That means not satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
Year number two. Germany is on a roll.
Germany expects economy to shrink after cutting 2024 forecast – Government predicts rebound in 2025 after 0.2% decline this year.
Germany is facing its first two-year recession since the early 2000s, as the government downgraded its growth forecast for 2024, predicting a contraction of 0.2 per cent.
“The situation is not satisfactory,” Robert Habeck, economy minister, said on Wednesday.
is the apostrophe.”
They’re not used in German to show possession. Until now. Sort of.
Germans decry influence of English as ‘idiot’s apostrophe’ gets official approval – Linguistic body has relaxed rules on use of apostrophe to show possession, not traditionally correct in German.
Once upon a time
Somebody say to me
(This is a dog talkin’ now)
What is your Conceptual Continuity?
Well, I told him right then (Fido said)
It should be easy to see
The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe…
Why should anyone be surprised when the Federal Statistical Office gets its numbers wrong?
And actually, if you stop to think about it, federal statistical offices always get their numbers wrong so maybe they finally got something right.
Germany’s botched data revamp leaves economists ‘flying blind’ – IT hitches force Federal Statistical Office to suspend consumer and services releases.
Germany’s statistical office has suspended some of its most important indicators after botching a data update, leaving citizens and economists in the dark at a time when the country is trying to boost flagging growth.
In a nation once famed for its punctuality and reliability, even its notoriously diligent beancounters have become part of a growing perception that “nothing works any more” as Germans moan about delayed trains, derelict roads and bridges, and widespread staff shortages.
“There used to be certain aspects in life that you could just rely on, and the fact that official statistics are published on time was one of them — not any more.”
Nobody wants Volkswagen’s electric cars.
The fewest German drivers do, anyway.
Driving on empty: The German government has few options to help an ailing car industry – Economy Minister Robert Habeck will meet with carmakers — but he has few weapons to stave off a car industry crisis.
Threats of historic job cuts and plant closures at German car giant Volkswagen and plunging earnings elsewhere in the industry are prompting Federal Economy Minister Robert Habeck to hold crisis talks on Monday.
But strained federal finances, fights with China over car tariffs and looming EU environmental regulations leave Habeck with few tools to help an industry which is the country’s economic backbone.
“Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende.”
“Better to have an end with fright than fright without end.”
Migrants say Germany’s ‘welcome culture’ has soured as far-right parties rise – On Sunday, voters in the eastern German state of Brandenburg will vote for a new regional parliament. The anti-migrant far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, could win the most votes. On 1 September the AfD won a major German election for the first time, coming first in the eastern state of Thuringia. In Brandenburg polls show the AfD leading with 28%.
To undermine support for the AfD, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s left wing-led government on Monday introduced checks for migrants on all of Germany’s borders. He also wants to increase deportations of people whose application for asylum is unsuccessful. Opposition conservatives meanwhile want the borders closed to asylum seekers altogether.
That means to do the Biden. To a politician.
To toss him out, in other words.
Germany’s Scholz risks Biden’s fate – If the chancellor’s SPD party loses a crucial regional election to the far right on Sunday, it could lead to his ouster from the top spot.
As German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attends the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sunday, his political future will likely be decided at home in a regional election 6,000 kilometers away.
One more defeat at the hands of the far right this weekend will almost certainly spell the end, and Scholz could very well share the fate of U.S. President Joe Biden — thrust aside by his panicking party to make way for a candidate who can avoid a massacre in a national election next year.
Silly me. I thought that was the only kind of law there was.
Germany has stopped approving war weapons exports to Israel, source says – Germany has put a hold on new exports of weapons of war to Israel while it deals with legal challenges, according to a Reuters analysis of data and a source close to the Economy Ministry.
A source close to the ministry cited a senior government official as saying it had stopped work on approving export licences for arms to Israel due to legal and political pressure from legal cases arguing that such exports from Germany breached humanitarian law.
That means spot checks or spot controls.
German police reintroduce spot controls at all borders – Germany is reintroducing border checks at all its borders for at least six months. The aim is to help restrict migration.
Checks are being temporarily reintroduced at Germany’s borders with France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Denmark. They are due to run until March 15, 2025. Such controls have already become part of daily life at the borders with Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland.
Temporarily? We’ll see about that.
That means to put on ice. As in put on hold.
Intel postpones construction of chip factory in Magdeburg – Haseloff against abandonment of the project.
The chip company Intel has put its plans to build a factory in Magdeburg on hold. According to company boss Gelsinger, construction will probably be delayed by two years due to cost-cutting measures. A total of 3,000 direct jobs were to be created on Magdeburg’s Eulenberg. Saxony-Anhalt’s state government assures that the semiconductor plant will nevertheless go ahead.
Or not.
That means waste management.
And some waste managers really mean business over here.
A work of art by the “Sprayer of Zurich” at the Museum Church of St. Cecilia in Cologne has already been restored once. Now the spray-painted skeleton by Harald Naegeli has to be renewed once again – because workers overdid it with the cleaning.
Observing Hermann 