BBC News is reporting today that a Thomas Cook flight from Glasgow skidded off the end of the runway after landing in Arrecife this morning.
They have a short film showing the plane next to the perimeter fence with fire engines in attendance. Passengers appear to have left the aircraft using steps and there are no chutes visible.
Click here for more details.
Stasi is the abbreviation for Staatssicherheitsdienst. In the GDR this referred to the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit.
The Stasi monitored the people of the GDR, especially those with contact to people in West Germany. Letters were opened, read, and re-sealed. Telephone calls were recorded.
Many people co-operated unofficially with the Stasi, the so-called “IMs” (inoffizielle Mitarbeiter) and reported information about their friends and neighbours. The Stasi then archived this information, creating a large source of information about the people that they were monitoring.
Much of this information was destroyed before German re-unification, although there are projects that reconstruct these documents leading to new revelations about who informed on whom.
To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:
(Press the “play” button to listen to the podcast)
The Solidaritätszuschlag is an additional form of tax that was originally conceived to assist with the re-building of East Germany after re-unification.
It was introduced in 1991 and although there was a break of 2 years in the 1990s, it is still valid today and anyone who pays tax in Germany also pays this Zuschlag on top.
The Solidaritätszuschlag is often a point of discussion, especially a to how long we will have to continue paying it – 18 years after re-unification. However, at the moment there appear to be no plans to discard it again.
To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:
(Press the “play” button to listen to the podcast)
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