News in Brief

Date: 14 February 2020 - 23:12

News ID: ۷۶۱۱۸

BERLIN (Reuters) -- German police detained 12 men on Friday suspected of setting up a far-right organization with the goal of carrying out attacks against politicians, asylum seekers and Muslims, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (GBA) said. Prosecutors said four of the suspects had set up a "terrorist organization” in September 2019 and regularly met and contacted each other by phone and in online chart forums and chat groups. They had no immediate plan to carry out an attack. The other eight men were detained on suspicion of supporting the organization with money and weapons, the GBA said. The suspects wanted their attacks to create havoc and an atmosphere of fear that resembles a civil war, it added. "The goal of the organization was to shake and eventually destroy the democratic system and social cohesion of the federal republic,” the GBA said. "For the purpose of creating an conditions that resemble a civil war, attacks that were not yet concrete against politicians, asylum seekers and members of the Muslim faith were planned.”

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WASHINGTON (AFP) – U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr on Thursday delivered a highly unusual public rebuke of Donald Trump, saying the president’s tweets were making his job at the Justice Department "impossible.” "I have a problem with some of the tweets,” Barr said in an interview with ABC News, adding: "I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.” "I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” said Barr. His interview came as Trump stands accused of interfering with the sentencing recommendation for his former advisor, Roger Stone -- prompting four Justice Department prosecutors to resign from the case this week. The outburst was all the more remarkable as Barr has emerged as a powerful defender of Trump, earning the nickname of the "president’s attorney” from critics.

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MUNICH (Reuters) -- Germany’s president took an indirect swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday in accusing Washington, China and Russia of stoking global mistrust and insecurity with a "great powers” competition” that could threaten a new nuclear arms race. In opening remarks at the annual Munich Security Conference, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier deplored the three big powers’ approach to global affairs and, without naming Trump, took issue with his vow to "make America great again”. "‘Great again’ - even at the expense of neighbors and partners,” quipped Steinmeier, a former Social Democrat foreign minister whose comments on foreign policy carry authority. As foreign minister in 2014, he was central to the so-called "Munich consensus” when German leaders said Berlin was ready to assume more responsibility in global affairs. Steinmeier pressed that point again on Friday, but not before bemoaning the foreign policy approaches of Russia, China and the United States.

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ALGIERS (Reuters) -- Thousands of Algerians marched on Friday, a year since the start of weekly protests calling for a complete overhaul of the ruling elite, an end to corruption and the army’s withdrawal from politics. "We will not stop,” chanted a crowd in the center of the capital Algiers, despite a large police presence. Over the past year the protesters have changed the face of Algeria’s power structure, causing the fall of a veteran president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and the arrest of dozens of leading figures including a once untouchable former intelligence chief. However, while the new president has released people detained in the protests, set up a commission to amend the constitution and offered talks to the opposition, much of the old ruling elite remains in place.

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SAO PAULO (AFP) -- Scientists in Antarctica have recorded a new record temperature of 20.75 degrees Celsius (69.35 Fahrenheit), breaking the barrier of 20 degrees for the first time on the continent, a researcher said Thursday. "We’d never seen a temperature this high in Antarctica,” Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer told AFP. He cautioned that the reading, taken at a monitoring station on an island off the continent’s northern tip on February 9, "has no meaning in terms of a climate-change trend,” because it is a one-off temperature and not part of a long-term data set. But news that the icy continent is now recording temperatures in the relatively balmy 20s is likely to further fuel fears about the warming of the planet. The reading was taken at Seymour Island, part of a chain off the peninsula that curves out from the northern tip of Antarctica. The island is home to Argentina’s Marambio research base. Schaefer, a soil scientist, said the reading was taken as part of a 20-year-old research project on the impact of climate change on the region’s permafrost. The previous high was in the 19s, he said.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A fire swept through an orphanage run by a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit group in Haiti, killing 13 children, including infants, health care workers said Friday. Rose-Marie Louis, a child-care worker, told The Associated Press that she saw 13 children’s bodies being carried out of the Orphanage of the Church of Bible Understanding in the Kenscoff area outside Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. Marie-Sonia Chery, a nurse at the nearby Baptist Mission Hospital, confirmed that 13 boys and girls had died. Louis, who worked at the orphanage, said the fire began around 9 p.m. Thursday and firefighters took about 1.5 hours to arrive. About seven were babies or toddlers and about six were roughly 10 or 11 years old, she said. She said the orphanage had been using candles for light due to problems with its generator and inverter.