Worldcrunch
BERLIN — “You’re the ones who created this mess I’m in…” Mohammad points his finger at me, and doesn’t even want to tell me his real first name: “Call me Mohammad, we are all the same to you racist Italians anyway.” His age, though, he does tell me: He’s 47, but looks a bit younger […]
In 1972, Germany was divided in two — between the Soviet-occupied German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the east and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the west. Being on the “good side” of the fence, we were able to drive there and see the ominous Iron Curtain with its barbed wire and threatening miradors. […]
BERLIN – It’s an animal story with a happy ending, five years in the making. A Berlin woman who’d lost her tabby cat “Pauley” in 2008 had an almost unthinkable surprise waiting for her at the capital’s Tierheim animal shelter. “When I got the letter a few days ago from the shelter saying my cat […]
In Germany, efforts are on to increase the number of male teachers. Here’s the tale of a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who wound up on very different terrain.
BERLIN – There are impressive museum collections – indeed entire museums – of works by Pablo Picasso: in Malaga and New York, Paris and Barcelona, Münster, Madrid, Basel and Cologne. The best one? Berlin – part of the legendary collection of art dealer Heinz Berggruen (1914-2007) housed since 1996 in a palazzo-style building across from […]
At the German capital’s Jewish Museum, the starting point for are anonymous questions from ordinary visitors — and a sense of humor.
BERLIN – In my local video store, they’ve just created a new section for TV series. The very great majority of the series are American: The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, Girls, Modern Family, Lost, 24, various CSIs, and so on and so forth. The dominant culture in Europe […]
DER SPIEGEL (Germany), THE GUARDIAN (U.K) Worldcrunch BERLIN – This is not your daddy’s “video game.” Privacy activists in Berlin are protesting against surveillance video cameras by destroying and debilitating them, as part of a social game where you earn points for every CCTV taken down. The Guardian spoke to the anonymous creator of the […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – The German Police has launched a special investigation codenamed “Tunnel” in the search for the perpetrators of a spectacular break-in at a Berlin bank. According to Die Welt, the thieves dug 100-foot long tunnel from a neighboring underground garage into the safety deposit box vault of the Volksbank in […]
Located near the Berlin zoo, the address is the first in Germany for the famed US luxury hotel brand.
BERLIN – She’ll never know why, on August 7 1970, her father was in the border area near the Berlin Wall. The only thing she knows is that East German border guards fired 177 shots at him. Monika N. was 13 when she lost her father. Her sister was a year older. The worst thing […]
SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch MUNICH – New details have emerged Friday of a vast police raid this week against Deutsche Bank in an ongoing tax evasion case. Some 500 state prosecutors, tax and crime investigators were involved in the Wednesday raids on Deutsche Bank offices in Frankfurt and branches in Berlin and Düsseldorf. […]
EL GOUNA – In Samih Sawiris’ world, “small scale” is not a concept that gets much play. Over the years, the scion of Egypt’s richest family has shown a flair for the oversized, even to the point of eccentricity. Twenty years ago Sawiris bought up around 40 million square meters of sand and rock and […]
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – By 2016 Deutsche Post wants to have its own national online food retail operation up and running. A spokeswoman said the company has been planning the move for some time and that the challenge was setting up a system of outlets around Germany that would stock a wide selection […]
EUROPE 1, LE FIGARO (France) Worldcrunch PARIS – Unemployment has reached a new record high in the eurozone, with European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi saying Friday that the single currency would not recover until the second half of 2013. “We have not yet emerged from the crisis,” Draghi told France’s Europe 1 radio […]
SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) Worldcrunch BERLIN – Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis murdered 500,000 Sinti and Roma Gypsies. Now, nearly 70 years after World War II, a memorial is being inaugurated today in Berlin to honor those murdered. German President Joachim Gauck, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Berlin’s Mayor Klaus Wowereit are expected to attend the […]
-Analysis- MUNICH – Last month, for a moment, crisis-plagued European nations seemed to have reason to rejoice: Germany’s Constitutional Court had cleared the way for the European Stability Mechanism, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced its plan for potentially unlimited purchases of government bonds in crisis countries, and the EU Commission laid out a new […]
BERLIN – The issue is as old as Christianity: who belongs to a church? Some Catholic scholars in Germany defend the position that it is possible to be Catholic without paying church tax – but the country’s bishops don’t agree, and after months of negotiations they have voted a law that makes further discussion moot […]
BERLIN – Six years ago, shortly after Daniel Alter became one of the first Jews to be made a rabbi in Germany after the Holocaust, he said that he thought for a long time about how to explain to his daughter why there were relatively few Jews in Germany. He told Die Welt: “To tell […]
DER SPIEGEL, DIE WELT (Germany), LE MONDE (France) Worldcrunch BERLIN – German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a cold, power-hungry would-be dictator overseeing the insidious collapse of democracy, according to a new book causing a political stir in Germany. Gertrud Höhler’s book, Die Patin (which means “the Godmother” in English and retains all of its mafia […]
BERLIN – In the posh, lush Pankow neighborhood of East Berlin, nothing indicates that people are squatting the Kunterbunt house. Everything is orderly in the small brownish building, a legacy of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). There are flower bouquets on the tables and water paintings of landscapes hanging on the walls. Yet Doris, […]