One of the strangest and most fascinating moments of the literary world in 2016 will come almost immediately after the calendar turns, on Jan. 1, when the 70-year-old German copyright on Hitler’s Mein Kampf finally expires. The book, whose title is usually translated as “My Struggle” in English, is part memoir and part manifesto, and was first published in two editions in 1925 and 1926. As you might guess, it’s an intensely anti-Semitic work, and it lays the groundwork for the atrocities Read more [...]

The 46-year-old was hysterical when she called in to local law enforcement, police report. Her fury had been sparked when her 67-year-old mother-in-law gave her son a box of expensive chocolates for Christmas. But when the boy and his twin sister bit into the treats they immediately spat them out in disgust, complaining there was alcohol inside. After the family was unable to settle the dispute among themselves, the mother called up the police, demanding they step in. However, the officer Read more [...]

The Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") has ruled that a modern topographic map falls within the scope of Article 1(2) of the EU Database Directive 96/9/EC (the "Directive"). Article 1(2) of the Directive provides that a database is "a collection of independent works, data or other materials arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic or other means". The CJEU has already considered Article 1(2) of the Directive in several previous cases and Read more [...]

The 51-year-old man is now sitting in police custody in Cologne almost eight years after the first of his crimes, prosecutors announced on Monday. On January 26th 2008, the man attacked an 18-year-old from behind while she was out jogging in the late afternoon in Storkstadt, northern Bavaria. The man dragged the woman into a bush where he raped her, before escaping on a bicycle. The woman was taken to hospital and police embarked upon an intensive search which included using a helicopter. Read more [...]

But Bavarian interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said on Sunday that the federal government had rejected the request from Munich. "I can't understand at all," Herrmann told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. "That we are not carrying out reliable controls, even five weeks after the Paris attacks and despite the blatant danger, is a sign of weakness." A spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior pointed out that the federal government alone has jurisdiction over Germany's national borders. The Read more [...]

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who has come head-to-head with Greek officials this year over the country's economic policy, told Germany's "Bild am Sonntag" newspaper that Athens has long ignored the rules obliging migrants to file for asylum in the first European Union country they arrive in. German courts, Schäuble was quoted as saying in the Sunday paper, had concluded some time ago that refugees were being treated inhumanely in Greece and were therefore not able to be sent back there. "The Read more [...]

Under German law, a copyright expires at the end of the year 70 years after an author’s death — in this case, Hitler’s April 30, 1945, suicide in a Berlin bunker as the Soviet army closed in. That means Bavaria’s state finance ministry, which holds the copyright, can no longer use it to prevent the work’s publication beyond Dec. 31.

BERLIN –  Bavaria's top security official is urging fuller border controls on the German-Austrian frontier and says his state would like to pitch in. Germany introduced border controls Sept. 13 amid a huge influx of refugees and other migrants. Borders are the federal government's responsibility and federal police have been carrying out checks. Read more [...]

Joachim Herrmann said Bavaria should take control of its own borders, as thousands of desperate refugees continue to flood into the southern German state every day. In an interview with the German weekly newspaper "Welt am Sonntag," Bavaria's interior minister blamed personnel shortages for the federal government's inability to stem the flow of migrants across the border. For that reason, he said, Bavaria's regional government should take the reins. "Here we would like to play an active role Read more [...]

2 houses hosting refugees burnt down in Bavaria Police suspect arson in an incident which saw two houses inhabited by families of migrants go up in flames in the German town of Nördlingen, Bavaria, on Wednesday evening. Twelve people, seven of them teens, have been reported injured. Trends The two houses, which neighbor each other, caught fire almost simultaneously at about 20:45 local time. In the first house, where the fire started in a “totally trashed cellar,” 11 inhabitants, Read more [...]