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Police free 2 people after hostage alarm at German bank but find no perpetrators

BERLIN (AP) — Police in Germany entered a bank in a small German town Friday and rescued two people from a locked room, hours after officers were called to respond to a hostage situation.

Regional police said they were alerted to the situation at the Volksbank branch in Sinzig, a town of about 17,000 people in the Rhine valley near Koblenz, at about 9 a.m. local time. They said they believed there were “several perpetrators and hostages” in the bank and the driver of an armored van was a hostage.

Shortly before 3 p.m., police said special forces entered the bank and freed two people unhurt from a locked room. Police said they found no hostage-takers.

They said that the perpetrator or perpetrators appeared to have left immediately after locking the two people into the vault, but it wasn’t clear how that happened. Police did not indicate whether the perpetrators made away with any cash or valuables.

Beijing bans 4 New Zealand lawmakers from entering China because they visited Taiwan

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Beijing banned four New Zealand lawmakers from traveling to China for a year and demanded they apologize because they visited Taiwan on a parliamentary trip, according to a message from the Chinese embassy conveyed via parliamentary officials and shown to The Associated Press on Thursday. China has hit lawmakers from other countries with sanctions related to contact with Taiwan before, but it's the first time for New Zealand parliamentarians, the government in Wellington said. Beijing has been increasing pressure in recent years on the democratically governed island that it claims as its own territory. Two lawmakers reached by the AP on Thursday rejected the demand for an apology, while the other two could not be immediately reached. New Zealand's government said it would express concern about the travel bans to Beijing. The elected officials visited Taipei in May, as New Zealand parliamentarians have done “for decades,” a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement.
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