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German kindergartens told to pay before they sing BERLIN — A body representing German musicians found itself accused of Scrooge-like meanness on Tuesday after pressing kindergartens to pay up for singing songs that are protected by copyright. The GEMA, the German musical copyright monitoring body, has written to 36,000 of the nursery schools telling them they have to fork out to photocopy song texts and to keep a proper record of which ones are sung. Kindergartens and MPs were incensed, with the mass-circulation Bild daily calling the move "bureaucratic madness." A spokeswoman for the Paritaetischer Wohlfahrtsverband Hamburg, an association representing...

Doctors at a Berlin hospital have made a medical breakthrough after capturing live MRI images of the miracle of birth. The pictures, taken after a German mother agreed to give birth inside a magnetic-resonance imaging machine, could provide valuable new insights into the birthing process and allow future lives to be saved. Gynaecologist Ernst Beinder at Berlin's Charité Hospital said the birth proceeded normally and the machine filmed all the movements and processes that went on inside the womb.

In an interview with SPIEGEL, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, 68, criticizes US calls for Germany to reduce exports, outlines his plans for an insolvency framework for indebted European nations and the emphasizes the significance of the German-French axis for Europe...

. . . Germany has pushed for a replacement of the programme, which expires in 2013, and increased economic coordination in the EU — a goal advanced last month when plans it put forward with France to make limited changes to the bloc's treaty and tighten budgetary rules gained approval. France and Germany should maintain their leadership role in Europe, Schaeuble said, especially in order to harmonise its economic policy and bolster stability given current economic uncertainties. These are being worsened by reckless policy in part from the the United States, Schaeuble said, sharpening his criticism of the Federal Reserve's...

Pope Benedict has called on immigrants to respect the laws and national identity of their host countries. He said that every country had the right to regulate the flow of migration and immigrants had a duty to integrate.The Pope's comments are likely to add to the Europe-wide debate about integration of foreigners.The Vatican traditionally identifies with migrants and refugees and recently criticised France for deporting 1,000 Roma (gypsies) to Romania and Bulgaria.During the summer, about 200 camps were dismantled.The policy aroused a sharp response from the EU and prompted the Pope to tell French pilgrims they should "accept legitimate human...

Editor: He was supposed to have gotten his hat, but this story, persecuting Bishop Mixa and attacking the Prior and Abbot of Ettal (who were later exoherated) for alleged child abuse, might explain why he didn't. Here's why he probably didn't, and might not get, the Cardinal's hat. Church enemies organizsed in the name of the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising, for the promotion of more AIDS, more Mortal Sin, more Divorce and more Child abuse. [kreuz.net, Mühldorf] In the coming Saturday, the alleged 'Catholic Jouth Center Mühldorf" have organized a workshop against the Sixth Commandment. The horrible occasion was held under...

The Chancelor of Germany, Angela Merkel, has taken an incredibly bold move by openly and honestly admitting that the country of Germany is suffering because millions of Muslim immigrants refuse to learn the nation's language or properly assimilate into German culture. Her simple solution: Learn German and adopt Christian values. In an article released this weekend by Audrey Kauffman, writer for AFP: ""Multikulti", the concept that "we are now living side by side and are happy about it," does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin...

NOTE The following blog entry is a quote: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2010 update on : German terror suspect arrested in Kenya UPDATE ON German detained in Kenya on terror suspicion-report Kenyan police said on Tuesday they had arrested a suspected German militant and deported him shortly after issuing an alert about his presence in the country. Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said Sascha Alessandro Boettcher, who arrived in Kenya on September 22, was arrested in Mtwapa outside the coastal city of Mombasa."Kindly note that the suspect has been arrested from a private residence in Mtwapa and deported back to Germany," Kiraithe...

With comprehensive health reform signed into law by President Obama a little less than six months ago, a high-ranking delegation of health care experts from Minnesota and Washington, D.C. will meet in Berlin, Sept. 14-20, for a seminar on health care policy that compares the U.S. and German systems. This is the second consecutive year that the University of Minnesota's Center for German and European Studies has organized this trip. This year's focus is on health insurance. The new legislation calls for the creation of state-based health insurance exchanges and Minnesota is positioning itself to maintain its national leadership role...

The Federal Government announced charges today against a ring of foreign corporations and executives who conspired to bring antibiotic-laden Chinese honey illegally into the US, in an attempt to avoid paying millions in fees. A federal grand jury in Chicago indicted top executives of German food conglomerate Alfred L Wolff GmbH, and several of its affiliated companies for allegedly importing more than $US40 million in Chinese honey, but saying it originated elsewhere in order to avoid paying duties of nearly $US80 million that were levied on Chinese honey.

BERLIN: A German held by American forces in Afghanistan has revealed details of planned terror attacks in Germany and other European countries, Der Spiegel weekly reported Saturday. The US believes that the detainee, a 36-year-old from Hamburg, is a "major source" of information on future attacks, the news magazine reported. Germany's foreign ministry has acknowledged that a German was being held by American forces in Afghanistan, but refused to give any more details. According to the magazine, the detainee, identified only as Ahmad S, was part of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. German authorities have been asking to be given...

A leading member of Germany’s central bank has caused outrage by claiming that Jews are identified by a particular gene. Thilo Sarrazin, who is on the board of the the Bundesbank in Frankfurt, said in a newspaper interview: ‘All Jews share a certain gene. Basques (Spanish separatists) have particular genes, that distinguishes them from others.’ German’s Jewish community today reacted with horror and accused him of anti-Semitism and attempted racial profiling. ‘Whoever tries to define Jews by their genetic make up succumbs to racism,’ said Stephan Kramer, secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Sarrazin gave an interview...

Police in Hamburg shut down the notorious al-Quds mosque, renamed the Taiba mosque in 2008, led by German-Syrian national and voluntary imam Mamoun Darkazanli. Darkazanli (a.k.a. Abu Ilyas al-Suri) has been a suspected al-Qaeda operative, primarily as a financier and logistician, in the European Union for close to two decades. Long active in al-Qaeda circles, Darkazanli first surfaced on the radar of Western intelligence agencies when he purportedly helped procure a cargo ship named “Jennifer” for Osama bin Laden as early as 1993 (Hamburger Abendblatt, October 16, 2004). Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt (BKA- Federal Criminal Police Office) admitted that it had been...

German parliament slashes solar subsidiesUS solar shares tumble as Germany finally approves cuts to solar incentives Jessica Shankleman, BusinessGreen, 07 May 2010 The German parliament yesterday approved long-expected cuts to solar energy incentives prompting US shares in solar companies to tumble amid fears that demand from one of the world's largest markets for soalr panels will now fall. The Bundestag voted in favour of a 16 per cent cut to feed-in tariff incentives for solar rooftop installations, as well as an 11 per cent reduction in incentives for solar installations on conversion sites and the scrapping of support for solar...

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BERLIN - Some Germans are calling for a public roasting of the oracle octopus who correctly picked the winner of all six of their national soccer team's World Cup matches -- including a bitter defeat to Spain on Wednesday. Paul, a two-year-old octopus in a German aquarium, turned into a global celebrity for his uncanny ability to predict the winner of all Germany's matches -- even a group stage defeat to Serbia and an ousting by Spain in the semi-finals.... Not an ordinarily superstitious people, Germans became believers in Paul's possible psychic powers. The country was shocked and distraught when...

For those who have not followed the story on Courage: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2509699/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2504206/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2497257/posts http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2492661/posts The preliminary hearing for Kimberly Nizato, a Bellflower woman charged with animal cruelty in the case of a severely emaciated German shepherd, began Monday and then was continued to July 26.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Germany's government said Friday it will cut off aid to Zimbabwe unless illegal and violent occupiers are removed from a farm owned by a German national. In a Friday protest note to the Zimbabwe foreign ministry, Germany noted the occupation of the eastern Zimbabwe property owned by German investor Heinrich von Pezold violates a decade-old investment agreement between the two countries.

A German man wearing a burka and carrying a pistol was arrested in northwest Pakistan Monday after travelling from an area known as a hub for Al-Qaeda-linked militants, police said. "A German man, wearing a burka, was intercepted at a checkpoint in Bannu while coming from Miranshah with a six-year-old girl," local police station chief Farid Khan told AFP. Two tribesmen travelling with him in the vehicle were also detained, he said. Miranshah is the main town of lawless North Waziristan tribal district, a known hotbed of Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants. Most women in the area wear a burka,...

An organization of German Jews that wants to send an aid ship to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza says that its intentions are no betrayal of the Jewish people. In an interview with the German Press Agency dpa in Berlin, Kate Katzenstein-Leiterer, a leader of the German Jewish Voice organization said instead that they wanted to help preserve the state of Israel by showing that its current policies were wrong.