Germany: several people injured after man attacks train passengers with an axe
Multiple people were injured after a teenage Afghan refugee went on a slashing spree armed with an axe and knife on a train in southern Germany on Monday night before he was shot to death by police, officials said.
Wuerzburg police said on their Facebook page that three of the victims suffered serious injuries and one was slightly injured. Another 14 people were being treated for shock.
Bavaria"s top security official, state Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, told Germany"s ARD television that the attacker had been identified as a 17-year-old Afghan refugee.
Herrmann said initial information was that the suspect came to Germany as an unaccompanied minor and had lived in the Wuerzburg area for some time, initially at a refugee facility in the town of Ochsenfurt and more recently with a foster family.
He said authorities were still investigating the motive of the attack and were looking into reports that the suspect had yelled out "an exclamation" during the rampage.
He was responding to reports that some witnesses had heard the suspect shout "Allahu Akbar" ("G*d Is Great") during the attack.
The train was on its way from the Bavarian town of Treuchtlingen to Wuerzburg, which is about 60 miles northwest of Nuremberg.
Germany last year registered more than 1 million refugees entering the country, including more than 150,000 Afghans, but it was not immediately clear whether the suspect was among them or someone who had been in the country for a longer time.
The rampage came amid heightened security in Europe, days after 84 people were killed when a man who pledged allegiance to ISIS rammed a truck into a crowd in Nice, France after the conclusion of a Bastille Day fireworks show.
For five decades, Germany and England have been at odds over the crucial goal in the 1966 soccer World Cup final; Germans say it never crossed the goal line, Brits say it did. Bild, Germanys top-selling newspaper, has an offer for Britain as the country votes on its membership in the European Union: Choose to remain, and Germany will accept that the goal was valid.
Dear Brits, if you stay in the EU, well even acknowledge the Wembley goal, Bild wrote on its front page Thursday, in a nod to Sir Geoff Hursts extra-time goal at Londons Wembley stadium that gave England its first--and only--World Cup trophy.
The soccer pledge is one of 11 promises Bild is making to persuade Britain to stay in the EU. The paper says Germans will no longer make fun of Prince Charless ears, theyll provide unlimited bad guys for James Bond movies, and--important for British sun worshipers on holiday in Spain or Greece--will use their beach towels to reserve poolside lounge chairs for Brits.
The pro-remain sentiment of the tongue-in-cheek story fits squarely with the mood in Germany as Britain goes to the polls Thursday. Der Spiegel this month published a special edition adorned with an image of the Union Jack and the plea Bitte geht nicht!, alongside the English translation, Please dont go!
Berliner Zeitungechoed Thelma Houstons 1977 disco hit on its front page Thursday with a photo of a Union Jack balloon and the captionDont leave us this way! Tagesspiegel, a Berlin daily, led with a picture of a kissing couple, their faces painted with the EU and British flags, and the English headline Love or Leave.
Bilds soccer promise comes as the two countries could soon face off again in international competition. Both England and Germany have reached the knockout stage of the European championship in France and assuming both advance, they could meet in the semi-finals. If that match were decided by penalty kicks, England may want to call in another of Bilds promises: We will drop our goalkeeper for the next penalty decision, for more excitement!
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Selling or moving a work out of Germany has just become a lot more difficult.
The German parliament, the Bundestag, on Thursday (23.06.2016) passed a new law that will closely regulate the international sale of art and artifacts deemed to be of significant cultural value.
"With the new cultural protection law, Germany finally recognizes - with decades of delay - the standards of UNESCO and Europe, which are in effect in nearly every European country," said Germany"s Culture Minister Monika Grtters, who has adamantly backed the protection act from the beginning.
The path to agreement was "sterile and rocky," added Grtters, but "the right balance between various legitimate interests has finally been found."
What is Germany"s national cultural property?
While the bill aims at protecting art of significant cultural value to Germany, a major bone of contention has been the absence of a clear definition as to what that actually means. Thursday in Berlin, a first - if very vague - definition was finally offered. The label applies to works that "bear identity for Germany"s culture" and whose removal would cause a "significant loss."
While that clarification may seem to apply to everything or nothing, it will serve as the basis for a legally binding list of protected artworks and artifacts. Each German state will contribute a panel of experts from cultural institutions like museums, archives, libraries, academia, art dealers and private collectors that will be tasked with compiling the register.
Sound like a bureaucratic nightmare? In a letter from states of Baden-Wrttemberg and Hesse last week, state politicians expressed concern that "an unforeseeable financial and logistical burden" awaited them - which may indeed be the case. However, Grtters said she"s expecting only "several thousand" export permit requests per year, since museums - which have until now been responsible for 90 percent of the permit requests - will be freed from filing deadlines. The federal government promised to review the bureaucratic pile-up in two years.
A vocal critic of the law, Georg Baselitz likely won"t be impacted
Baselitz relieved, private collectors worried
Significantly, works by living artists can only land on the protected list with their approval. The initial fear was that German artists would face an international sales embargo, while "protecting" their works within the country would significantly diminish their value. Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz and Andreas Gursky, for example, regularly claim six- and seven-figure sums for their works abroad, where the art market is much more lucrative than at home.
Last August, in response to a draft of the culture protection bill, Baselitz had announced plans to remove his works from museums, turning control of them over to his family.
So will works by high-grossing deceased artists like Andy Warhol or Jackson Pollock, who were not German, be forced to stay within the German borders, where they can only be sold for a fraction of their international market value, if their current owners are located there? That has yet to be determined by the cultural representatives writing the list of protected works.
Need a permit? Age and value matter
While artists like Baselitz can likely breathe a sigh of relief since they can opt out of the protection list, collectors of works by non-living artists have also been sweating out the result of Thursday"s vote, fearing that they may face a drastic devaluing of their collections should their works land on the list of protected art.
According to the new legislation, paintings that are older than 50 years and worth more than 150,000 euros ($169,000) will require special permission to be sold outside of the European Union. Within the EU, an export permit is mandatory for works older than 75 years and worth more than 300,000 euros.
Attorney and art expert Peter Raue told DW in an interview last fall that export permits have until now only been required for sales outside of the EU.
Within the EU, "we"ve always had free trade." For non-European sales, he said, an "export permit [has been] given if the work has not been stolen, does not belong to Jewish heirs, and is not counterfeit. Whether or not the works sold abroad are German cultural assents has never been an issue" - until now.
Minister Grtters has stood behind the bill all along
Though a collector of, say, a Baroque masterpiece that is older that 75 years and worth well over 300,000 euros, could not sell the work abroad according to the new law, a special clause was written in at the last minute as a compromise. It stipulates that, in the case of a blocked sale, the dealer can involve a government appraiser that will recommend an appropriate price for the work.
As for ancient archeological treasures, a permit will be required for international sales regardless of their value. The Deutscher Kulturrat, Germany"s umbrella organization for cultural institutions, on Thursday praised the last minute decision to drop the value from 100 to zero euros.
As far as art loans go, public and private museums are to get a one-time blanket permit to cover works borrowed for exhibitions.
Laws regulating the export of art have been on Germany"s books since 1955, based on lists of culturally significant works that varied in each of the country"s 16 states. In 2013, the federal government decided the laws needed refreshing - and that Germany needed a unified registry for works of national value.
Curbing the black market for stolen art
With the national debate over the definition of national cultural significance and the role of the state in the art market, a second but not unimportant aim of the new protection law has nearly been forgotten: preventing the circulation of ancient artifacts and cultural treasures from the crisis regions like the Middle East.
In Syria, Iraq and other countries in the Middle East, the so-called Islamic State has been known to not only destroy cultural heritage sites like Palmyra, but also to repossess artifacts from national museums, selling them on the black market and filling their war coffers with the revenues.
Until now, artifacts from crisis regions have required written permission from their respective countries to be sold in Germany. According to the new law, they can now only be sold with a certificate of provenience.
Viernheim shooting: Man attacks Kinopolis cinema in Germany, takes hostages, perpetrator killed
The rifle-wielding man entered the cinema in Viernheim, near Frankfurt in western Germany, shortly before 3 p.m. local time, Hesse Interior Minister Peter Beuth said.
Police received reports of four shots fired.
German public TV initially said 25 people were injured, but it wasn"t clear if they were shot or hurt in other ways.
After the ordeal ended, a Viernheim police spokesman told CNN that no one was injured by gunfire aside from the attacker.
The U.S. Embassy in Germany said officials are looking into the possibility that tear gas might have caused some of the injuries, spokeswoman Jackie McKennan said.
At one point, the assailant took hostages, but it"s unclear why.
"There were hostages in the vicinity of the individual. It was at this point that he was fatally shot by special forces," Beuth said. "I have no knowledge that anyone else was harmed."
A popular destination
The cinema is part of a major shopping center called Rhein Neckar Zentrum Viernheim. The complex, with more than 100 businesses, hosts 20,000 visitors daily, according to its website.
An employee at Coyote Caf Viernheim, just across from the cinema, said about 50 to 100 officers rushed to the scene.
"Our caf went into lockdown. We brought all of our customers out of the back door," said the employee, who asked not to be named.
"This is something very unusual for our town. I"ve never seen anything like that. I never want to see anything like that again."
Late Thursday afternoon, the shopping complex announced the police operation was over.
"At this moment in time we have no information on injured persons," the shopping center said on its Facebook page. "The driveway is still blocked. We will keep you updated on new developments. "
The motive for Thursday"s attack remains unclear, but German police said there"s no indication the incident was terror-related.
Prior to the attack, police had repeatedly warned that Germany could be targeted by ISIS.
Germany absorbed more than 1 million refugees last year, and there have been concerns about the possibility of ISIS cells in the country.
CNN"s Andrew Carey, Claudia Otto, Michael Pearson, and Bex Wright contributed to this report.
