Armoured & Luxury
Chauffeur Driven Cars

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany has an unending responsibility to remember the Nazis’ war crimes, as she made her first trip while in office to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.

The responsibility was “part of our national identity”, she said. Her visit comes amid a rise in German anti-Semitism and ahead of the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.

The Nazi regime murdered an estimated 1.1 million people, the vast majority of them Jewish, at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Mrs Merkel was accompanied on her visit by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and a death camp survivor, 87-year-old Bogdan Stanislaw Bartnikowski.

She walked through the notorious “Arbeit macht frei” (work sets you free) gates at Auschwitz and then held a minute’s silence at the so-called Black Wall, where thousands of prisoners were executed.

Read More

Months after a man was shot dead in a Berlin park, Germany is throwing out two Russian diplomats because it suspects the murder was ordered by Russia or Russia’s Chechen republic.

The expulsions come shortly after Germany’s chief prosecutor decided to take over the case.

Germany has accused Russia of failing to assist in the investigation. Russia has rejected accusations of its involvement as “absolutely groundless” and says it will retaliate.

Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old former Chechen rebel commander, was shot in the head from behind in the Kleiner Tiergarten park in August. A man was quickly arrested but has given little information to police.

German media have compared the attack on Khangoshvili to the attempted murder of Russian former intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK last year.

Read More

A 22-year-old man from Bath has been charged with 12 terror offences.

Andrew Dymock, of Weymouth Street, was arrested on Wednesday following an investigation by counter-terror police into suspected right-wing terrorism online. He will appear before Westminster Magistrates Court later, a spokesperson for Counter Terrorism Policing North East said.

The charges include five offences of encouraging terrorism. He has also been charged with four offences of disseminating terrorist publications, two counts of terrorist fundraising, and one count of possessing material that is of use to a terrorist.

Avon and Somerset Police supported the probe by Counter Terrorism Policing North East.

The investigation is understood to be linked to the extreme right-wing groups Sonnenkrieg Division and System Resistance Network.

Police in Dublin have been given a further 24 hours to question an Irish citizen who became an Islamic State bride.

Lisa Smith and her daughter were deported from Turkey and arrived in Ireland on Sunday. She was arrested on suspicion of terrorist offences on arrival by gardaí (Irish police).

A former member of the Irish Defence Forces, Ms Smith remains in custody at a south Dublin Garda station.

Plans have been made for the care of her two-year-old daughter, who was born in Syria but is an Irish citizen. She is currently being detained under the provisions of Section 30 of the Offences against the State Act, as amended.

She said was not involved in fighting and did not train girls to become fighters. She also claimed she had been visited more than once by the FBI for questioning, and agents had taken her fingerprints and DNA.

Ms Smith had been living with her daughter in a Syrian refugee camp.

The taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar had previously said she would “certainly” be investigated if she returned to Ireland.

Police in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila are searching for dozens of gunmen who attacked the city hall in the town of Villa Unión on Saturday.

More than 500 shots were fired in the gun battle which ensued between the suspected members of a local cartel and the security forces. Twenty-one people, including four police officers, were killed.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Sunday that reducing crime remained his biggest challenge.

More than 60 armed men drove into the small town of Villa Unión around midday local time (18:00 GMT) on Saturday and started firing at the town hall which also is the headquarters of Villa Unión’s small police force. Residents recorded the arrival of the gunmen in the town. In other videos posted by news site Coahuila en línea, shots could be heard ringing out and the army could be seen driving at speed into the town.

The shoot-out lasted for more than an hour and 10 gunmen and four police officers were killed, according to Coahuila Governor Miguel Ángel Riquelme.

Read More