Doctors from abroad who want to work in Germany should have their qualifications recognized more quickly, the German Medical Association has said, publishes dpa news agency.
“There is undoubtedly a likelihood of long waiting times or delays due to the complex recognition procedure,” said Ellen Lundershausen, the association’s vice president.
According to the association, the number of doctors in Germany without German citizenship reached a new high of just under 64,000 at the end of last year. Nevertheless there is still a great demand for doctors in many regions of the country.
Lundershausen told dpa that the cooperation between the various authorities required for a foreign doctor to start working in Germany “could certainly be improved.”
However, the main problem is the necessity of individually checking the equivalence of medical studies undertaken in the doctor’s country of origin.
“Recognition procedures take a long time if the documents are not complete or the authorities’ staff resources do not allow for a quick check … Staffing levels at the authorities are lagging behind,” she said.
There is a joint assessment body based in Bonn specifically for this purpose, but its director, Carola Dörfler, also admitted that the equivalence assessment can take “six months, eight months or, in a few cases, up to a year.”
The recent increase in the number of applicants from Turkey and Ukraine in particular has led to a backlog, she said.
Germany’s domestic intelligence service (BfV) has warned companies to exercise caution when dealing with authoritarian foreign governments such as China, publishes the German news agency dpa.
German companies should be cautious with mandatory tax software required by the Chinese government, for instance, since those programmes risk giving Chinese authorities access to internal company information, the BfV’s vice president, Sinan Selen, said on Wednesday in Berlin.
“We are increasingly seeing attempts to influence politics, business and science by illegitimate means, but also classic espionage,” Selen said at the start of a joint event to address risks from China organized by the agency and the Alliance for Security in Business (ASW) on Wednesday.
He said it was high time for business leaders to come to a more realistic assessment. Where German managers had been too naive and optimistic, “these companies have practically disintegrated,” he said.
To arm themselves against this risk and the infiltration of malware via Chinese apps, German companies are now generally giving employees in China “empty” devices that operate outside the global company network.
ASW Managing Director Günther Schotten said that business travellers should be aware that confidential documents may not be secure in a hotel safe in China.
The conference comes only days after German security services arrested four suspects on allegations of spying for China, including an aide to a prominent politician in the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Maximilian Krah.
Three suspected spies had been arrested in western Germany shortly beforehand on allegations that they obtained information about military technology in Germany in order to pass it on to the Chinese secret service.
German political parties and political actors are currently exposed to a particularly high number of cyberattacks, according to the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).
“Particularly in light of the upcoming European elections, it can be assumed that there is currently an increased number of attacks,” a spokeswoman for the authority told dpa.
The BSI and the domestic intelligence service have current information on phishing attacks by a state actor against German parties, among others.
So-called hack-and-leak attacks, in which non-public data or documents are captured and then published – sometimes manipulated or falsified – are to be expected in particular. The new modus operandi increases the cyberthreat to the targets in focus.
The BSI does not comment on details of current cases, the spokeswoman said.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that such attacks are not only a problem for those directly affected, but also aim to shake confidence in democracy.
“We know that this is above all part of the Russian regime’s toolbox of hybrid threats,” Faeser told dpa on Thursday. It must be expected that captured data will be falsified and used for “massive disinformation campaigns.”
Six weeks ago, the domestic intelligence service and the BSI warned the parties of the danger of possible hack-and-leak operations in the 2024 election year. In the letter, which is available to dpa, the security authorities warned against taking such cyberattacks lightly.
The partial legalization of cannabis for personal use, which was championed by the centre-left government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, took effect in Germany on Monday, publishes DPA news agency.
The Bundesrat, or upper house of parliament, let the long-debated bill pass last month after it was approved by the lower house, the Bundestag.
Shortly after midnight, several hundred people gathered in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and lit up joints to celebrate the new law.
“We can finally show ourselves, we don’t have to hide any more,” Henry Plottke, a member of the German Cannabis Association (DHV), told dpa before the event began.
The landmark legislation allows for adult possession of up to 25 grams of cannabis for personal use in public.
Three live cannabis plants can now be grown legally at home and up to 50 grams of cannabis can be stored for personal use there.
Smoking weed in public spaces is to be banned in schools, sports facilities and within 100 metres of these facilities.
The three ruling coalition parties – the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and liberal Free Democrats (FDP) – launched the plans despite great resistance from the opposition, the federal states and also from organizations.
The government argues that the prohibition policy has failed and that cannabis consumption has increased despite the ban.
The aim of the law is to combat the black market and reduce health risks. The active ingredient content of cannabis purchased from dealers is unknown and toxic additives and impurities could be present.
Justice Minister Marco Buschmann expects that the partial legalization of cannabis will mean less work for the judiciary and police in the medium term.
“The changeover will mean a one-off increase in workload, but in the long term the police and judiciary will be relieved,” Buschmann told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland media group on Monday. “They will then be able to focus on even more relevant crime.”
There are currently more than 100,000 criminal proceedings against cannabis users, Buschmann told the newspaper group. This is a sign that the current cannabis policy has failed, he said.
“It has placed a heavy burden on the police, public prosecutors and the judiciary, but in reality has hardly stopped consumption. Instead, users have been driven into the hands of dealers with inferior products and hard drugs.”
The GdP police union, on the other hand, foresees problems with the implementation of the new law.
“Conflicts are pre-programmed,” GdP deputy federal chairman Alexander Poitz told dpa in Berlin. “We are certain that the various ambiguities and lack of legal definitions will lead to noticeable dissatisfaction, uncertainty and errors among all those involved.”
Poitz referred, for example, to different distance regulations to facilities such as schools. In addition, the police lacked items such as precision scales or analytical instruments for checks, he said.
The conservative opposition CDU/CSU bloc have vowed to revoke the legislation if they gain power.
“In our view, drugs policy, particularly with respect to protecting young people, is an issue of such central significance that we will revoke the legalization of cannabis in the event we take power,” lawmaker Thorsten Frei told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper in remarks published on Saturday.
Germany’s Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck has warned in strong terms of the uncontrollable momentum of global warming, publishes DPA news agency.
“We may be on the verge of global warming, in this case the warming of the oceans, actually getting out of control,” the Green politician said on Tuesday in Berlin at an international energy transition conference.
The temperature in the world’s oceans has been at record levels for around a year now. “There will be storms, winds and hurricane floods that we will find difficult to control,” warned Habeck. “That worries me deeply.”
Habeck said that in addition to dealing with current crises, politicians must take strategic countermeasures against global warming.
“It is the task of our political generation to find solutions and implement them. If we don’t do this, alongside everything else we need to do, we will have failed as a political generation,” he said.
He called for the switch to renewable energies to be driven forward worldwide, including through trade.
In a report published on the margins of the conference, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) warned that the target agreed at last year’s climate conference in Dubai to triple the capacity of renewable energies by 2030 could only be achieved with considerable additional efforts.
On average, almost 1,100 gigawatts (GW) of extra capacity would have to be installed annually by then – more than twice as much as the 473 GW added in the record year of 2023.
According to the report, renewable energies grew primarily in China, the EU and the US, which together accounted for 83% of global growth. Developing countries in particular lagged behind.
At the 2015 World Climate Conference in Paris countries agreed to limit global warming – and thus its potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity – to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.
Many experts believe this is now barely possible, but any lower limit on the rise in temperature is still worthwhile.
“We all know that we are not on a 1.5-degree path, so we need to do more and do it faster,” warned Habeck.
Germany’s climate and energy policy was praised at the conference by Fatih Birol, director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), who congratulated the German government on its course.
According to preliminary figures published by the German Environment Agency on Friday, German greenhouse gas emissions fell by more than 10% last year, although this is also due to the poor economic situation.
Birol cited the conversion of the energy sector away from fossil fuels and the slump in industrial production as reasons. However, this was an inherited problem, the result of decades of dependence on a key supplier that had long delivered cheaply, Birol said in an obvious reference to Germany’s long-time main gas supplier Russia.
Initially, I thought that the goal of the Russian influence operations was to create a kind of sympathy for the Russian regime and Russian ideology. But their main target now is simply to create more chaos inside the neighboring countries in order to kind of make us look the other way into our internal problems and stop supporting Ukraine in the defense from the Russian aggression. So, the main goal is basically to create a certain chaos in Europe generally and make us weaker, in a sense…
This is how the Lithuanian researcher, Ph.D. Nerijus Maliukevičius, in the interview for Meta.mk, explained the goal of the ever-growing Russian influence, especially considering the fact – as he puts it – that this year is a “super-election” year, for both the European Union and the United States of America, not to mention the ongoing elections in Russia.
He explains thoroughly how disinformation from the Russian side is being circulated, including the fake narratives and the overall process of their influence in the Western Balkans and the world.
“I think we are experiencing a sophisticated information cyber-attack operation even more widely in Europe. And it is done because authoritarian regimes, especially Russia, consider this a very important year in Europe, in the European countries – an election year. And they are trying to achieve their goals to create more chaos, distrust to break the electoral processes”, says Maliukevičius.
He is an expert on media and crisis and strategic communication, and an author of two books and many publications, with special focus on the challenges arising from dealing with fake narratives, propaganda, and disinformation. His story in this field dates back to the year 2000.
“I especially got interested in the new Russian laws that were being implemented and they were called “the information security doctrine” of Putin, through which Russia would take control of its information environment to mobilize Putin’s power to fight off any foreign influence that he consider as such. And I was interested from my perspective – of how media and information policies can be abused in a time which was not so clearly authoritarian”, he explains.
Once he got deeply involved, he wrote his dissertation titled “Russian Information Geopolitics”, where he tried to explain how Russia transformed traditional politics of “divide and conquer” into media geopolitics.
“Then it is not that much important how you control the geographical territories, but how you control and fight for mental territories and people’s minds”, specifies Maliukevičius.
He was on a two-day visit of North Macedonia that included workshops, lectures, and meetings with local stakeholders, organized by the Office of the Embassy of Lithuania and the EU Delegation in North Macedonia.
Below is the entire interview with Maliukevičius in which he explains the flows of foreign influence and how disinformation narratives are disseminated.
Members of the Last Generation climate activism group daubed orange paint onto the façade of the German chancellery on Saturday morning, publishes DPA News Agency.
A photo published by the group shows the phrase “Help! Your children” written in large letters, and numerous handprints. Several activists can be seen sitting or lying down on the ground in front of the wall.Berlin police are investigating the incident, and detained 16 people between the ages of 13 and 16 to check their identities.
The police opened an investigation on suspicion of damage to property.
The activists are calling on the German government to live up to its responsibility towards the younger generation in terms of climate change, a Last Generation press release said.
Last Generation has repeatedly made headlines with dramatic protests calling attention to climate change, with some activists arrested for disrupting traffic and other measures.
The group has been demonstrating for more climate action with street blockades and other measures since the beginning of 2022.
They have also daubed the Brandenburg Gate with orange paint in the past.
Several investigations and trials are under way of members of the group, many of whom have already been convicted.
A two-day public transport strike began in numerous German states on Thursday morning, publishes DPA.
Passengers can expect considerable disruption, as buses, trams and underground trains ceased operating in many places. The trade union Verdi had called for the two-day strike, lasting until Friday.
Cities and states which are affected include Berlin, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate. Demonstrations were planned in several cities on Thursday. In Thuringia, a two-day strike continued on Thursday.
Most suburban trains or regional buses that are not operated by municipal employers won’t be affected.
Regional and long-distance rail services are also not on strike and will run according to the usual timetable.
Public transport workers have staged several strikes in recent weeks amid tense collective bargaining talks with nearly all public transit agencies in the country.
Staff in Bavaria are also part of the negotiations but remain under contract and cannot take part in the strikes.
The upcoming strikes are planned for different days next week in different locations, although verdi said that Friday will be the main strike day.
The climate activist group Fridays for Future announced it plans to stage demonstrations on Friday as well, demanding more aggressive action on climate change and greater investment in public transit.
Germany has been hit recently by repeated strikes in the transport sector.
The number of asylum seekers in Europe significantly exceeded the one million mark last year, according to the European Union’s asylum agency, based on the Mediterranean island of Malta, publishes DPA news agency.
The agency registered a total of 1.14 million applications in the 27 EU member states, Norway and Switzerland, according to the annual report published in Valletta on Wednesday.
Compared to the previous year, this represents an increase of 18%.
According to the asylum agency, most applicants once again came from the civil war country of Syria, followed by Afghanistan.
Towards the end of the year, after the start of the new Gaza war in October, an increasing number of Palestinians also wanted to come to Europe.
Germany remained by far the most important destination country, where 334,000 new applications were registered between January and December 2023 according to these figures.
In the previous year, the total number of applications had remained just under the million mark at 996,000. In contrast, significantly more were registered in 2015 (1.4 million) and 2016 (1.3 million).
This does not include more than 4.4 million people from Ukraine who sought refuge in the European Union as a result of the Russian invasion and were granted temporary protection.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has categorically ruled out the deployment of ground troops from NATO states to Ukraine in its war against Russia, publishes DPA news agency.
The chancellor opposed French President Emmanuel Macron’s earlier comments that nothing was off the table to make sure Kiev wins the war, including the deployment of French troops.
At a Ukraine aid conference on Monday involving 20 heads of state and prime ministers, it was discussed that what was agreed at the beginning of the war “also applies in future, namely that there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil sent there by European states or NATO states,” Scholz said on Tuesday.
Scholz added that there should also be no involvement of soldiers from afar in the war. It had also been agreed “that the soldiers who are active in our countries should not take an active part in the war,” he added.
Several thousand people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin early on Saturday afternoon to commemorate the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine exactly two years ago, publishes German news agency dpa.
Many participants in the rally carried Ukrainian flags. Others displayed their views on the war on banners and posters with slogans like “Russia always lies” or “The devil is in the Kremlin.” People also shouted slogans like “Russia is a terrorist state.”
According to initial estimates by the Berlin police, more than 3,000 people took part in the solidarity rally.
On Saturday morning, activists from the environmental organisation Greenpeace projected several slogans onto the façade of the Russian embassy in Berlin near the site of the rally, also in protest against the war. “Stop the killing” and “Hands off Ukraine” could be read in German and English on the building in the morning. Activists also held up posters.
Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser plans to set up an “early detection unit” for foreign manipulation and influence campaigns as part of government efforts to fight right-wing extremism, publishes DPA news agency.
The plan is part of a package of 13 measures which Faeser presented in Berlin on Tuesday together with the head of the domestic intelligence services, Thomas Haldenwang, and the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Münch.
Most of the projects in the package had already been announced previously.
According to the paper, right-wing extremists aim to undermine confidence in the stability and ability of the state to act. They share this goal with some foreign actors who also have an interest in weakening democracy.
“Autocratic states use fake accounts to create artificial reach on the internet, invent stories with AI-based images and feign credibility with copied newspaper websites,” the paper says.
Such coordinated campaigns are used to manipulate the free formation of opinion and political debate and weaken democracy, it adds. The new early detection unit is intended to recognize such campaigns in advance.
“We want to use all the instruments of the rule of law to protect our democracy,” Faeser said in a statement. “We want to smash right-wing extremist networks, deprive them of their income and take away their weapons.”
In the paper, the Interior Ministry also argues in favour of amending Germany’s constitution to better protect the Federal Constitutional Court from the influence of enemies of democracy. This is also being discussed among legal experts, with a particular focus on the appointment of judges.
The north-western German city of Bremen saw thousands of people fill its streets on Sunday to demonstrate against right-wing extremism, as weeks of nationwide protests continued at the weekend.
The police estimated the number of participants at around 16,500, while the organizers put it higher at 25,000. The rally was organized by a new alliance in Bremen of left-wing and anti-fascist groups.About 45,000 people had turned out in Bremen for a similar protest a week ago.
Street protests have been held in cities big and small following a report published on January 10 by investigative journalist group Correctiv.
The report revealed details of a meeting in November between radical right-wingers and individual politicians from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in which plans for the expulsion of millions of people with immigrant backgrounds were discussed.
On Saturday afternoon in Berlin, strangers locked hands outside the historic Reichstag parliament building to form a human chain. Police said more than 150,000 participated, although others said as many as 300,000 people were there.
About 30,000 people rallied on Saturday in both the eastern city of Dresden and Freiburg in the Black Forest. Another 25,000 came out in Bavaria’s Augsburg. Thousands more protested at other rallies.
A majority of German citizens say they welcome the protests against the far-right.
Some 55% favoured the demonstrations in a survey conducted by the INSA opinion research institute for the Sunday edition of the Bild newspaper. In contrast, 26% were opposed and 12% were indifferent.
In the survey, participants were also asked whether democracy in Germany was in danger.
Some 61% of respondents thought so, while a third of respondents did not consider German democracy to be in danger.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius warned that the war between Russia and Ukraine could expand beyond the neighbouring countries, publishes dpa news agency.
“We hear threats from the Kremlin almost every day – most recently again against our friends in the Baltic states,” Pistorius told the Tagesspiegel newspaper in an article published on Friday.
With regard to the Bundeswehr, the minister emphasized: “We must quickly strengthen our defence capabilities in light of the urgency of the threat situation.”
“So we have to take into account that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin might even attack a NATO country one day,” added Pistorius, who has been in office for a year this Friday.
However, if it were to happen, he said it would happen between “five to eight years” from now.
With his call for the Bundeswehr to become “war-ready” he also wanted to “shake up our society,” he said.
The minister expects proposals for re-introducing a version of compulsory military service by April. Germany ended mandatory conscription in 2011.
The minister would also be open to opening up the armed forces to soldiers without a German passport.
The defence industry also needed to be made more efficient, according to Pistorius. He spoke in favour of reforming the debt brake for security reasons.
“With a debt brake in this form, we will not get through these crises unscathed,” he said.
Pistorius also rejected calls for more German military aid for Ukraine, saying the Bundeswehr could not go “all in” and leave Germany “defenceless.”
Hundreds of flights at Frankfurt Airport in Germany have been cancelled on Thursday, a day after a winter storm forced the airport to suspend take-offs and landings for several hours, publishes DPA news agency.
Heavy snowfall in Frankfurt and throughout western Germany, meanwhile, left some motorways impassable overnight and led to further transport chaos in parts of the country. Hundreds of motorists spent hours stuck on jammed motorways late on Wednesday and into Thursday morning.
At Frankfurt Airport, more than 300 of about 1,000 scheduled flights for Thursday have been cancelled, a spokeswoman for airport operator Fraport told dpa on Thursday morning.
Flights are taking off and landing at the airport, but air traffic was still recovering from a storm that brought ice, freezing rain and snow to much of western and southern Germany.
It was unclear if additional flights might be cancelled over the course of Thursday. The airport spokeswoman urged passengers to check the status of their flights online before travelling to the airport.
The Frankfurt Airport is Germany’s largest and most important aviation hub, and is among the busiest airports in Europe.
Munich Airport, another major hub that was affected by the winter storm, largely returned to normal operations on Thursday, an airport official told dpa.
Late on Wednesday, lorries became stuck in deep snow near Frankfurt on three of Germany’s busiest motorways, the A3, A4, A5 and A7.
The stuck lorries led to traffic jams that stretched for several kilometres, stranding many motorists. In addition to road maintenance vehicles, the Red Cross was deployed to provide drivers with blankets and hot drinks, according to the police.
Some local schools in parts of Germany particularly hard-hit by the winter storm also remained closed on Thursday or switched to online instruction so children could remain at home.
Criminalizing once again the insult and slander, designating all non-governmental organizations that receive foreign donations (including the organizations working in journalism) as “agents of foreign influence” and establishing a Media Register, where the state decides who may or may not perform a journalistic activity.
These are just some of the draft-law provisions that present a serious threat to media freedom in Republika Srpska, which is part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Media and civic associations are under enormous pressure, and some of them might close down completely.
Meta.mk spoke about these issues with Sandra Gojković-Arbutina, Editor-in-Chief of “Nezavisne Novine”. We mentioned the latest blow to the media in Macedonia – the verdict against IRL by the Basic Civil Court, which thereby decided that non-governmental organizations cannot perform journalistic activities and that, “the journalists of IRL were not journalists at all”. This did not surprise Arbutina much, because, as she puts it, this kind of pressure in Republika Srpska started suddenly and spread throughout the entire system of legal solutions, causing obstacles for the journalists to work freely.
All this, undoubtedly, mimics the expanded law on “foreign agents” in Russia. A few days ago, quoting Deputy Justice Minister Oleg Sviridenko, Radio Free Europe reported that sanctions of up to 500,000 Rubles (5,660 Dollars) will be imposed to third parties that “with or without intention” promote or disseminate materials produced by “foreign agent” subjects without proper attribution.
For TASS, Sviridenko stated that Russian Justice Minister, Konstantin Chuychenko will sign an appropriate order towards the end of the month, followed by a Government decree enabling Russian authorities to impose sanctions on “libraries, books, universities, televisions” as well as on “ordinary people”.
The current law enabled labeling media and individual journalists as “foreign agents”, including those who did not receive foreign funding but were “under foreign influence”, demanding they mark all their material as “produced by a foreign agent”. In the meantime, more than 30 staff members of Radio Free Europe have been denoted as “foreign agents” by the Russian Justice Ministry.
All this seems to be fast approaching Republika Srpska, as the Editor-in-Chief of “Nezavisne Novine” presented.
How advanced is the procedure of adopting the law according to which every citizen association’s project approved from abroad or funded with foreign money will have to be designated “an agent of foreign influence”? Gojković-Arbutina: The Draft Law on the Special Register and Publicity of the Operations of Non-Governmental Organizations is in parliamentary procedure. A public debate will follow, after which the draft law will go to the vote in the Parliament. This will most probably take place at the end of December. The law follows the amending the Criminal Code that made slander a criminal offense, which is extremely indicative.
What is key in the law defining “agents of foreign influence”? Gojković-Arbutina: The non-governmental organizations are already regulated by many laws. They must report their operations to all agencies – for the taxes, for their financing – in fact, they are subject to the same laws as any other company. That said, no donor wants to work with a civic organization that has not legally covered finances. The donors demand transparent financial management – where and how all the funds are spent. All the financial reports of the non-governmental organizations are publicly available on their websites.
In addition, most of the smaller news sites are registered as citizens’ associations, since the registration process is much easier and less documentation is required, although they pay all the contributions for their employees, including taxes, etc. However, there seems to be one big problem, which as I see it, is very discriminatory – the formulation “agent of foreign influence”.
If you are a non-governmental organization that has received a donation from Sweden, Norway, USA, Germany, Switzerland, etc., and, if for example, you work on environmental issues and you want to organize a river-cleaning initiative, you need to approach the Government and the Environment Ministry saying: ”The rivers must be cleaned up and that is your competence”, thereby exerting pressure. Now with this law, if you are dealing with environmental issues and you approach any governmental institution with a request for a river-cleaning action, that might be interpreted as political pressure. This law bans the political action of non-governmental organizations, thereby closing up both the field and purpose of their action, since even the appeal to the Ministry of Environment for cleaning the rivers can be understood as political action, as the Ministry is part of the Government.
The draft law defines the activities related to science, culture, social protection and healthcare, sport, consumer protection, national minority rights and rights of disabled persons, environmental protection, fight against corruption, philanthropy, volunteering, and informing as non-political activities.
Interestingly, the human rights or the rule of law, the areas of action of a significant number of the active civic organizations in Republika Srpska are not included in these exceptions.
What could the consequences be? Gojković-Arbutina: This will practically legalize the current labels – “foreign mercenaries”, “traitors”, Sorosoids” etc. All this now will become part of one label – “agent of foreign influence”. An educated person might understand the situation, but if you tell the average person that someone is an agent of foreign influence, then s/he will believe that such a person or organization is here to destroy the institutions, act against Republika Srpska, thereby practically creating the stigma that all citizen’s associations are acting together to dismantle the state institutions.
What do you think is the motive for all this? Gojković-Arbutina: As I already mentioned, slander is now a criminal act. We were first in the region to decriminalize slander. That happened in the 1990s, and we all celebrated it. After more than 20 years, we managed to make it a criminal act again, which is opposed to EU requirements – decriminalization of slander, because anything less than that is simply not civilized. This took us back 100 years.
And now there is an attack on the civic sector. That is a very hindering environment for their work and I think that after this, many of them will give up, and many will not be able to operate under such pressure. The Ministry of Justice will be competent for civil society organizations, and it may perform extraordinary inspections, inspect documentation without prior notice, ban their operation, etc. Now, if you have some kind of a flyer developed as part of a project – or whatever, any kind of document – you will need to clearly notify that you are an “agent of foreign influence”.
And the civic sector is now under attack. That is a very hindering environment for their work and I think that after this, many of them will give up / Photo: Meta.mk
Still, why would someone take such a step? Gojković-Arbutina: It is considered there is large influx of foreign money. But that is why non-governmental organizations exist, since they are not funded by the budget.
I am not saying that some do not, maybe, have different aims – two or three aims – but we cannot treat all of them the same. You know, we are a small community of 200,000 people and such labeling can be difficult for those who are actually performing this activity, but also for their children and families.
Did you protest the draft law? Gojković-Arbutina: It is difficult for me to lay down all of the responses. There are hundreds of them… as journalistic vocation, as journalists, as non-governmental organizations… we even engaged legal experts to avoid making layman claims. Paragraph by paragraph, they revealed the ethical and human rights violations. Nothing happened however.
The public debate was organized just for the sake of organizing it. The legal experts said that the law was so bad that it could not be improved at all, not even by submitting amendments.
Are online media regulated in your case? Gojković-Arbutina: No. Portals are not regulated by any legal framework. The same package contains the Criminal Code, the Law on Foreign Agents and the Law on Media which will be passed after 27 years. The current law recognizes only televisions, newspapers or radios, and a part of the law says that the entire print-run can be confiscated if estimated necessary. We have been asking for a law for twenty years without getting it. And now, after these two, we are getting a new Media Law.
What does this law provide? Gojković-Arbutina: There is an Advisory Group that will ask us what we want. But, after these two laws, I don’t believe in a good solution, because I see this as a package – the systemic package that concludes an entire story.
All of these laws are not in line with European legislation, but still they were adopted, and we acquired EU candidate-country status. The moment when we were fighting the most for these laws we acquired candidate-country status and now we are going backwards.
The new law will encompass the portals as well. We demand, however, transparent ownership. They didn’t like that, but we think that it is key to know who stands behind a given medium. On the other hand, they want to develop a Medium Register which is also a type of threat with elimination options. For example, if a medium cannot be established by a non-governmental organization, then that medium will not be able to be entered into the Register.
The Register is developed by the state; therefore, they will not be able to attend public events and press conferences of institutions, which is also dangerous.
We need a media law, but I am afraid that after these two laws, nothing good can be expected.
What is your motivation to work in the area of journalism now? Gojković-Arbutina: This has been going on for a year now. We are quite exhausted of repeating how bad, dangerous, and undemocratic that is. When we talk about criminalization, we try to explain to people that such a thing affects everybody – all those who will write something on the social networks, and even if uttered in a café with two witnesses you might end up with a criminal offence for libel. The public thought that the media were just panicking, but no… that affects everybody. It applies to all people. The sanctions are not that high, but the fines in this case are not important.
In our case, the criminal procedure lasts 3-5 years, while the plaintiff is entitled to demand confiscation of equipment and ban operation… For example, you will not be able to win a tender since not having a criminal procedure is a requirement. Our medium survives thanks to announcements. Hence, that would practically paralyze us for several months, not to mention the small media outlets that live from advertisements.
Heavy overnight snowfall paralysed transport connections in the southern German state of Bavaria on Saturday morning, leaving thousands of travellers stranded, some of them on trains halted by the weather front, publishes DPA.
Other parts of the country also experienced heavy snow and ice, with conditions expected to deteriorate further on Saturday night. At least one person died as a result of the condition when a car skidded and collided with a van.
Winter services were working to restore safe operations at Munich Airport, where flights were suspended until 6 am (0500 GMT) on Sunday. Passengers due to travel on Sunday were advised to check the status of their flight before travelling to the airport.
A Lufthansa spokesman said the closure of air traffic in Munich would have an impact on other airports. For example, there are also significant restrictions in Frankfurt.
Rail transport was also affected, particularly around Munich, as fallen trees blocked tracks and overhead lines were iced over.
Train services to and from Munich Central Station were initially cancelled, including connections with the Austrian cities of Salzburg and Innsbruck. Passengers in Ulm and Munich had to spend the night on immobilized trains.
Services in southern Germany were expected to remain severely disrupted until Monday, a railway spokeswoman told dpa.
Underground trains, buses and trams also initially stopped running in the Bavarian capital. Scores of traffic accidents were reported throughout the state and there were long queues of vehicles on major roads, including a 30-kilometre tailback on the A8 motorway from Munich to Salzburg.
Also there were outages in parts of the German state of Bavaria on Saturday, leaving thousands of households in the dark as the cold weather spell continues. The main areas affected were around Munich, but also a number of towns to the south, east and north of the city, after trees fell on power lines and lines were damaged or severed by the weight of the snow. Warnings were issued to the public not to approach cables that were hanging down or lying on the ground.
The police in Upper Bavaria called on the population to stay at home while the emergency and snow-clearing services worked to restore normal life. Many smaller roads outside of built-up areas were heavily snow-covered or blocked by fallen trees.
Authorities also advised people to stay out of forests due to the risk of the weight of snow bringing down trees.
More than 300 police officers took part in raids targeting two banned Palestinian organizations in the German capital Berlin early on Thursday morning, reports DPA agency.
Across Germany, 15 properties were raided and searched, 11 of them in Berlin, a spokeswoman for the city’s administration said.
Police also raided properties in the states of Lower Saxony, North Rhine Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein in connection with the ban on the terrorist organization Hamas and the international Palestinian prisoner advocacy network Samidoun in Germany. The German government banned both groups earlier this month.
The German Interior Ministry announced the raids on Thursday morning. The measures were ordered by the administrative courts to enforce the bans and to further clarify the structures of these banned groups, the ministry said. A total of 15 properties were searched.
“We are continuing our consistent action against radical Islamists,” said German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.
On November 2, the German government banned Samidoun, and imposed further measures to stamp out support for the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas, which is already listed as a terrorist organization in the European Union.
“By banning Hamas and Samidoun in Germany, we have sent a clear signal that we will not tolerate any glorification or support of Hamas’ barbaric terror against Israel,” Faeser said at the time.
“Samidoun, as an international network, spreads anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda under the guise of being a ‘solidarity organization’ for prisoners in various countries,” Faeser said.
Under the ban, the groups’ assets can be confiscated, and any internet presence or social media activities by the groups has been outlawed, according to Faeser’s ministry. Anyone who continues to be active for the organizations is committing a criminal offence, the ministry said.
Around a year after the hype surrounding ChatGPT began, tools like this have arrived in the everyday educational lives of many young people in Germany, according to a new survey, writes the news agency DPA.
The survey found that 68% of school pupils, trainees and university students have already used ChatGPT or similar artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools for homework or coursework, according to a YouGov survey commissioned by the mobile phone provider congstar and the company “share.”
According to the survey, 11% regularly use AI programmes for homework and coursework, 32% sometimes and 25% rarely use it. Only 29% stated that they do not use such tool at all.
The survey was made available to dpa.
A representative sample of 702 people aged between 16 and 26 who were either in training, studying or still at school were surveyed between September 25 and October 4.
The chat robot ChatGPT from US start-up OpenAI has been available free of charge since November 2022. In just a few weeks, the number of users skyrocketed to over 100 million.
With the help of AI, ChatGPT can answer questions on a wide range of topics or even write entire essays, although there are questions about its accuracy.
The arrival of ChatGPT and other such tools has raised increasing debate about how the technology will affect education in the long term.
There have been renewed threats at several German schools and radio stations, following a series of bomb threats that targeted at least seven schools and public broadcaster ZDF on Monday, publishes the news agency dpa.
A secondary school in the southern state of Bavaria was evacuated after it received a second bomb threat on Tuesday morning.
Police spoke of a threat that came in via email with links to the Islamist militant group Hamas.
In the Thuringian capital Erfurt, threats were received at three schools. These were not bomb threats, but “threats of violence,” police told dpa.
The buildings of the schools had not yet been searched, police said.
Meanwhile, a broadcasting centre also in the state of Thuringia housing three radio stations – Antenne Thüringen, Landeswelle Thüringen and Radio Top40 – was evacuated after it received a bomb threat via e-mail, which police said was sent by Hamas.
Tests for explosives are being carried out in the building, police said.
On Monday, threats against several schools triggered major police operations nationwide. Schools in the states of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine Westphalia, Saxony and Thuringia were affected.
The headquarters of public broadcaster ZDF in the western city of Mainz were also evacuated briefly because of a bomb threat.
Nothing suspicious was found and police gave the all-clear on Monday.
