Berliner Tageszeitung - News from Berlin, Brandenburg and the world

German prosecutors accused a Syrian doctor Wednesday of torturing detainees and killing one of them while working in military hospitals in his war-torn homeland, on the first day of a landmark crimes against humanity trial in Frankfurt.

Survivors of twin earthquakes in Afghanistan were waiting Wednesday for aid to arrive after spending their second night exposed to sub-zero temperatures following tremors that killed at least 22 people and wrecked homes.

The World Health Organization has warned that the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, as France, Germany and Brazil posted new records of infections in the past 24 hours.

The newly elected leader of Hong Kong barristers said Thursday that his profession should avoid politics and build closer ties to mainland China, as concerns grow about rule of law in the financial hub.

The United Nations said destruction caused by Typhoon Rai in the Philippines had been "badly underestimated" in initial assessments, tripling the number of people "seriously affected" to nine million.

Petite but commanding, China's former world champion gymnast Sui Lu stood among a sea of yoga mats doling out encouragement to her students as they bent their torsos towards their outstretched legs.

A human rights lawyer has been detained in China on suspicion of "inciting state subversion", according to an official notice obtained by his wife weeks after he spoke out for a hospitalised teacher.

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said Friday he was cutting short an official visit to Suriname and Guyana and returning home after his mother died.

A Roman villa housing the only mural by Caravaggio failed to find a bidder in an auction Tuesday sparked by a dispute between its heirs.

The UN General Assembly on Thursday adopted a non-binding resolution calling on all member states to fight against Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, especially on social media.

Up to 2,000 trucks are backed up at Argentina's main border crossing with Chile due to tougher Covid-19 testing requirements, Argentine haulers said on Tuesday, adding that the supply chain could suffer.

Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria on Friday hunted down Islamic State group fighters after an IS attack on a Kurdish-run prison housing fellow jihadists, a war monitor and Kurdish forces said.

In a trendy Tokyo neighbourhood, customers browse the wares at Majerca, a shop stocked with handmade items from scarves to glassware, all produced by people with disabilities.

As the EU moves to label energy from nuclear power and natural gas as "green" investments, Austria is gearing up to fight this, including with a legal complaint.

Countries are neglecting the massive impact of the "throwaway" economy on planet-warming emissions, according to research published Wednesday that calculated more than half a trillion tonnes of virgin materials have been consumed since the 2015 Paris climate deal.

Peruvian authorities sealed off three beaches Monday after they were hit by an oil spill blamed on freak waves caused by the volcanic eruption in Tonga.

Italy's parliament begins voting for a new president Monday, with Prime Minister Mario Draghi tipped for election in a high-stakes version of musical chairs which threatens the survival of the government.

China on Friday launched a special bullet train service to speed athletes to Winter Olympics venues in a bubble separating them from the rest of the population.

Russia risks becoming embroiled in a "terrible quagmire" if it invades Ukraine, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warned Friday, raising the spectre of a prolonged, bloody and sapping conflict for Moscow.

Indonesia's parliament on Tuesday passed a law approving the relocation of its capital from slowly sinking Jakarta to a site 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) away on jungle-clad Borneo island that will be named "Nusantara".

The powerful head of Libya's National Oil Corporation on Wednesday decried a lack of state investment in the country's vital energy sector.

The Taliban's prime minister called Wednesday on Muslim nations to be the first to officially recognise their government, as aid-dependent Afghanistan faces economic collapse.

Eleven people were killed in coalition air strikes on Yemen's rebel-held capital Sanaa, a witness and medical sources told AFP Tuesday, after the insurgents launched a rare and deadly attack on the United Arab Emirates.

The first humanitarian flights arrived in volcano and tsunami-stricken Tonga Thursday, five days after the dual disaster cut the Pacific kingdom off from the rest of the world.

Oil prices hit their highest levels in more than seven years Tuesday, driven in part by hopes of a global economic recovery that would ramp up demand.

A missing World War II plane has been identified in India's remote Himalayas nearly 80 years after it crashed with no survivors, following a treacherous search that led to the deaths of three guides.

The Saudi-led coalition killed 14 people in air strikes on Yemen's rebel-held capital, a medical source said Tuesday, after an attack by Huthi insurgents on the United Arab Emirates sent regional tensions soaring.

US senators dealt a death blow Wednesday to President Joe Biden's push to defend voting rights against what Democrats frame as an all-out assault by conservative states targeting racial minorities.

President Joe Biden transformed the White House in his first year with policies unrecognizable from the Trump era -- at least regarding the policy on pets, that is.

A defiant Boris Johnson vowed Wednesday to remain British premier and contest the next election as calls for his resignation snowballed and a former Brexit minister demanded he quit 'in the name of God'.

The Taliban's religious police have threatened to shoot women NGO workers in a northwestern province of Afghanistan if they do not wear the all-covering burqa, two staff members told AFP.

The Chinese megacity of Xi'an has partially resumed public transport, according to official announcements, after millions were confined to their homes for weeks because of a coronavirus outbreak.

China and Russia on Thursday blocked a US push to impose United Nations sanctions on five North Koreans in response to recent missile launches by Pyongyang, diplomats told AFP.

A Belgian court on Wednesday is to deliver its verdict in a trial of 23 people suspected of being involved with a gang that smuggled Vietnamese migrants to Britain, 39 of whom died in the back of a truck in October 2019.

Beijing on Tuesday pushed back against claims from Canberra that a detained Australian writer was being arbitrarily held and not receiving adequate medical support despite his declining health.

A growing number of Western nations and cybersecurity groups have issued digital surveillance warnings for next month's Winter Olympics in Beijing, with some advising foreign athletes to leave personal phones and laptops at home.

Anders Behring Breivik, who is seeking conditional release just 10 years after carrying out Norway's deadliest peacetime attack, poses the same danger to society as a decade ago, a psychiatrist said in court Wednesday.

Community leaders in Blackburn, northwest England, on Monday voiced their shock after a local man took four people hostage more than 4,500 miles (7,400 kilometres) away at a Texas synagogue.

Hong Kong independence activist Edward Leung, whose now-banned slogan became a rallying cry during the 2019 pro-democracy movement, was released from jail in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday after serving nearly four years.