Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J30400 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
A weekly round-up of news stories that piqued our interest or made us scratch our heads. This week:
Rightwinger rightly served After five years in the courtroom, Beate Zschäpe, the surviving member of the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU), was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for the murder of 10 people between 2000 and 2007, her part in two bombings and several counts of attempted murder and robbery.
No cause for celebration Vying for a reputation almost as nasty as Zschäpe's, interior minister Horst Seehofer reached new lows when he commended the deportation of 69 rejected asylum seekers to Afghanistan's capital Kabul on a direct flight from Munich on his 69th birthday. One of the asylum seekers subsequently committed suicide upon return. No word on whether that was the present Seehofer was hoping for.
Welcome to Berlin! Liu Xia, the widow of the late Chinese dissident and Noble peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo, arrived in Berlin on Tuesday, after living under house arrest in Beijing for almost eight years. Liu Xia was detained in 2010 after her husband received the Nobel prize for his activism in China while in prison. Xiaobo was jailed in 2009 for 'subversion' and died last year from liver cancer while serving an 11-year prison sentence.
Croats are crackin' Croatia has made it to the World Cup final! And man, are they celebrating here in Berlin. Here they got down and dirty around Europa Center and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on both Saturday and Wednesday night, causing police to block off part of Ku'damm. Should they win on Sunday, we know what to expect.
Berlin vs Munich Eight Bavarian teenagers on a student trip got more than Schnauze last Friday when they were beaten up by 10 Berlin teenagers on Friday night near May-Ayim Ufer in Kreuzberg. Kids these days.
The man without a name It’s been almost four months after one jogger fell into a coma and his identity still remains unknown. According to the police, this is a completely new situation for a missing person and also the first time that there is no missing person report in such a case. The man is estimated to be around 60 to 70 years old and collapsed while jogging on March 13 in Volkspark Wilmersdorf.
That's the sharing economy oBike – the one with the bumpy start – met with a bumpy end on June 25 as they filed for bankruptcy. But worse still is the matter of what to do with the 700 bikes left on streets here in Berlin. The bikes were sold to the Umzug 24, but Umzug's app apparently has trouble locating the bikes at all, leaving most of them lying around the streets. To add insult to injury, those oBike customers who paid a €79 deposit aren't getting their money back. oBoy!