Tuesday, March 19, 2024

19 March 2024: Five German News Stories

 1.  Focus did a survey of Germans on the war-business.

Three-quarters of Germans responding....said they have no confidence in the Bundeswehr (meaning to carry out the defense of the homeland).

Roughly same number said that the gov't has to give the Bundeswehr more funding.

Two of three responded on bringing back the conscription business (the draft) as being right.

One out of three Germans responding said that they would 'stand-up' and participate in the defense of Germany.  

This is one of those topics that no one in Germany would have expected thirty years ago.

2  Some areas of Germany expecting snow this weekend.  It's been spring-like for almost eight weeks now.

3.  Syphilis numbers on a big surge in Bavaria.....not a lot of explanation on details.

4.  Some hyped-up worry that German kids are chatting in chat-rooms on extremism and far-right-wing stuff.  Teachers aggravated by this, and questions come up now over how you handle a group of 12-year-old radicals. 

5.  Just an odd lead-in story last night on ARD prime news.....Microsoft has presented plans for a massive data center....in the far NW of Germany....in what was a open-pit coal-pit.  Two data centers are planned out.  

Microsoft says they will train up to 1.2 million Germans in AI.

Based on the agreement from a decade ago to ease out of the coal business....the gov't gave the region billions of Euro to cover the clean-up and the re-training of personnel.  I suspect a lot of this money will come to Microsoft to pay for their investment in the region.

Getting coal-miners into the tech field?  This part....I'm not that sure about.

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