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Xinhua world news summary at 1530 GMT, Jan. 16

Xinhua, January 16, 2015 Adjust font size:

German police arrested on Friday two people for planning a terror attack outside Germany following overnight raids in Berlin on numerous properties linked to radical Islamists.

More than 200 police officers and special task forces raided suspected extremist hotspots in and around the country's capital early Friday, according to German media reports. (Germany-Terrorism-Crackdown)

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PARIS -- The armed man who took two hostages at noon time on Friday in a post office at Colombes in the west of Paris has surrendered to the police, local medias reported.

The hostages were released and no one was wounded, according to the news channel BFMTV. (Paris-Hostage)

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BRUSSELS -- The office of the Belgian state prosecutor confirmed on Friday that 13 suspects were detained in a police anti-terror operation conducted in the previous evening.

In the operation, police raided some premises in the capital city of Brussels and the eastern town of Verviers on Thursday in relation to the information that a "large-scale" terrorist attack was "imminent" in the country. (Belguim-Antiterrorism-Crackdown)

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SEOUL -- Senior officials from South Korea and Japan will hold talks in Tokyo on Monday to discuss the "comfort women" issue, Japan's sex slavery atrocity during the World War Two, Seoul's foreign ministry said Friday.

Lee Sang-deok, director general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's Northeast Asian affairs bureau, will tour Japan to meet with Junichi Ihara, chief of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau. (S.Korea-Japan-Ties)

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WASHINGTON -- Washington would not link nuclear talks with Iran to the release of Americans from Iranian prisons, the U.S. State Department reiterated Thursday.

Echoing earlier remarks by White House spokesman Josh Earnest, who dismissed connections between the two issues, State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said that Washington would not draw American prisoners, including a Washington Post journalist, into Iranian nuclear talks. (U.S.-Israel-Iran) Endi