Latest news with #Welt
Gulf Insider
18-07-2025
- Gulf Insider
After Foreigners Banned From Swiss Pool, Season Ticket Sales Surge And Police Incidents Stop
After all foreigners were banned from a Swiss swimming pool in Porrentruy over violence, sexual harassment and constant disturbances, Swiss visitors to the pool and employees are generally expressing happiness with the move. The ban, which came about after 'French youths with a migration background' continuously caused problems at the pool and in pool bathrooms, including sexual harassment of young girls. The situation even sparked international headlines. However, the Swiss paper 20 Minuten reported a surge in season ticket sales after the ban was put in place. 'It went very well. Citizens have rediscovered the bathing establishment with the peace and quiet that comes with it,' said Lionel Maître, the municipal councilor for tourism and leisure in Porrentruy. 'We have seen an increase in season ticket sales as citizens have finally regained the long-awaited sense of security. There have been no problems and no new bathing bans since then.' Maître said that it had become increasingly noticeable that the perpetrators had Arabic names. Apollo News also reported that the need for security has suddenly disappeared since the ban on foreigners. 'People were climbing over the fence. They didn't respect us – not even the security guards,' said Luna Lando, a lifeguard at the Porrentruy outdoor pool. She said her daily routine is now transformed. 'It's much quieter now,' said Luna in an interview. 'There's no need for security anymore.' 'We wouldn't have been able to come here anymore if the measures hadn't been introduced,' Vieira da Silva Aurelie, a swimming instructor from another pool in Switzerland, told German newspaper Welt. According to Welt, there were repeated thefts at the location, women were whistled at, and boys and men touched girls inappropriately. One mother stated she had forbidden her daughter from visiting the pool due to safety fears. Even Bild sent a reporter to the pool to cover the reaction to the ban, highlighting just how far-reaching the story has become. Before the ban, the pool itself had already issued 20 'house bans' on specific individuals from entering the pool area, but this proved insufficient to keep the peace. The problem? The pool is located only a few kilometers from the French border and the city of Belfort. Although the town itself is described as a classic Swiss village, complete with rolling hills filled with grazing cows, the suburbs of Belfort feature troubled foreign youth who consistently cause problems in the neighboring Swiss village. One 17-year-old student, Alexi, told Bild it is now quiet and thefts have ended. 'It's better this way. Sometimes we Swiss couldn't get in at all. Now, it's quieter, you can swim and there are no more thefts, it couldn't go on like this, that we Swiss couldn't go into our own swimming pool anymore,' he said.A 68-year-old pensioner, Chantalle, agreed, saying: 'There were a lot of problems with 15-year-olds that caused stress. The police were there almost every day.' Foreigners can still enter the pool, but only if they have a work permit in Switzerland or if they are guests at a local hotel that provides pool cards to its guests. However, they have to pay double the price as Swiss citizens, which also serves to restrict the number of foreign guests. Although the ban targets all foreigners, Bild indicates the true target was the French youths who ruined the peaceful atmosphere at the pool and participated in various crimes. A 51-year-old teacher, Melanie (51), told Bild: 'The problem is that people are simply afraid of large groups that don't follow the rules in the swimming pool. They come from the suburbs of Belfort in France. These are people who cause problems there, too. Of course, that's a shame for everyone else who can't get in anymore, who aren't criminals.' However, a cleaning specialist, 38-year-old Said, who has a migrant background, said: 'This discriminates against our families. They're stereotyping all the French now. This is a minority that has sometimes made a bit of a splash here. That's not good. I've been here a lot, and I've never experienced much stress here.' One Swiss woman, Marie, said she did not like the ban. 'I go to the swimming pool every day and regret the decision. I saw a lot of French people here and never noticed any problems. I think the decision was made because it was often very crowded here. Maybe too crowded. But you shouldn't solve this problem like that,' she told Bild. However, the police in Porrentruy tell a different story, telling Bild that since the start of the season in mid-May, they have been called to the pool several times, including in instances where they had to come 'sometimes two or three times an hour.' There were no criminal complaints ever recorded, only oral complaints. But since the ban came into place, the police have not been called once, although it has only been in place for a short time. The police would not comment on allegations from the community that French migrant youth were harassing girls. 'We're not allowed to talk about it.' He told the reporter that the media attention to the subject had grown too large, and there were efforts to 'muzzle the community.' The reality is that German newspapers are so interested in this swimming ban due to the crisis at German swimming pools, which have seen young girls sexually assaulted and harassed in large numbers over the years. In addition, thefts, assaults, and general disorder have been prevalent, as Remix News has reported numerous times. However, while some swimming pools with the unique issue seen in Porrentruy could implement such a ban on foreigners, the widespread issue seen in Germany will not vanish with such a ban. This is due to the fact that the crime and harassment problem presented by foreigners is coming from those who live in the cities and towns already, not from outsiders. In many cases, these are youths born to foreign parents, and many of them already have German citizenship. However, an end to the problems involving swimming pools would mean fewer security staff are required, which would lower ticket prices and contribute to a peaceful and relaxed atmosphere within swimming pools. In addition, the appearance of police crisis teams at swimming pools, such as seen in Berlin, would also disappear. Police would then be freed up to handle crime in other areas of the cities of Germany. Only fundamental changes at the federal level in regards to immigration and crime enforcement will make European swimming pools peaceful and family-friendly places once again.
Metro
17-07-2025
- Science
- Metro
How a dusty old envelope led to discovery of one of world's rarest minerals
When Roland Eichhorn popped open the dusty cardboard box, he couldn't believe it. There, in the basement of a stuffy government office in Germany, was a pile of six yellow lumps. But these old rocks were one of the rarest minerals found on Earth. Until the discovery, only about a snowball-sized amount of the mineral, called humboldtine, had ever been found, Roland Eichhorn of the Bavarian State Office for the Environment (LfU) said. 'And we've now found a second snowball,' he told the German newspaper Welt. Humboldtine, named after the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, was first discovered in a rundown brown coal deposit in the Czech Republic in 1821. The mineral is prized highly by collectors because it has only been discovered in 30 locations across eight countries, including the UK. 'We are legally obligated to make geological collection pieces accessible to the public,' Eichhorn said. Archivists were asked last year to digitise the agency's mineral and rock catalogue stored in the LfU basement in Hof, on the banks of the Saale, in 2023. While scanning the shelves, a worker stumbled on a note written by a coal mine owner in 1949. 'Humboldtine from the Mathias mine near Schwandorf,' it read, referring to an old open-pit mine for brown coal by the river Naab. Eichhorn was taken aback, to say the least, not only because of how rare the mineral is, but because it wasn't listed anywhere in the collection. The owner of the Mathias mine likely sent in samples of the rock, but it was never documented by agency officials. Eichhorn's team immediately began rifling through more than 13,000 rocks collected across 250 years, only to discover the humboldtine stored anticlimactically in a drawer. Inside was a box labelled 'Oxalit', German for organic mineral, with the rare material inside. The dusty rock is the 'cyborg among minerals', Eichhorn said. Like all life on Earth, the mineral's crystal lattice contains carbon, water and oxygen, according to the mineral database Mindat. But what sets it apart i the iron these ingredients to life are bound to. Humboldtine only forms when iron-rich rocks contact specific acids in damp conditions, creating a lemon-yellow clump that can contain crystals. Most of humboldtine unearthed so far are only millimetre‑sized grains. But how these yellow-amber crumbs formed in the Mathias mine left Eichhorn baffled. Brown coal, also called lignite, is one of the dirtiest fossil fuels and has a low concentration of carbon. More Trending A brown coal mine isn't exactly the best conditions for humboldtine to form, yet LfU lab tests 'clearly confirmed' it was the precious crystal. Digging at the mine had closed in 1966 and was flooded with water a few decades later. Eichhorn said this makes it almost impossible for officials to investigate the site and obtain clues about where the humboldtine came from. 'Why the yellow nodules formed in the Schwandorf brown coal will probably remain a mystery forever,' the LfU said. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Here's how it could become harder for people-smugglers to reach the UK MORE: Lufthansa CEO's wife 'runs over and kills woman crossing the road' on family holiday MORE: Now I want to watch Netflix's 'ultimate grandmother of all bad movies ever made'
Local Germany
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Local Germany
Backlash after German minister suggests cap on immigrant students in schools
Speaking to a Welt tv program over the weekend, Germany's Education Minister Karin Prien (CDU) said she was open to introducing a cap on the number of students with a migrant background in school classes. Her comments came in response to a question from Welt's editor-in-chief, who had referenced similar efforts in Denmark. Prien suggested that a cap of 30 to 40 percent was a 'conceivable model,' emphasizing that the decisive factor for school success is that children should be able to speak German when they start school. She called for early, mandatory language tests for four-year-olds and binding language learning support measures for those identified as needing help. Prien argued that looking at the experiences of other countries—specifically Denmark—could provide valuable insights. What's happening in Denmark? While Denmark does not have a formal, nationwide quota for children with a migrant background in schools, it has implemented similar measures in certain areas. In neighbourhoods with a very high proportion of children with a migrant background, the Danish government reportedly required schools to pause the admission of new students and develop plans to attract more 'ethnically Danish' students. However, these were localised interventions, and not a blanket national quota system. READ ALSO: What parents in Germany should know about the planned schools shake up Reaction in Germany Prien's remarks were met with immediate and widespread criticism. The Federal Government's Integration Commissioner, Natalie Pawlik (SPD), rejected the proposal, arguing that 'Germany does not need quotas in the classroom' and that integration is best achieved through targeted support, not exclusion. The president of the German Teachers' Association, Stefan Düll, said that using a child's foreign roots as a benchmark was not helpful. He called the idea of quotas 'problematic', noting the logistical challenges in areas where almost half the population has a migrant background. READ ALSO: How German leaders are blaming foreigners for country's woes Advertisement He and other education experts stressed that language skills, not background, should be the main criterion for school admission. Opposition parties and associations also voiced strong concerns. The Left Party called the proposal unworkable, especially in urban centres, and warned of stigmatization and exclusion. The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), on the other hand, criticized Prien's proposal as 'too lax', called for a significantly lower limit of ten percent. READ ALSO: More childcare, less paperwork - How Germany can make life easier for foreign parents In fact media reports, including one by the German teachers' magazine News4teachers , have pointed out that the idea of introducing migrant quotas in Germany was first suggested by the AfD. Not constitutional Despite the polarised debate that Prien's comments sparked, the legal, practical, and political obstacles to introducing school quotas in Germany appear insurmountable. Germany's Basic Law ( Grundgesetz ) prohibits discrimination based on origin, meaning that the constitutional court would almost certainly challenge the legality of mandating migrant quotas in schools. Advertisement Additionally, in Germany education is primarily the responsibility of states rather than the federal government. So only the states ( Länder ) can implement binding rules on quotas or mandatory language tests.
Los Angeles Times
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Bruce Springsteen's European stadium concerts harness rock's ‘righteous power' in ‘dangerous times'
BERLIN — In a country that saw its democracy die in 1933, the more than 170,000 people crowding into three of Germany's biggest soccer stadiums for Bruce Springsteen's rock concerts in recent weeks have been especially receptive to his message and dire warnings about a politically perilous moment in the United States, one that has reminded some of Adolf Hitler's power grab in the '30s. At these gigantic open-air concerts in Berlin, Frankfurt and Gelsenkirchen, which have been among the largest concerts to date in Springsteen's two-month-long, 16-show Land of Hope & Dreams tour across Europe, the 75-year-old rock star from New Jersey has interspersed short but poignant political speeches into his exhausting, sweat-drenched performances to describe the dangers he sees in the United States under the Trump administration. 'The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock 'n' roll in dangerous times,' Springsteen says to cheers at the start of each concert. 'In my home — the America I love, the America I have written about — the America that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.' Springsteen's words have had special resonance in Germany, where memories of the Nazi past are never far from the surface and the cataclysmic demise of the Weimar Republic, which led directly to Hitler's takeover, is studied in great detail in schools and universities. With that Nazi past embedded in their DNA, German fears of President Trump's tactics probably run higher than anywhere else. 'Germans tend to have angst about a lot of things and they are really afraid of Trump,' said Michael Pilz, a music critic for the Welt newspaper, who agrees that the death of German democracy in 1933 is a contributing factor to the popularity of Springsteen's anti-Trump concerts this summer. 'A lot of Germans think Trump is a fool. It's not only his politics but the way he is, just so completely over the top. Germans love to see Trump getting hit. And they admire Springsteen for standing up and taking it to him.' The crowds in Germany have been as large as they are enthusiastic. More than 75,000 filled Berlin's Olympic Stadium on June 11; 44,500 were in Frankfurt on June 18; and another 51,000 watched his concert in the faded Ruhr River industrial town of Gelsenkirchen on June 27. All told, more than 700,000 tickets have been sold for the 16 shows in Springsteen's tour (for concerts that last three or more hours), which concludes on July 3 in Milan, Italy. 'The German aversion to Trump has now become more extreme in his second term — Germans just don't understand how the Americans could elect someone like Trump,' said Jochen Staadt, a political science professor at the Free University in Berlin who is also a drummer in an amateur Berlin rock band. Staadt believes Springsteen's 1988 concert may well have helped pave the way for the Berlin Wall to fall a little over a year later in 1989. 'Germans are drawn to Springsteen as someone who played an important role in our history when Germany was still divided and as someone who may have helped overcome that division with rock music.' Springsteen has been filling stadiums across Europe in the warm summertime evenings with his high-energy shows that not only entertain the tremendous crowds but also take on Trump's policies on civil liberties, free speech, immigrants and universities in thoughtfully constructed messages. To ensure nothing is lost in translation, Springsteen's brief forays into politics of about two to three minutes each are translated for local audiences in German, French, Spanish, Basque and Italian subtitles on the giant video walls onstage. To ram the message home to more people, Springsteen also released a 30-minute recording from the first stop of the tour in Manchester, England, that contains three songs and three of his speeches onstage. 'I've always tried to be a good ambassador for America,' said Springsteen while introducing 'My City of Ruins,' a song he wrote after the 9/11 terror attacks that has taken on a new meaning this summer. 'I've spent my life singing about where we have succeeded and where we've come up short in living up to our civic ideals and our dreams. I always just thought that was my job. Things are happening right now in my home that are altering the very nature of our country's democracy and they're simply too important to ignore.' Springsteen's first speech during the tour's Manchester show on May 17 prompted a sharp rebuke from Trump on his Truth Social platform. 'Springsteen is 'dumb as a rock'… and this dried out 'prune' of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that's just 'standard fare'. Then we'll all see how it goes for him!' Springsteen did not respond directly. Instead, he repeated his messages at every concert across Europe. He delivered more political commentary in introducing his song 'House of a Thousand Guitars' by saying: 'The last check on power, after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people. You and me. It's the union of people around a common set of values. That's all that stands between democracy and authoritarianism. So at the end of the day, all we've really got is each other.' In the song, Springsteen sings about 'the criminal clown has stolen the throne / He steals what he can never own.' His concerts also included the live debut of 'Rainmaker,' about a con man, from his 2020 'Letter to You' album. At the concerts in Europe, Springsteen dedicates the song to 'our dear leader,' with a line that goes: 'Rainmaker says white's black and black's white / Says night's day and day's night.' He also changed one line in the song from 'they don't care or understand what it really takes for the sky to open up the land,' to 'they don't care or understand how easy it is to let freedom slip through your hands.' Springsteen's enormous popularity across Europe has long been on a different level than in the United States, and that gap could grow even wider in the future. Springsteen's close friend and the band's lead guitarist, Steve Van Zandt, recently observed in an interview with the German issue of Playboy magazine that the E Street Band may have lost half of its audience back home because of the group's unabashed opposition to Trump. (The band's concerts in the United States are often held in smaller indoor arenas.) But in Europe, Springsteen and his band have been reliably filling cavernous stadiums during the long, daylight-filled summertime evenings for decades with improbably enthusiastic crowds that sing along to the lyrics of his songs and spent most of the concerts on their feet dancing and cheering. There are also large numbers of hearty Springsteen fans from scores of countries who use their entire yearly allotment of vacation to follow him from show to show across the continent. This summer, Springsteen's message has been amplified even more, sending many in the boomer-dominated crowds into states of near-ecstasy and attracting considerable media attention in countries across Europe. 'The message of his music always touched a deep nerve in Europe and especially Germany, but ever since Trump was elected president, Springsteen's voice has been incredibly important for us,' said Katrin Schlemmer, a 56-year-old IT analyst from Zwickau who saw five Springsteen concerts in June — from Berlin to Prague to Frankfurt and two in San Sebastián, Spain. All told, Schlemmer has seen 60 Springsteen concerts in 11 countries around the world since her first in East Berlin in 1988 — a record-breaking, history-changing concert with more than 300,000 spectators that some historians believe may have contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall just 16 months later. 'A lot of Germans can't fathom why the Americans elected someone like Trump,' said Schlemmer, who had the chance to thank Springsteen for the 1988 East Berlin concert at a chance meeting after a 2014 concert in Cape Town, South Africa. 'We saw for ourselves how quickly a democracy was destroyed by an authoritarian. The alarm bells are ringing about what a danger Trump is. People love [Springsteen] here because he tells it like it is and because he is standing up to Trump.' Stephan Cyrus, a 56-year-old manager from Hamburg, said Germans view Springsteen as a trustworthy American voice during a period of uncertainty. 'When Germans hear Springsteen speaking about his worries about the United States, they listen, because so many of us have so much admiration and longing for the United States and are worried about the country's direction too,' said Cyrus, who saw the June 11 concert in Berlin. 'He definitely touched us with his words.' In one of his concert speeches, Springsteen goes after Trump without mentioning his name. 'There is some very weird, strange and dangerous s— going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.' Springsteen then adds: 'In my country, they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they are inflicting on loyal American workers. They're rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They're defunding American universities that won't back down to their ideological demands. They're removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now. A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.' He tells the audiences that those in the administration 'have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.' But Springsteen ends on a hopeful note, promising his audiences: 'We'll survive this moment.'
Russia Today
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Germany's Merz praises Israel for doing ‘dirty work for us'
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz publicly lauded Israel's military strikes against Iran, stating that the Israeli government and army have courageously undertaken the 'dirty work' on behalf of Western nations. The German leader made the remarks in a series of interviews on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada, attended by all guarantors of the original Iran nuclear deal, except for Russia and China. 'This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us. We are also victims of this regime,' Merz said in an interview with ZDF, claiming that 'this mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world.' I can only say: the greatest respect for the fact that the Israeli army and the Israeli leadership had the courage to do this. 'I assume that the attacks of the last few days have already weakened the mullah regime considerably and that it is unlikely to return to its former strength, making the future of the country uncertain,' Merz added in a separate interview with Welt. Germany is part of the P5+1 group that negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, back in 2015. Despite his support for the strikes, Merz claimed that Berlin stands ready to back new negotiations to ensure that Iran never obtains nuclear weapons. West Jerusalem justified its Friday attack by claiming Iran was on the brink of obtaining a nuclear weapon. Tehran has repeatedly denied such accusations, maintaining that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful. Iran retaliated by firing dozens of ballistic missiles into Israel, with the sides exchanging attacks ever since. Iran has reported at least 224 deaths since hostilities began, while in Israel the government reports 24 fatalities. In a joint statement on Monday, the leaders of the G7 branded Iran as the 'principal source of regional instability and terror,' adding, 'we have been consistently clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.' US President Donald Trump demanded an 'unconditional surrender' from Iran on Tuesday, warning that he wanted Iran to forgo 'entirely nuclear weapons.' Washington previously demanded that Tehran stop all uranium enrichment – something Iranian officials described as 'completely detached from reality.' Iran currently enriches uranium to 60% purity, far above the 3.67% cap set under the now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal, which was rendered null and void after Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from it during his first term. Russia has condemned Israel's initial airstrikes and called for de-escalation. President Vladimir Putin spoke with Trump by phone over the weekend, and according to Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, the two discussed the possibility of reviving negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.
