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The article reports that France and Germany are pushing rival models for defence co-operation, but neither is very ambitious. Topics disccussed include acronyms made such as Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), European Defence Fund (EDF) and a European Intervention Initiative (E21) as Europeans scramble to reduce their military dependence on the U.S. and the gap between the rhetoric of political leaders and the modesty of these defence drives.

The article reports that Germany's Töpfer law appears to be strangling Great Britain's paper-recycling industry. The companies paid by German industry to dispose of waste paper have such a glut of the stuff that many are paying German paper makers to take it off their hands. This, in turn, has allowed German paper makers to reduce their costs by as much as 15%. British firms have lowered their prices in an effort to hold on to market share, but are losing money as a result. British paper mills are closing.

This article provides information on the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Germany. In 2007, a massive restoration scheme is under way after a fire ravaged the rococo hall and the priceless book collection housed within it. The 2004 fire was the largest library burning in Germany since the Second World War. The fire destroyed over 100,000 books, many of them first editions of Baroque and Enlightenment classics.

Reports that hemp products have made a comeback in Germany. Decision taken by the German government to re-legalize cultivation of some species of hemp; Uses of hemp as damp-resistant paper, clothing and building materials; Popularity of hemp-based products among German environmentalists; Difficulties in processing hemp plants; Ways in which the government plans to check presence of banned substances produced from hemp; Application of ultrasound to process hemp plants; Use of steam pressure by the Institute of Applied Research in Reutlingen, to process hemp plant.

The article discusses tabloid journalism. Emphasis is given to comparisons of tabloid newspapers in Great Britain to those in Germany, France, Japan, Poland, and the U.S. According to the author, tabloid publications in most countries suffer from declining circulation, but a revival in tabloid journalism is taking place online. Details related to the German paper "Bild Zeitung" are presented. Topics discussed include the relationship between tabloids and politics and competition between papers.

Discusses foreign relations between Great Britain and Germany in light of the June 1999 publication of a joint Anglo-German paper called `Europe, the third way, die neue Mitte,' emphasizing New Labour positions on Anglo-Saxon economics. Political, economic and institutional differences between Britain and Germany; Identification of the group that prepared the paper; Possible gains for British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The article looks at the Swiss newspaper, the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" (NZZ). Barring a daring switch from its typeface in 1946, the NZZ has changed little since the 1930s, when it was banned in Germany for suggesting that Hermann Göring was responsible for the Reichstag fire. The emphasis is on international news, business, finance and high culture. A Zurich banker who is one of the paper's 1,500 shareholders claims it is second only to the "New York Times." Falling sales (the paper sells just under 160,000 copies, of which 4,000 are in Germany) and fewer advertisements have led to a 65% drop in the NZZ's share price. A recent decision to break up long stories with sub-headings was taken only after years of debate in the NZZ boardroom, says Thomas Maissen, a professor at Heidelberg and author of one of two new books on the paper's history.

By taking out an injunction in a German court against a British tabloid for publishing rumours about his private life, Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has done nothing to squelch the story, while giving his opponents a chance to froth on one of their favourite subjects--sinister continental threats to ancient British liberties. The 'Mail on Sunday' ran an interview with Schröder's ex-wife about the state of his current marriage. She appeared to confirm rumours that it was on the rocks. It linked the chancellor to a prominent television talk-show presenter. By British standards, it was pretty tame stuff. In Germany, though, standards are different. Reporting of politicians' private lives counts as a scandalous intrusion. Schröder even went to court last year to scotch rumours that his hair colour came out of a bottle. It is the opinion of this author that the injunction against the 'Mail on Sunday' is toothless. The paper did not sell any of the offending copies in Germany, and it does not even have a proper website from which Germans could download the story. Despite the German lawyers' failure even to try to prevent the 'Mail on Sunday' from publishing whatever it likes in Britain, the paper sees the whole business as a terrible warning of the dangers of further European integration.

The article focuses on the probable economic and financial impact that refugees and migrants will have on Germany and the European Union. It states that a recent paper found wages for menial jobs was depressed by just two percent (%) by a 10% rise in the share of migrants working those jobs. It examined the fiscal impact of refugees getting benefits compared to the taxes paid and suggested refugees would increase Germany's gross domestic product to public expenditure of 0.35% in 2016.

The article reports on labor reform in Germany. Workers at DaimlerChrysler plants in Germany took a "day of action" on July 15th to protest against proposed wage cuts and longer working hours. Yet if the carmaker cannot reduce labour costs at its Sindelfingen plant in south-west Germany, it threatens to move production of the C-class Mercedes to Bremen or to South Africa. This is only one of many poker games being played by German firms with unions as they seek to cut labour costs. Last month Siemens got the nod from the biggest blue-collar union, IG Metall, to raise its working week from the standard 35 to an average of 40 hours at two plants near Cologne. The argument was that this would save 2,000 jobs that would otherwise shift to Hungary. Siemens can now impose similar conditions at other plants under threat. Germans work fewer hours per year than workers in any other rich country except the Netherlands and Norway, according to the OECD. A labour-market reform has just passed into law, the Hartz IV, as it is called, merges social-security payments with the unemployment-benefit system. That may sound like paper-shuffling but it is, claims Matthias Platzeck, premier of Brandenburg, "the biggest social revolution in Germany since the second world war." From January, the long-term unemployed, whose lives have been too cushy, will find the tap turned off if another household member is in work, or they have too many assets, or they are unwilling to take jobs offered. In eastern Germany, the average unemployment is 18.5% and there are areas where it is closer to 30%. But everywhere, say the polls, there is a growing readiness to be flexible to save jobs, including working longer hours.

This article discusses studies on how lightning works and the attempts to find x-rays in lightning at the Institute for Experimental Physics of the Free University of Berlin. Currently, researchers must either literally wait around for lightning to strike, or else they can try to trigger it with rockets that work by trailing copper wires from the sky, thus" earthing" the clouds they are fired into. Although radar can track the way winds flow within a storm, it cannot easily discern the total energy of a storm, and whether that energy is increasing or decreasing.Earlier this year, Renyi Zhang of Texas A & M University and his colleagues published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences arguing that lightning is the most important source of ozone in the upper atmosphere. When the field is strong enough to overcome the attraction between electrons and their nuclei, there is a sudden electrical discharge. The problem is that, despite years of effort, researchers have never observed an electric field in a thunderstorm that is powerful enough to do this. On top of this, spark theory suggests that lightning should generate X-rays. Unfortunately, no one can find them.

Last week Commerzbank, Germany's fourth-biggest bank and a perennial target of takeover rumours, announced a write-off intended to make it more alluring as both investment and merger partner. The favourite (for now) is HVB Group, the country's ailing number-two bank. Commerzbank's share price rose. This week the price rose further still on rumours that WCM, a corporate raider with a stake of just under 5%, is talking to a potential buyer. That triggered memories of three years ago, when WCM and fellow speculators claimed control of 17% of Commerzbank shares and said they were looking for a strategic investor. They never found one, and the share price dived, leaving them with paper losses. Commerzbank shares now fetch three times what they did at their nadir. WCM appears more troubled, which explains why it looks like a seller.

Discusses controversy in Germany over whether to postpone commitment to a European single currency. The significance of the issue to general elections to be held in September 1998; The issuing of a paper against delay by Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union; Focus on those who are proposing delay; The sentiment of the German people.

Discusses the characteristics of Germany's newspapers. Their politeness toward Great Britain, despite the flap over British beef; Lack of combativeness among themselves to provide the latest news; Lack of competition as a reason for this; `Bild' and the `Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting,' (FAZ) the country's most powerful national newspapers; Other papers including the `Suddeutsche Zeiting'; The seriousness of the FAZ's reporting.

The article discusses economics in the euro zone in 2012, examining concerns about deficits and recessions in Spain, Greece, and Portugal and arguing that further integration is required to manage the euro zone's banking, growth, and sovereign-debt crises. The article examines a paper by the economist Jay Shambaugh which found that regional imbalances must be addressed through internal devaluation, which the article says is opposed by Germany.

This article reports on a newspaper war in Berlin, Germany, between "Bild Zeitung," Germany's leading tabloid, owned by Axel Springer, and the left-wing "Tageszeitung" (TAZ). The two venerable papers serve very different constituents but have been engaged in fiery competition for years, however, economic pressures are squeezing both publications.

Only nine of Germany's top 30 listed firms disclose how much they pay, individually, their top executives--a subject of growing interest in the country, especially since the recent Mannesmann trial drew attention to the issue of executive remuneration. That is despite all 30 signing up two years ago to a corporate-governance code that strongly recommends such a pay breakdown. German law demands only the publication of an aggregate figure for the entire board. Brigitte Zypries, Germany's justice minister, has threatened to put the requirement for individual disclosure into law if the big 30 firms do not comply by next summer. Hans Eichel, the finance minister, says that he will require it of government-owned firms, such as Deutsche Bahn and KFW, in their 2004 annual reports. Horst Köhler, Germany's president, added his voice to those of union leaders and (some) company executives calling for voluntary compliance. This week, Michael Diekmann, boss of Allianz, bowed a little to the pressure and disclosed his salary, but not those of his fellow board members. Animosity between the European Commission and Germany over standards of governance is brewing on two fronts. One commission consultation paper recommends a "cooling-off period" of five years before an executive of a firm moves up to its supervisory board. This is a full-frontal assault on standard German practice: former chief executives of 16 of the top 30 companies moved straight up and now run their supervisory boards. Meanwhile, an EU-inspired "company-law action plan" is expected to require a full breakdown of executive pay in all member states.

Politicians of all stripes reacted angrily to news that the German subsidiary of Vodafone could deprive the government of up to $21 billion through tax write-offs. The law has been changed again to free profits earned by subsidiaries from tax. That, too, could benefit Vodafone. Constant changes to Germany's corporate-tax regime--long famed for its high tax rates on paper but low payment in practice--have given big firms lots of scope to pare their tax bills. The changes in 1999 exempted from tax both dividends and capital gains from subsidiaries.

This article examines the link between economics and religion. If you want to avoid an argument over religion at your next dinner party, you might suppose it safe to invite an economist or two. They, of all people, could be expected to stick to Mammon. Or maybe not, if a new paper by Robert Barro, one of America's best-known economists, and Rachel McCleary, a colleague at Harvard University, is any guide. Recently, Niall Ferguson, a British historian at New York University, argued that today's economic stagnation in Germany and other European countries owes much to the decline of religious belief and church attendance during the past four decades. More prosperous countries seem to have lower rates of church attendance, although America--the best instance of a country of competing sects rather than a state religion--is a conspicuous exception. If there is a link between religion and economic performance, then economists ought to have something to say about it.

Valéry Giscard d' Estaing, chairman of the European Union's (EU) constitutional convention, has proved that even at the age of 77 he is a master politician. Using a mixture of regal hauteur, bullying, negotiation and selective listening, he now looks likely to force the disputatious rabble on the convention floor to agree to a single text for an EU constitution, which will be presented at a grand summit meeting in Greece on June 20th. However, the convention is a failure in one crucial respect: it has failed to achieve its objective of sparking a wide public debate and making the EU more comprehensible to the public. A Spanish opinion poll found that a good 90% of Spaniards were unaware of the convention's existence and only 1% knew its goal was to write a constitution for the EU--and by extension for Spaniards. In Germany, a founder member of the Union whose serious papers devote acres of space to EU affairs, another recent poll found that 31% of the public had never heard of the European Commission, the EU's most important institution.

Focuses on the use of an antiviral mechanism known as RNA interference (RNAi) to block the activity of individual genes. How this can help researchers develop new drugs that work by suppressing the activities of individual genes; Difficulties associated with RNAi; Mention of a paper published in a spring 2001 issue of 'Nature,' by Thomas Tuschl and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany, which overcomes the difficulties; How RNAi works.

Focuses on a July 1999 manifesto published by 13 young Social Democratic Party members of Germany's Bundestag. Their objection to political ideology at the expense of pragmatic reform; Their support for a joint paper issued by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on modernization of the political left; Background of their action; Reaction of the party's far-left youth organization.

Presents information on the Germany's `Borsen-Zeitung,' financial newspaper. How the paper is run; Writing of the editor, Hans Konradin Herdt; Newspaper refusing to release figures on circulation or commission studies on the backgrounds of subscribers; Layout seen as dull and text-heavy; Details on its Internet presence.

Spotlights the military relationship existing between Germany and France. The seeming inevitability of their closer military cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty organization (NATO); French reservations regarding NATO; France's decision to withdraw its troops from German soil; Talks between the two nations of nuclear defense issues; A Franco-German defense paper revealed by the French newspaper 'Le Monde' in January 1997.

Focuses on the growth of money-market funds (MMFS) in Germany. Financial revolutions sparked in the U.S. and France by the introduction of MMFS which invest in short-term instruments such as bank certificates of deposit and commercial paper; Efforts of the Bundesbank to stop the funds growing fast because it does not want businesses to rely too heavily on short-term financing; Boost for foreign firms that are wooing younger and less conservative German investors with promises of superior performance.

Focuses on German financial markets. The Bundesbank's unexpected cut to its benchmark discount and Lombard rates on May 11, 1994; Confirmation of the news that it would drop its longstanding opposition to money-market funds (MMFS), which invest in short-term corporate and government paper; The German government's omnibus financial-markets law; Details.