Germany

FRANKFURT, April 26 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A 37-year-old man suspected of being a member of Daesh militant group has gone on trial in Frankfurt accused of genocide and murdering a young Yazidi girl.

Taha al-J is accused of enslaving the five year old, chaining her up and leaving her to die of thirst.

He is alleged to have held several roles in the militants’ so-called capital in Raqqa in Syria and in Iraq.

Detained in Greece last year, he was then extradited to Germany.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has warned against reopening tourism destinations too quickly, saying Europe should agree on a common path back to freedom of travel, a newspaper quoted him as saying on Sunday.

“A European race to see who will allow tourist travel first will lead to unacceptable risks,” Maas told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

Maas referred to the high infection rate in the Austrian ski resort of Ischgl, where many German tourists are believed to have been infected.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank has declined a request by prominent U.S. senators to provide information about the German lender’s recent business dealings with President Donald Trump and his family, according to a letter this week seen by Reuters.

Four Democratic senators, led by Elizabeth Warren, earlier this month demanded details from Deutsche’s chief executive, Christian Sewing, about the bank’s interaction this year with Trump and his family’s companies.

23 April 2020; AFP: Two alleged former Syrian intelligence officers went on trial in Germany on Thursday accused of crimes against humanity in the first court case worldwide over state-sponsored torture by Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Prime suspect Anwar Raslan, an alleged former colonel in Syrian state security, stands accused of carrying out crimes against humanity while in charge of the Al-Khatib detention centre in Damascus.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Mosques in Germany that depend on donations from Friday prayers face bankruptcy as the coronavirus lockdown strips them of their only source of income, which peaks during the month of Ramadan that starts this week.

After five weeks of closure, some have launched online appeals urging members to donate via bank transfers.

But Imam Mohamed Taha Sabri, who runs the Dar Assalam mosque in Berlin’s Neukoelln district, said an online campaign had produced only a trickle of donations.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union’s Economics Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told German magazine Der Spiegel that aid worth around 1.5 trillion euros ($1.63 trillion) could be needed to tackle the coronavirus crisis.

“The Eurogroup has now made proposals for aid worth more than 500 billion euros to finance healthcare and short-time work and to help small and medium-sized companies. That leaves at least one trillion euros. This is roughly the amount we need to be dealing with now.”

He said the funds could be raised via the EU’s next multi-annual budget.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank will give banks ample time to return to normal capital and liquidity levels after the coronavirus crisis passes, the ECB’s chief supervisor told Spanish newspaper El Confidencial.

“We will have to decide on the path to return to the normal capital and liquidity levels on a bank-by-bank basis,” Andrea Enria was quoted as saying on Monday.

Although the ECB has asked banks not to pay dividend during the current crisis, Enria said it was not planning to put any constraints on payments of additional Tier 1 and Tier 2 coupons.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German procurement proposal to replace Germany’s aging fleet of Tornado fighter jets foresees the purchase of up to 93 Eurofighters, and up to 45 F-18s from Boeing, a German Defense Ministry source said.

Parliament would probably only deal with the proposal in 2021 or 2022, the source added.

The Eurofighter is built by Airbus, Britain’s BAE Systems and Italy’s Leonardo SpA.

BERLIN, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The rate of new infections with COVID-19 in Germany slightly picked up but remained below peak times as the number of confirmed cases increased by 3,380 within one day to 133,830, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced on Friday.

"The outbreak has, as of today, become controllable and more manageable again," said German Health Minister Jens Spahn at the RKI press conference on Friday.

BERLIN, April 15 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The number of deaths in Germany from the Coronavirus has surpassed those reported by China, according to statistics released on Wednesday by local health authorities.

Data analysis firm Risklayer and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, which compiles real-time figures from nearly 400 local authorities, reported 301 new deaths over the past 24 hours, bringing the toll to 3,495.