibility for housing refugees.

Lower Saxony’s interior minister, Boris Pistorius, said Germany couldn’t look away from the humanitarian disaster in Syria.

Millions of Syrians have fled their homes, with hundreds of thousands seeking refuge in neighboring countries.

Pistorius says a Europe-wide solution is needed to ensure that each country takes in as many refugees as it reasonably can.

Germany has offered shelter to the largest number of Syrians so far.

 

3 Miners Missing After Accident in Germany

miners-missing-Germany

Three miners have been reported missing after a controlled detonation at a potassium mine in eastern Germany led to a gas leak there.

The German news agency dpa quoted an unidentified official at the mining company, K + S GmbH, as saying that carbon dioxide was released by the detonation Tuesday in the mine in Unterbreizbach in the state of Thuringia.

The official said two mines and the shaft installations above ground had to be evacuated, and that the gas leak led to a large release of dust inside the mine where the detonation occurred and above ground.

Dpa said seven miners were initially trapped but four of them quickly rescued without injuries. Rescue personnel were searching for the three missing miners about 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) below ground.

 

Zookeeper Killed by Tiger in Germany

tigerGerman authorities say a tiger attacked and killed his keeper at a zoo in the country’s northwest.

The local fire department said the 57-year-old keeper was killed in the Allwetterzoo Muenster on Thursday afternoon after apparently not noticing he had left one animal behind after he moved a group of tigers into a new enclosure, the dpa news agency reported.

The tiger then attacked the keeper and bit him fatally on the neck. The zoo had no immediate comment and further details weren’t immediately available.

 

Germany Joins US in Blaming Assad for Attack

G20Germany has joined the United States and ten other members of the Group of 20 biggest economies in blaming the Syrian government for a chemical attack against civilians last month.

Germany had been the only European member of the G-20 not to co-sign a joint statement issued Friday at the end of the G20 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The statement calls for a strong international response against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad but stops short of explicitly calling for military action against the Syrian government.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Saturday in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius that Germany wanted to wait for European Union foreign ministers to agree on a common position before backing the statement.

 

13 Injured as Crane Tips Into House in Germany

Germany. crane tips into a buildingPolice say a crane carrying a panoramic cabin tipped over at a festival in southwestern Germany and hit a house, injuring 13 people.

The accident happened Saturday afternoon in the town of Neuenstadt am Kocher. The cabin suspended from the crane had been set up for a festival organized by a local school.

Police in nearby Heilbronn said in a statement that the cabin collapsed into the roof of a residential building. All eight adults and five children in the cabin were injured; two of the adults suffered serious injuries and were taken to hospitals by helicopter.

No one in the house was hurt.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the crane to tip over.