BERLIN (Dispatches) — German police conducted raids across the country Tuesday targeting individuals and premises they believed to be linked to a banned takfiri extremist group. Authorities claim the group’s goal is to establish a takfiri state in Germany that rejects democracy and uses religious texts as the sole basis for all laws. The dpa news agency reported that officers searched dozens of locations in six German states, arresting three people. Prosecutors say a total of 41 people are accused of membership in the banned group known as the “Caliphate State.”

 

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NEW DELHI (AP) — Police in New Delhi have arrested a Muslim journalist for allegedly hurting religious sentiment in what many slammed as the latest example of shrinking media freedom under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Muhammad Zubair, a co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News, was arrested Monday evening over a tweet that police said deliberately insulted “the god of a particular religion.” Senior police officer K.P.S. Malhotra said the case was brought following a complaint from a Twitter user and Zubair was remanded in custody for one day. Journalists across India have been targeted increasingly for their work in recent years. Some have been arrested on criminal charges over posts on social media, where they routinely face threats and trolling. The Twitter accounts of some journalists and news websites have also been suspended on government orders.

 

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BERLIN (Reuters) -- Germany will return a goddess statue that was stolen from Cameroon 120 years ago, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation said, part of a growing trend to give back artifacts taken during the colonial era. The female figure, known as Ngonnso’, will be returned to the kingdom of Nso’ in northwestern Cameroon. It was taken by colonial officer Kurt von Pavel and donated to Berlin’s Ethnological Museum in 1903. “Bring Back Ngonnso,” a civil society initiative, has been campaigning for the statue’s return for years, as the Nso people say they have suffered numerous calamities since the statue was stolen. “The Ngonnso’ has a central role for the Nso’, as she is considered a mother deity,” the foundation said in a statement. It added the artifact was not removed by war looting from Kumbo, the capital of the Nso kingdom. However, Pavel was accompanied by armed soldiers in Cameroon, which would have intimidated the Nso’, the foundation said.

 

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BEIJING (Reuters) -- Power consumption in several Chinese regions rose to record highs over the weekend, as persisting heatwaves spurred the use of air conditioners to help people cool off. Monitoring data from the national power grid showed that electricity loads soared from Friday to Sunday in the provinces of Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi as well as Xinjiang, and reached all-time highs, state television said on Tuesday. Power grids in the northern and central regions were already hitting record levels of power consumption since last week, when temperatures started reaching above 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). This month, seven provincial power grids in Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and Xinjiang, as well as power grids in northwestern China, have reached record levels of consumption. The power load in the eastern province of Shandong, which is also the second most populous with more than 100 million people, reached 97.58 million kilowatts, its fourth new high this summer. 

 

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Koreans were working intensively to protect crops, factory equipment and other assets from potential damage from days of heavy rainfall, state media said Tuesday, as outside observers worry any flooding could aggravate the country’s economic hardships amid its COVID-19 outbreak. Summer floods in North Korea, one of the poorest countries in Asia, often cause serious damage to its agricultural and other sectors because of its troubled drainage and deforestation. Typhoons and torrential rains in 2020 were among the difficulties leader Kim Jong Un said had created “multiple crises” at home, along with strict pandemic-related restrictions and UN sanctions over his nuclear weapons program. North Korea’s weather authorities predicted this year’s rainy season would start in late June and issued alerts for torrential downpours in most of its regions from Monday through Wednesday. 

 

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AMSTERDAM (AFP) -- A tornado ripped through a southwestern Dutch city, killing a woman and injuring nine others in the first fatal twister to hit the country for three decades. The whirlwind left a trail of destruction through the seaside city of Zierikzee, ripping the roofs off homes and toppling trees onto cars, an AFP journalist at the scene said. Images on social media showed debris rotating in the air in the fierce winds and a huge funnel descending from stormy clouds as the tornado hit the city in the scenic province of Zeeland. The victim was a 73-year-old woman from Wassenaar, a town near The Hague, police said. Local media said she was a tourist who was hit on the head by a roof tile in the city’s harbor area. One injured person was taken to hospital and eight others were treated on site by paramedics it said, adding that there had been a “huge deployment” of emergency services.