Below is a roundup of the top news stories from and about Germany on Saturday, January 17 and Sunday January 18: Berlin's police chief says syndicates in the city are flying in criminals from overseas to carry out violence and extortion. "Young men are specifically recruited abroad for this purpose," Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik Meisel told German news agency DPA. "They enter the country on a short-term tourist visa and then commit crimes here that they have been hired to carry out,"