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The mayor of Cologne has summoned police for crisis talks after about 80 women reported sexual assaults and muggings by men on New Year's Eve. The scale of the attacks on women at the city's central railway station has shocked Germany. About 1,000 drunk and aggressive young men were involved. City police chief Wolfgang Albers called it "a completely new dimension of crime". The men were of Arab or North African appearance, he said. Women were also targeted in Hamburg.

BERLIN, Nov 29 Hamburg's bid to host the 2024 Olympics collapsed on Sunday after the majority of the city's residents voted against the multi-billion euro project in a referendum, killing off the candidacy and leaving officials in shock.

HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - A Moroccan accused of helping the September 11 suicide hijackers received training in encryption techniques at an al Qaeda camp in Iran in 1997, an Iranian defector said on Friday. But his testimony to a German court was promptly undercut by comments from Germany's intelligence services, who questioned his credibility and said his evidence was worth very little. Hamid Reza Zakeri, the cover name of a man who says he worked in Iranian intelligence and defected in 2001, was testifying toward the end of Germany's second major trial of suspected members of al Qaeda's Hamburg cell....

When Science is Betrayed – and What Lessons We Should Learn By: Msgr. Charles PopeThere is a great reverence for science in our culture. On the one hand, rightly so. Science has made enormous strides that have changed life as we know it. Profound discoveries have eradicated diseases, improved health, increased the world’s food supply, led to a computer revolution, drawn us higher into outer space and deeper into inner space, revealed hidden mysteries of nature, and produced technologies unimaginable to even our recent ancestors.On the other hand, the reverence of science has tipped perhaps too far in the direction of a...

The office of a German newspaper that printed Charlie Hebdo cartoons was the target of an arson attack early this morning. Vandals threw rocks at the headquarters of the Hamburg Morgenpost (MOPO), which reprinted cartoons from the satirical magazine at the centre of the terrorist attacks in Paris last week. Two men who were 'behaving suspiciously' in the area have been arrested by police and German state security have begun an investigation.

Parts of downtown Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, resembled a war zone after hundreds of supporters of the jihadist group Islamic State [IS] engaged in bloody street clashes with ethnic Kurds. The violence—which police say was as ferocious as anything seen in Germany in recent memory—is fueling a sense of foreboding about the spillover effects of the fighting in Syria and Iraq. Some analysts believe that rival Muslim groups in Germany are deliberately exploiting the ethnic and religious tensions in the Middle East to stir up trouble on the streets of Europe.

Germany: Holy War Erupts in Hamburg by Soeren Kern October 15, 2014 at 5:00 am "We are living in Hamburgistan." — Daniel Abdin, imam of Hamburg's Al-Nour Mosque.One politician has been repeatedly threatened with beheading as the price to pay for leading a fundraising campaign to provide food and water for Kurds in northern Iraq."As a society we must ask ourselves: how can it be that people who live in Germany and... born and raised here, are supporters of a brutal, inhuman and fundamentalist group such as the IS and attack peaceful protestors with knives, sticks and machetes. Here...

Ethnic Kurds clashed overnight with alleged members of a hardline Islamist movement in Hamburg last night, as ISIS clashes spread far from Syria. Police in the northern German city say 14 people were injured overnight in the violence involving hundreds of demonstrators before riot police were able to quell the disturbance. Police spokesman Karina Sadowsky said this morning that fighting began after hundreds of Kurds held a protest against the Islamic State group.

"9/11 plotter released in Syria prisoner exchange" SNIPPET: "The al-Qaeda recruiter reputed to have assembled the so-called Hamburg Cell, which planned and largely carried out the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, has been set free in a prisoner exchange between rebel and regime forces in Syria. Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham has secured the release of 9/11 plotter and alleged al-Qaeda core member Mohammed Haydar Zammar, adding to concerns about the composition of the Islamic Front. A naturalized German citizen of Syrian origin, Mohammed Haydar Zammar left Germany shortly after the attacks and traveled to Morocco, where he was reportedly...

TILDEN TWP., Pa. - A New Jersey State Police trooper asked an officer not to arrest him on shoplifting charges by mentioning he worked on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's security detail, police said. An attorney for William Carvounis confirmed the trooper has worked on Christie's security detail but denied he asked for special treatment. He also denied that Carvounis shoplifted items from the outdoor retailer Cabela's in Tilden Twp., Berks Co., near Hamburg, on Jan. 8.

home of the high-speed autobahn, is perhaps one of the few countries that has had as intense a love affair with the automobile as the U.S. But in an effort to go green, the country's second-largest city is studying ways to eliminate cars by 2034.

SNIPPET: "I rarely attend trials, but this one is special. On July 24, 2013, the main hearing in the case of German businessman Rudolf M. and Iranian-Germans Gholamali K., Kianzad K., and Hamid Kh. opened at Hamburg’s Higher Regional Court. The defendants are charged with exporting 92 German-produced specialized valves for use in Iran’s Arak plutonium reactor and arranging the shipment of 856 nuclear-usable valves from India to Iran in 2010 and 2011. The reasons why the UN Security Council has ordered Iran to halt the construction of the Arak reactor are compelling. If this nuclear plant comes online in...

A Bucks County man stole more than $1,000 in ammunition and gun accessories Saturday from Cabela's in Tilden Township, state police said. Craig Holtzman, 41, of Warminster was stopped by state police on Interstate 78 in Greenwich Township at 3:18 p.m., two hours after he took the items from the store, troopers said. Holtzman had fled Cabela's after being confronted by store security, according to troopers. Cabela's employees gave troopers a description of the vehicle, which they pulled over near the Krumsville exit on the interstate, police said. Inside the vehicle, the stolen items - $1,048 in ammunition and scope...

Osama bin Laden´s son-in-law has been captured and is in the hands of the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI, two administration officials said on Thursday. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, was captured within the last week in Jordan, according to a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Peter King of New York. The lawmaker had been told of the capture by law enforcement officials. Congress was notified when Ghaith was taken into U.S. custody, the officials said.

The Polonium Diversion At least a dozen people have been contaminated by the rare radioactive isotope Polonium 210. The list includes Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB who died from a dose of Polonium 210 in London on November 23rd; Andrei Lugovoi, a former colleague of Litvinenko in the KGB, who met with Litvinenko at the Pine bar of the Millennium Hotel in London the day he became ill, November 1st; Dmitry Lugovoi, Lugovoi’s business associate, who also attended that November 1st meetings; 7 employees of the Millennium Hotel; Mario Scaramella, an Italian security consultant, who dined with...

House of prayer operators participate in march calling for Israel’s destruction. The Imam Ali Mosque in Hamburg, widely considered by experts in Germany and abroad the long arm of Iran’s regime in the Federal Republic, appears to have violated the spirit – and perhaps the terms – of its contractual partnership with the city of Hamburg. The mosque and its parent organization are said to have mobilized anti-Israel activists to call for the destruction of the Jewish state. ... Hamburg has the largest German-Iranian and Iranian community in the Federal Republic. The northern city is believed to have the second...

Clashes between neo-Nazi demonstrators and far-left counter-protesters overnight in the northern German port city of Hamburg left 38 police officers injured, police said Sunday. Security forces were pelted with rocks, bottles and fireworks and responded by turning water canon and pepper spray on the rioting groups who turned out at a march by the far right. At least two parked cars and a police cruiser were set ablaze. Police, who deployed 4,400 officers to keep the peace between the two sides, took 63 demonstrators into custody and formally arrested another 17. Around 3,500 people, mainly from the hard left, turned...

Quote: homeland.house.gov/hearing/subcommittee-hearing-jihadist-use-social-media-how-prevent-terrorism-and-preserve-innovation Subcommittee Hearing: Jihadist Use of Social Media - How to Prevent Terrorism and Preserve Innovation Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence | 311 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 | Dec 6, 2011 2:00pm On Tuesday, December 6, 2011 the Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence will hold a hearing entitled "Jihadist Use of Social Media - How to Prevent Terrorism and Preserve Innovation." The Committee will meet at 2:00 p.m. in 311 Cannon House Office Building. Witnesses Mr. Evan F. Kohlmann Flashpoint Global Partners Mr. William McCants Analyst Analyst for the Center for Naval...

Bathing blonde sculpture in central Hamburg5/8/2011 15:58 A giant head with made-up lips and eyes floats above the Inner Alster Lake in central Hamburg. Together with the naked knees sticking out of the water, it belongs to “The Blonde,” or “The Mermaid,” a gigantic sculpture that weights about two metric tons, and is four meters high and 30 meters long (approx. 13ft by 98ft).

BRITISH investigators believe that Alexander Litvinenko's killers used more than $US10 million of polonium-210 to poison him. Preliminary findings from the post mortem examination on the former KGB spy suggest that he was given more than ten times the lethal dose. Police do not know why the assassins used so much of the polonium-210, and are investigating whether the poison was part of a consignment to be sold on the black market. They believe that whoever orchestrated the plot knew of its effects, but are unsure whether the massive amount was used to send a message - it made it...