Headlines - More than Meets the Eye

This piece of news is from a Finnish news website called ''Helsingin Sanomat'' and was posted on April 12. 2019 https://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000006069077.html The german Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel had decided to renovate her office. This included taking two paintings down.These two paintings happened to be by Emil Nolden (1867–1951), a German expressionist painter . At first glance it may just be because of  aesthetic reasons but then the second reason might be because of Nolden was discovered to have had some anti-semitic thoughts. Anti-semitism meaning the discrimination or hatred towards Jewish people. This luckily didn’t spark any serious controversy. The reason these paintings were taken down might have something to do with the fact that an art gallery in Germany wished to have only one of the paintings, but when Chancellor Merkel discovered the slightly dark origin of the paintings, she decided to send both of them to the gallery. App...

 This piece of news is from a Finnish news website called ''Helsingin Sanomat''  and it was posted on April 24. 2019  https://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000006082033.html The German candidate to be the president of the EU Commission, Manfred Weber, has said that if he were to be elected, he would stop the construction of the Stream 2 gas pipeline near Russia, most likely because he thinks the EU should not rely on Russian gas. Weber has said that he would stop at nothing to be able to stop the construction of the gas pipeline, whatever law necessary. Weber has also said that he is not the candidate of Germany, but the EPP. Germany is currently split on this decision. Some say that the construction of the Stream 2 gas pipeline would be extremely important for Germany’s ability to produce energy. Germany will be giving up the use of coal and nuclear material, so they need to replace the lost power sources with something, and it would the Russian gas. But the people...

This piece of news is from Finland and media called "Helsingin Sanomat". It was published 11.3.2019. https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000006030729.html A German teacher from Tampere, Seija Sihvo, made an investigation about differences between Finnish and German schools. She interviewed 15-16 year-old-students and their teachers from Germany and Finland. There were 100 students from Finland and 200 from Germany. Also there were 40 teachers. The Finnish students were from schools in Tampere. The German students were from two different types of schools, Hauptschule and Gymnasium. In Germany students are divided into groups of strong, mediocre and weak students depending their grades starting from the fifth grade. But the German students are usually very happy with their own placing different types of schools. For Finnish students it seems really odd that German students are separated in different types of schools depending their grades. Sihvo's investigation shows one thi...

This piece of news is from Finland and media called "Helsingin Sanomat". It was published 8.3.2019. https://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000006027285.html This year Germany is celebrating the centennial of women's right to vote, although in Finland it was celebrated already in 2006. Schools, stores and offices are closed on Friday because of the Women's Day. For the first time it's a day off in Berlin. But nurses have to go to work. Jenny Funke-Kaiser says that many nurses would like to have a day off, but instead they must go to work to take care of patients. The day is harder than usual because kindergartens are closed. Activists are organizing a protest already a day before Women's Day, so that those who have to work on Friday can show their opinions too. In Berlin there is less day offs on weekdays than in other German states. Berlin's politicians wanted to level the situation. Iris Spranger wanted to get the Women's Day free. Spranger wants more wo...

According to the Federal Statistical Office, in February the number of employees increased by 477,000 to 44,79 million in comparison with the same month of the previous year. At the same time, labor force demand remains high. In February, BA recorded 784,000 vacancies. According to Federal Employment Agency chief Deleff Selle, "the labor market remains resilient despite the economic downturn," ie the low growth rates of the German economy. However, the number of unemployed in Germany will fall even further, ie it will have fallen for the first time time since 1981 under the 5% barrier. Source: http://www.economy365.gr/article/112508/se-istoriko-hamilo-i-anergia-sti-germania  

This news about Facebook's right to collect user data  in Germany was published online by Finnish Yleisradio, a public service broadcasting company, on Feb 7th, 2019.  https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-10635459 German competition authorities are opposed to people having to allow virtually unlimited data collection if they want to use Facebook. According to the authorities, Facebook is abusing its dominant position to gather information about people without their knowledge or consent. This will not be allowed in the future. In particular, the competition agency objects the way Facebook  acquires information about people from third party applications, and tracks down people who don't even use Facebook.  Facebook traces people for example from web pages with the Facebook "like" feature, but also from sites where Facebook's presence is not clearly displayed. The decision has no legal force yet. Facebook has one month to complain about it, and the company has announced i...