In Kreuzberg, Berlin, virtual currency Bitcoin has expanded off the internet to become a favoured medium of exchange in real shops and bars. Joerg Platzer, the owner of bar Room 77 is helping to establish what he believes to be the world's first Bitcoin local economy.

Two leaders in the European home education movement, a father from Sweden and a German mother, drew tears from the audience as they told a packed conference room about life in exile and the heart-rending decision to flee abroad. While each of their stories was unique, both parents were forced to escape from their homelands due to relentless government persecution when they refused to stop homeschooling.

Marco Wanderwitz, a conservative member of parliament for the German state of Saxony, said it is unfair and unsustainable for the taxpayer to carry the entire cost of treating obesity-related illnesses in the public health system.

The German teachers association recently called for school kids to be weighed each day, The Daily Telegraph said. The fat kids could then be reported to social services, who could send them to health clinics.

1 in 20 East Germans were informants. "The Lives of Others" is a sad and unsettling movie about what results when Soviet statism is executed with German efficiency: The Stasi. Funny how much of East German communist assets like this museum were homesteaded, and now the "kindler, gentler" western state wants to seize it all over again. Never again!