Word: merkel
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...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 to rewarding criminal behavior...
...head of the parliamentary legal affairs committee, Siegfried Kauder, a member of Merkel's Christian 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...
...Merkel agreed. However distasteful Germany's leader may have found the deal, she said on Monday that the end, in this case, may justify the means. "Just like any reasonable person, I am in favor of punishing tax evasion," she told reporters in Berlin. "In order to do this, everything should be done to get hold of this data...
...country's role in Afghanistan is concerned, Merkel is helped by the fact that in three consecutive coalition governments, prominent members of all parties except one have supported the military effort, including former heavyweights like her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder. Also, citizens who are normally lukewarm about employing soldiers abroad get increasingly frustrated with human rights - women's in particular - being trampled on by the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. She may do it at a snail's pace occasionally, but Angela Merkel takes things one step at a time. Werner Radtke, PADERBORN, GERMANY...
...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...