Die Zeit, 02.03.2006

The Serbian author Bora Cosic writes about the war criminal Radko Mladic, who is rumoured to be hiding out in an Orthodox cloister: "The Serbs are an untamed, robust, talented but dangerous people. I don't know in what state the hidden general is in. I do know that his daughter killed herself during the war, out of shame for what her father had done I mean. That at least was an act, an antique, pure act, the act of an Antigone. But that's not all. Having committed so many bestial acts must turn a person into another Brother Karamazov, one with the worst conscience, the darkest heart, a man without rest, peace or sleep."
See our feature "Journey to the Alaska of my past" by Bora Cosic.

Reporter Susanne Fischer trains Iraqi journalists in Northern Iraq at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. She describes the work of local reporters, which is far more dangerous than that of the foreign correspondents working there. "They don't live in high-security residences or hotels like their Western colleagues, they have no bodyguards. And their articles and films are read and shown in Iraq – for example the trials of captured insurgents shown on the new Iraqi state TV Al-Iraqiya. Anyone caught in the wrong place with an Al-Iraqiya press pass has to expect the worst. In November 2005, a planned attack on an Al-Iraqiya team left two journalists dead and six others injured."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 02.03.2006

Manfred Schwarz stands in awe before the freshly renovated Brussels Atomium, that "shiny steely fossil of modernity. The new non-corrosive stainless steel skin gleams so brilliantly in daylight, it's as if this space ship had just landed from another time. Only now it doesn't come from a glittering future, but from an elated past: from the bold, irresistibly elegant and intrepidly futuristic late Fifties. The time travel to which the Atomium beckons now goes backwards."


Berliner Zeitung, 02.03.2006

Anke Westphal talks with Hans-Christian Schmid, whose film "Requiem" comes out in Germany today. The film is based on a true story about a deeply religious girl with family problems who died in 1976 after being exorcised. But she is not the only victim, says Schmid. "The mother is too. The film deals with the post-war generation, which forbids itself both joy and heart-felt contact with others. My grandmother often said to my mother: you shouldn't laugh so much or you'll be crying again soon. That's got a lot to do with her generation: she never learned that you don't have to worry and be sorrowful all the time. Plus in the 1970s parents, doctors, psychologists and priests had a lot less contact with each other than they do now, at least in big cities. And then there's the arrogance of the doctors, which I've seen too. They don't have any time. The specialists do their thing, but they never get to know their patients. That's still a big problem today."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 02.03.2006

Germany will host the football World Cup this summer. Hendrik Leber, Managing Partner of Acatis investment consultants, analyses the strengths of the German team from a strictly financial perspective and comes up with a rather sceptical view of German "core competences in football": "How do things look in 2006 for the World Cup? The average market value of a German player on the national team is 7.1 million euros. Italy, England, Brasil and France have average player values of between 11 and 15 million euros. Does that point to a final without the German team? Luckily for Germany, there are teams with even lower market values. Togo, for example, has an average current value per player of 800,000 euros, while for Saudi Arabia it is zero."