Word: germanize
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...announcement may have caused some superrich Germans to tremble in their designer shoes. On Tuesday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaüble said the government had agreed to buy a CD from an anonymous informant that contains the stolen bank details of up to 1,500 people who are suspected of evading German taxes by stashing their money in Swiss bank accounts. The decision wasn't made easily: the deal prompted a weeklong bout of soul-searching in Germany, with critics accusing the government of playing into the hands of a common criminal. It also caused a spat with Switzerland...
...According to media reports, the informant first approached tax authorities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia with the deal last month. The individual provided a sample of the data, which authorities are now checking to determine its legitimacy. Details of the proposed deal were then leaked to the media, plunging Chancellor Angela Merkel's government into a public moral dilemma. Should it pay the $3.5 million the informant was reported to have demanded - which the media said could help the country recoup some $140 million in lost tax revenue - or turn down the offer because it amounted...
...Democratic Union Party, urged her to do the latter, saying the data may not even be admissible in court because of the manner in which it was obtained. Other officials and experts warned that the government would be sending the wrong message by striking such a shady deal. "The German rule of law obliges the state to tax people equally, but the state should also not deal with criminals," Moris Lehner, a professor of international law at Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University, tells TIME. "The informant acquired the data through a criminal act, and the government has to weigh...
...Madam Chancellor, You Look Marvelous! I was jarred by some of the descriptions of the German Chancellor in "Merkel's Moment" [Jan. 11]. While the article does a nice job of summing up Angela Merkel's rise through the sexist ranks of German politics, it contradicts itself by using such outdated gender stereotypes as diminutive, frail and kittenish to describe the first female Chancellor of Germany. Though subtle, this sort of language is damaging. One step forward, three steps back. And to think, the writer is a woman. Kate Karczewski Chicago...
Investigators have also raised other concerns: the doomed Concorde appeared to be overloaded with luggage from its planeload of German tourists, who were flying to meet their cruise liner in New York City; one of two routine daily runway sweeps at Charles de Gaulle Airport had reportedly been cancelled that day; and Concorde workers had allegedly neglected to replace a crucial tire spacer on the aircraft in maintenance work four days before the crash. Continental is the only company charged, along with the firm's former welder John Taylor, who fixed the titanium strip to the Continental...