Germany

14 Feb 2019; DW: Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world have signed two petitions calling on a German zoo to return Bili, a bonobo ape who was being "bullied" by fellow apes, to the United Kingdom.

The petitions, which have gathered more than 400,000 signatures, call on the authorities at the zoo in the western German city of Wuppertal to release Bili to an ape sanctuary in the UK.

12 Feb 2019; DW: Christian Democrat (CDU) leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the party had to prevent any repeat of the 2015 refugee crisis, which saw hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees arrive in Germany.

"We must do everything we can to prevent this from happening again," the CDU leader said. "We have learned our lesson."

Kramp-Karrenbauer took over the conservative CDU leadership from Chancellor Angela Merkel in December.

12 Feb 2019; DW: Germany needs at least 260,000 new migrant workers per year until 2060 in order to meet labor shortages caused by demographic decline, according to a study published on Tuesday.

Of that number, 146,000 people each year would need to immigrate from non-EU member states, the research published by the Bertelsmann Foundation said.

10 Feb 2019; DW: A man spouting racist insults allegedly confronted two Syrian teenagers in northeastern Berlin and punched them in the face, authorities said Saturday.

He hit the girls, aged 15 and 16, "with his fist several times ... before fleeing into a shopping arcade," police alleged in a statement. Both girls were taken to hospital for treatment.

9 Feb 2019; DW: US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell on Sunday criticized Germany's pledge to incrementally raise its defense spending to 1.5 percent until 2024 in an interview with German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

09 Feb 2019; DW: Germany's Bundeswehr has suspended a lieutenant colonel in the elite Special Forces Command (KSK) commando unit on suspicion of right-wing extremism, according to the military's counterintelligence service MAD.

"The person is already known by the MAD," a spokesperson said. "The responsible authorities have already taken disciplinary measures."

09 Feb 2019; DW: It cost over €1 billion ($1.13 billion) to build. It will house around 4,000 secret agents. It covers an area the size of 36 soccer pitches. The new headquarters of the German Intelligence Agency (BND) has completed its move from Pullach, on the outskirts of Munich, to the center of Berlin, close to the former Wall. 

09 Feb 2019; DW: Germans have an increasingly negative view of the relationship between their country and the US, a survey released on Friday indicated, with many seeing China as a more reliable partner.

Just over 42 percent of Germans who took part in the study said they saw China as a more reliable partner than the US, compared with 23.1 percent who favored the US over China.

The fatal blaze occurred shortly before midnight Thursday in Lambrecht, a town of 4,000 residents in a hilly region popular for its forested hiking tracks between Speyer and Kaiserslautern in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

A police spokeswoman said the fire possibly began in the kitchen of the apartment on the building's top floor. Among the dead were a couple registered as occupants. The other three were likely to have been visitors.

More than 100 firefighters fought the blaze through into Friday morning.

BERLIN, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- The German industrial production fell unexpectedly for the fourth month in a row in December 2018, the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) reported on Thursday.

After the price, seasonal and calendar adjustments, the industrial production in December 2018 was down by 0.4 percent from the previous month. Compared to the same month in 2017, it shrank notably by 3.9 percent, according to a statement of Destatis.