Word: berlin
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...Parts of the city are experiencing levels of poverty that were previously unknown in Germany. A 1999 report on the East Berlin neighborhood of Hellersdorf estimated that 15% of the population lives below the poverty line - defined as a household income that is 50% or less of the national average. A large number of those are children. Bernd Siggelkow, a pastor in Hellersdorf, says Western politicians made big promises to the residents of East Berlin, but they were not fulfilled. "People here thought, 'Now the West is coming with all its glitter and gold,'" Siggelkow, 39, says...
...Berlin's problems can be traced back to the subsidies - amounting to half the total budget in West Berlin - the city once received for its businesses, schools and culture. As a capitalist island behind the Iron Curtain, it was seen as a special case, deserving of special support. Now all that has changed. After the East German government was swept away in 1990, the subsidies were phased out. It became too expensive for companies to run factories there. "Berlin's citizens were very spoiled in the time of the divided country," says Sarrazin. The massive job losses that followed reunification...
Until last summer Patricia Schulze was used to waking up to the drab multistory buildings of her native Berlin. But last July she moved to the small Irish town of Ennis (pop. 18,000), and the country's lush rolling hills now greet her every morning during the 30-minute commute to work. After a year on the dole and some 200 futile job applications in Berlin, the vivacious 25-year-old was so frustrated that she decided to look for employment outside Germany. "There simply was no alternative," Schulze says. Now she's a tele-agent at a call...
...world is starting to look a bit safer for whales. While the largest inhabitants of the cetacean nation mind their own business in the oceans' depths, their human supporters are hailing the International Whaling Commission's shift toward a solidly conservationist agenda. At a Berlin conference last week, the IWC - once a bastion of an industry now worth only about $50 million (compared to whale-related tourism's estimated $1.5 billion) - agreed for the first time to establish a conservation committee. Its task: to advise the IWC on potential threats to marine mammals from pollution, sonar gear, ships, global warming...
...Such moves require the support of three-fourths of voting members rather than a simple majority. "It's a very high hoop to have to jump through," says Margi Prideaux, Australian director of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. But the breakthrough came in the bold new Mexican-led Berlin Initiative - co-sponsored by 12 anti-whaling European countries, plus Kenya, Brazil, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. Its architect, Andrés Rozental, a former Deputy Foreign Minister and ex-ambassador to the U.K., had mobilized support from "like- minded" countries - and signing up southern hemisphere nations was crucial...