Jill Petzinger

The rise of the robots, coming first for our jobs, then maybe our lives, is a growing concern in today’s increasingly automated world. Just today (Oct. 10), the World Bank chief said the world is on a “crash course” to automate millions of jobs. But a recent report from Germany paints a less dramatic picture: Europe’s strongest economy and manufacturing powerhouse has quadrupled the amount of industrial robots it has installed in the last 20 years, without causing human redundancies.

After an election that saw Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats bleed around one million voters to the right-wing Alternative for Germany, the German chancellor has finally given in to demands from her sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, and agreed to set an upper limit to the annual amount of refugees allowed into the country.

The German government’s controversial new law, which aims to crack down on hate speech on internet platforms, comes into force today (Oct 1). But while it seems like a progressive step towards combatting this issue, there are concerns that the move could lead to excessive censorship due to the level of fines social media platforms face.

Just hours after the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won its first-ever round of seats in the German parliament, its co-leader Frauke Petry told a press conference in Berlin—with her newly-elected colleagues next to her—that she had decided not to go into parliament with the party. Then she got up and stormed out of the press conference.

It wasn’t a stunning victory. In fact, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) had their worst showing since 1949, but Merkel’s fourth term as leader of Germany is secure.

Angela Merkel’s party may have won the general election today, but 13% of the voting population said “No” to her refugee policy by choosing the right-wing nationalists Alternative for Germany (AfD). AfD co-head Alexander Gauland immediately told supporters his party would launch a parliamentary investigation into Merkel for her handling of the refugee crisis. The AfD would “hunt” Merkel and “take back our country and our people,” he said.

Germany’s federal election Sunday is officially over. According to exit polls from public broadcaster ARD, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has won, scooping 32.7 % of the nation’s vote.

Germany’s Christian Democratic Union pulled out its big guns this week in the run up to Sunday’s election: a black-and-white picture of Angela Merkel as a child, and the caption “For a Germany in which everyone can become anything.” Considering the girl in the photo grew up in Communist East Germany and went on to become one of the most powerful leaders in the world, it’s a poignant message.

Beware the Demogorgon, but also the lawyers. Netflix sent possibly the coolest cease-and-desist letter ever to an unauthorized “Stranger Things” pop-up bar in Chicago.

Those outside Germany could be forgiven for barely noticing that the country is going to the polls in less than a week to decide its government for the next four years.

They have to pay taxes, pensions, and mandatory health insurance, but the 7.8 million foreigners who’ve long called Germany home won’t be heading to the polling stations come Sept. 24. The German constitution only permits German citizens to vote in its federal elections. There are 61 million Germans eligible to vote, adding another 8 million would increase the electorate by 13%.

It was never going to rival the savage pre-election TV debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, or between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, but Sunday night finally saw German chancellor and leader of the Christian Democratic Union Angela Merkel come face-to-face with her rival Martin Schulz.  

“Burqas? We like bikinis.”

When Martin Schulz returned to Germany last year after a long career at the European Parliament in Brussels, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) welcomed him home like a long-lost son. For a brief time, “Schulzmania” ruled, with many in the media predicting this was the man who could give chancellor Angela Merkel a run for her money in the Sept. 24 federal election. 

Berlin, Germany

The German government threw Air Berlin a lifeline after the country’s second largest airline filed for bankruptcy due to its biggest shareholder, Etihad Airways, pulling the plug.

The world will be watching Germany over the next six weeks to see if the populist sentiment that carried Donald Trump into office and Britain to vote Brexit will hurt Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. If populism sentiment does prevail, then it will be a shock, as polls right now show that the Christian Democrats are way ahead of even their closest rivals.

The emissions cheating scandal that began with Volkswagen in 2015 has now spread to include all the big German automakers. In recent weeks Daimler, VW, Porsche, BMW, and Audi were found to have manipulated nitrogen-oxide emissions from some of their diesel cars and issued mass recalls. 

Despite Turkey’s plentiful beaches, resorts, and rich cultural heritage, tourists have been put off by a series of deadly terror attacks, last year’s unsuccessful coup against president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the brutal crackdown that followed the attempted ouster. Germans, traditionally the largest group of tourists in Turkey, have drastically reduced their trips to Turkey in recent months. That was on top of a ban by Russia, home to the second-largest group of tourists to Turkey, on charter holidays to the country after Turkish military shot down a Russian jet near the Syrian border in 2015.

Imagine if you could find out how much your boss, colleagues, and friends were making at the click of a mouse. If you lived in Norway you could. Its citizens have been able to go online and check out how much every single person in the country is earning since 2001.

Paul Austin’s talk about ingesting tiny amounts of psychedelic drugs to enhance performance at this month’s Tech Open Air conference in Berlin was met with enthusiastic applause—perhaps no surprise considering he’s addressing a hall of young techies in one of the world’s most free-wheeling cities.

German magazine Der Spiegel reports that the country’s powerful automakers have been meeting in secret since the 1990s—and their joint decisions on dealing with diesel emissions may have laid the groundwork for Volkswagen’s massive emissions-cheating scandal.

Just one week after Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Daimler was officially under investigation for allegedly installing emissions-manipulating software in more than one million cars in the last 10 years, the company appears to be getting ahead of a potential backlash by announcing it will recall three million diesel vehicles across Europe.

The internal combustion engine has had a long run, but its days have been numbered for a while now. A recent survey from Dutch bank ING has pegged the year 2035 as the point when battery-powered cars will slay the gasoline engine for good.