The police, however, added that the arson did not result in any casualties.

“After unknown people set fire to the entrance of a gym in Marzahn this morning, the police department of state security is now investigating at the Berlin Criminal Police Office.

An attentive passer-by called the fire brigade and the police to the Allee der Kosmonauten at around 3.20 a.m. (02:20 GMT) when he noticed smoke in the gym of the German-Russian school,’’ the police said.

The police initially tried to put out the blaze, but the fire department had to join in to prevent the fire from spreading, according to the statement.

“The fire, which according to the ongoing investigation was started by the unknown with the use of an incendiary device, damaged the building’s coating.

“Nobody was injured. The investigation continues,’’ the police said.

The network of Lomonosov bilingual private schools has been operating in Berlin since 2006.

They offered primary and secondary education in Russian and German.

Russian premises abroad have been subjected to occasional assaults after the government launched an operation in Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The special military operation, according to Russia, was in response to calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in countering the aggression of Ukrainian troops.

The Russian Defence Ministry claimed the operation was targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only.

Hecker, 54, a foreign policy advisor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, had just taken up his post on Aug. 24, the embassy in the Chinese capital said in a posting on its social media Wechat account.

The cause of death has yet to be confirmed.

“It is with deep sadness and dismay that we learned of the sudden death of the German ambassador to China,” Germany’s Federal Foreign Office said on its website.

An embassy spokesman declined further comment to Reuters.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin offered condolences when asked about Hecker’s death during a regular media briefing.

“We are shocked to learn about the sudden death of Ambassador Hecker, who had been working actively to promote China-Germany relations since assuming his post,” he said.

China would provide assistance to Hecker’s family and the embassy, he added.

Hecker had appeared “happy and all right” when he hosted an event about German artist Joseph Beuys at his Beijing home last Friday, a guest at the event said.

German and European Union flags flew at half-mast on Monday, September 6, at the embassy in Beijing.

Hecker had arrived in China on Aug. 1, the embassy said, and like all arrivals would have been required to spend time in quarantine.

The World Happiness Report, which was launched in 2012, is an annual survey conducted by the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The survey ranks global happiness in countries around the world.

The happiness index included surveys on how countries have dealt with the coronavirus pandemic that has shaken the world for more than a year.

On this year’s report, Iceland came in second, followed by Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

See the World’s 20 Happiest Countries.

Finland

Iceland

Denmark

Switzerland

Netherlands

Sweden

Germany

Norway

New Zealand

Austria

Israel

Australia

Ireland

United States

Canada

Czech Republic

Belgium

United Kingdom

China

France

“Today, we have a theoretically possible capacity of almost 900,000 tests (per week) in Germany already, as long as the materials for these tests are available,” Health Minister Jens Spahn told reporters in Berlin.

Roughly 470,000 tests were carried out last week, suggesting there is spare capacity that could help prevent outbreaks among medical staff at hospitals and care homes.

“I think it’s very, very important to see that with what we’ve achieved together in recent weeks, including through the strong lockdown, the biggest risk for an outbreak is in healthcare,” Spahn said.

Tests should be carried out “as comprehensively and preventively as possible” among staff, including in care homes, he said.

Federal law and testing guidelines from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for disease control were being adjusted to reflect these aims, Spahn added.

The RKI estimates that the infection or reproduction rate of the coronavirus in Germany is presently around 0.9, meaning 10 infected people infect nine others.

Such low figures have encouraged federal and regional officials to loosen some elements of the lockdown, including opening smaller shops from last week and sending some pupils back to school from next week.

But new rules including a nationwide requirement to wear a facemask in shops and on public transport have entered into force, in an attempt to prevent a second wave.

The decision was made during a video conference on Thursday April 23, between representatives of all 36 clubs in the top two divisions decided to restart games on May 9, after the remaining league matches were initially suspended due to the Coronavirus outbreak.

Matches will take place behind closed doors with a maximum of 322 people allowed in and around stadiums for top-flight Bundesliga matches and 270 for second-tier games.

DFL CEO Christian Seifert said: ‘The Bundesliga is ready to resume, no matter whether on May 9 or a later date. But it’s not up to us to find a date. The political decision-makers decide. We have not defined an exact date today. The fact that we are even able to think about resuming games underlines the performance of the German authorities.  It would be presumptuous for the DFL to name an exact date for the restart. It’s not in our hands if we return or when. We have several options. If the signal comes in the next week that it can be May 9, then it will be May 9.”

The Government of Nigeria is restricting entry into the country for travelers from China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, Japan, France, Germany, the United States of America, Norway, the United Kingdom, Netherlands & Switzerland.

The Federal Government is temporarily suspending all visas issued to nationals from these countries. Nigerians arriving from these countries will be subjected to supervised isolation for 14 days.

The Government is also advising all Nigerians to avoid travel to these countries. These restrictions will come into effect from Friday 20 March 2020, for 4 weeks, subject to review.

Malaysia, like other Southeast Asian nations, has received shipments of unwanted rubbish since China banned the import of plastic waste in 2018. Now it is fighting back.

Since the third quarter last year, Malaysia has sent back 150 containers of plastic waste. Environment Minister Yeo Bee Yin said another 110 containers are expected to be sent back by the middle of this year.

Of the 150 containers, 43 were returned to France, 42 to the United Kingdom, 17 to the United States, 11 to Canada, 10 to Spain and the rest to Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Portugal, China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Lithuania, her ministry said.

She said the costs of sending back the waste were fully borne by the shipping liners and companies responsible for importing and exporting the waste, while the Malaysian government didn’t pay a single cent.

Yeo said talks were ongoing with U.S. authorities to take back another 60 containers this year. Canada also has 15 more containers, Japan 14, the U.K. 9 and Belgium 8 of the 110 additional containers still being held at Malaysian ports, she said.

“If people want to see us as the rubbish dump of the world, you dream on,” Yeo told reporters during an inspection at a port in northern Penang state.

Yeo said the government will launch an action plan on illegal plastic importation next month that will help the different agencies coordinate enforcement and speed up the process of returning the waste.

“Our position is very firm. We just want to send back [the waste], and we just want to give a message that Malaysia is not the dumping site of the world,” she added.

“The so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ of Iran, who has not been so Supreme lately, had some nasty things to say about the United States and Europe,” Trump tweeted of Khamenei’s comments earlier Friday in Tehran.

According to Trump, Khamenei’s blistering speech, in which he attacked the “vicious” United States and described Britain, France and Germany as “America’s lackey’s,” was a mistake.

“Their economy is crashing, and their people are suffering. He should be very careful with his words!” Trump tweeted.

“This threat exists,” said the German defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, at a press conference in London.

She was asked about an article in the Washington Post that claimed Trump had secretly warned France, Germany and the UK that the US would impose a “25% tariffs on European cars” if they did not activate the mechanism for the settlement of disputes (MRD) of the Iranian international nuclear agreement reached in Vienna in 2015.

Kramp-Karrenbauer told reporters on Thursday: “This expression or threat, as you will, does exist.” She is in the UK to meet her counterpart, Ben Wallace, to discuss Anglo-European defence cooperation post-Brexit.

Her remarks came as ministers from the five countries with nationals killed in the Ukrainian plane downed by the Iranian military met in London to coordinate their response to the Iran’s handling of the crash inquiry, as well as treatment of victim’s families.

Following the meeting the ministers called for an independent and transparent investigation governed by international civil aviation conventions. With emotions running high over the US assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani, as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ belated admission of responsibility for downing the jet, Iran is likely to bridle at being told how to carry out its own inquiry.

A Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 plane was shot down outside Tehran killing all 176 crew and passengers. Iran’s handling of the crash led to four days of street protests mainly in Tehran.

Iran initially denied responsibility for the crash, but three days later admitted that it had downed the plane believing it was an incoming US missile. An Iranian national security commission is investigating the episode.

There is concern that some in Iran are refusing to cooperate with the international investigation and refusing to hand over the black box flight recorder. There are claims within the country that the US may have jammed Iranian radar, making it impossible for the anti-aircraft battery operator to have checked the status of the plane.

Trump made his tariffs threat to Europe relatively recently and European diplomats insist they had already made the decision in principle to trigger the dispute mechanism because of previous Iranian steps away from the deal, but had not announced the move in deference to a request from China.

As a result they claim the Trump threat did not push Europe into abandoning its policy of trying to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive.

But the threat is a further insight into Trump’s modus operandi, with Europe – in effect using threats of economic sanctions and the power of the dollar to try to force Europe to follow US foreign policy.

The news will only confirm the view of Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, that Europe is failing to stand up to a high school bully. Zarif met the EU external affairs chief, Josep Borrell, to discuss the European decision to trigger the dispute mechanism, describing it as “a strategic mistake”.

Meanwhile, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, revealed that Iran is now enriching more uranium than it did before it agreed to a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015.

Speaking on live TV on Thursday, Rouhani said: “We are enriching more uranium than before the deal was reached … Pressure has increased on Iran but we continue to progress.”

Iran has gradually scaled back its commitments under the nuclear deal in retaliation to Washington’s withdrawal from the pact in 2018 and its reimposition of sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.

Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement in part because it did not address Iran’s support for armed groups across the region and its ballistic missile programme.

Iran continued to abide by the agreement until last summer, when it began openly breaching some of its limits, saying it would not be bound by the deal if it saw none of its promised economic benefits.

After the airstrike on 3 January that killed Gen Qassem Suleimani, the architect of Iran’s regional military operations, Iran said it would abandon all restrictions in the nuclear deal.