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RTH10260
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Germany

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ISIS Fighter Convicted in Death of Enslaved 5-Year-Old Girl
In a trial held in Germany, the man was sentenced to life in prison for the death of the Yazidi girl, whom he allowed to die of thirst in Falluja, Iraq.

By Christopher F. Schuetze
Nov. 30, 2021

BERLIN — A German court on Tuesday convicted an Islamic State fighter for crimes against humanity and war crimes for tying up a 5-year-old Yazidi girl he had bought as a slave in Iraq, and leaving her in scorching heat to die of thirst.

The 29-year-old man, identified only as Taha Al-J. under German privacy laws, was sentenced to life in prison and ordered to pay 50,000 euros, or about $57,000, in compensation to the girl’s mother, who was a co-plaintiff in the case and was present when the verdict was read.

It was the first genocide conviction of a fighter for the Islamic State, which systematically persecuted the Yazidi ethnic group in Iraq, according to Christoph Koller, the judge overseeing the trial in Frankfurt. During its reign, the Islamic State killed thousands of Yazidi men, and kidnapped and forced into slavery thousands of Yazidi women and girls.

“This is the moment Yazidis have been waiting for,” Amal Clooney, a human rights lawyer and a member of the mother’s legal team, said in a statement. “To finally hear a judge, after seven years, declare that what they suffered was genocide.”

Even though neither the victim nor the killer were German, and the crime occurred in Falluja, Iraq, the trial was held in Germany on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which German courts have been using to try people accused of war crimes in countries like Iraq and Syria.



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/worl ... rmany.html
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https://www.axios.com/olaf-scholz-germa ... 23a6b.html
Social Democrat Olaf Scholz was sworn in as chancellor of Germany on Wednesday, succeeding Angela Merkel after 16 years and launching a new era of German and European politics.

Why it matters: Scholz, a center-left pragmatist who served as finance minister and vice chancellor in Merkel's last government, will lead Europe's largest economy in a coalition with the environmentalist Greens and pro-business Free Democrats.

The big picture: Climate change, more progressive social and economic policies, and a stronger European Union are the central planks of the Social Democratic platform.

The experienced former mayor of Hamburg is seen as a continuity figure for Merkel's foreign policy, which has been driven in large part by the interests of Germany's export-driven industry.
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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RTH10260
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Germany

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Germany’s last three nuclear power stations to shut this weekend
Closures, delayed after Russia reduced Europe’s gas supplies, leave conundrum for energy policymakers

Alex Lawson
Sat 15 Apr 2023 07.00 BST

Germany’s three remaining nuclear power stations will shut down on Saturday, 12 years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan accelerated the country’s exit from atomic energy.

The closures mark the conclusion of a stop-start approach to atomic energy and a victory for the country’s vociferous anti-nuclear movement.

The facilities shutting are in Emsland, in the northern state of Lower Saxony, the Isar 2 site in Bavaria, and Neckarwestheim, in Baden-Württemberg in the south-west.

The shutdowns leave a conundrum for energy policymakers attempting to balance growing electricity demand in one of Europe’s industrial superpowers and efforts to decarbonise, against the backdrop of uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine.

Germany last year delayed the closure of the three sites – which provided about 6.5% of the country’s electricity in 2022 – after Russia reduced European gas supplies, triggering concerns about a shortage of energy over the winter.

The country began phasing out nuclear power more than two decades ago amid a long-fought campaign against the technology, but, in 2010 Angela Merkel, then chancellor, announced an extension to the life of the country’s 17 nuclear plants until 2036 at the latest.

This policy was swiftly reversed the following year after an earthquake and tsunami caused the meltdown of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, triggering fresh anti-nuclear protests and political resolve to exit the technology.

Nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 had already entrenched the push against nuclear in Germany, which had begun earlier in the 1970s. Germany has switched off 16 reactors since 2003.

The final shutdowns have raised questions about security of energy supplies and the outlook for Germany’s carbon emissions. The country plans to close all coal-fired power plants by 2038, with the first round of closures planned in 2030.

However, its parliament approved emergency legislation to reopen mothballed coal-fired power plants to aid electricity generation last year. A push to build more terminals to import liquefied natural gas has also been accelerated since the Ukraine war began.





https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... is-weekend
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