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CRIME

Children find freezing newborn in barn stall

Children playing in a Nordhackstedt barn on Wednesday afternoon found a hypothermic baby girl in one of the stalls, daily Flensburger Tageblatt reported on Thursday.

Published: 15 January 2009 16:22 CET
Children find freezing newborn in barn stall
A file photo of a barn. Photo: DPA

“The baby was taken to emergency doctors at the Flensburg hospital,” police spokesperson Björn Goos told the paper. “She is out of life-threatening danger.”

Witness reports led police in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein to the newborn’s mother, who news agency DDP reported was a 17-year-old girl. The girl has also been been hospitalized. Her motive in abandoning the child remains unclear, police said.

The children found the crying infant tucked into fabric sack and dressed in a dark jacket in barn hay, the paper reported.

Two abandoned babies were found dead in the region in 2006 and 2007, almost exactly one year apart, police said. “Naturally we have these cases in the back of our mind,” Goos said. “The police investigation will reveal whether the cases are connected.”

CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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