“F - Go Back to Your Seat.”

SPIEGEL cover story: The OECD’s Pisa study reveals that by international standards German schools have failed. German schoolchildren read poorly, are deficient when it comes to arithmetic and most of all incapable of solving problems. If the school system is to be saved, politicians and educationalists must change their course radically. Perhaps the most sobering result of the Pisa study is the discovery that climbing the social ladder through education and much-quoted equal opportunities, pet issues of social-democratic educational policy, quite evidently don’t happen in this country. Traditionally, German schools are guided by the idea of what ought to be put inside children’s heads, rather than what is to come out of them. German literature lessons, in particular, are still characterised by the notion held by the educated classes that there ought to be a list of good texts which pupils should read and ideally memorise. The question why is not permitted.

“A Number in Afghanistan”

Terrorist attacks: For the first time, German investigators have filed charges against suspected terrorists who were trained in bin Laden’s camps – like many others who are still hiding in Germany. The investigators view the accused as so-called “non-aligned mujahedin”, warriors of God who are not firmly affiliated with a particular organisation, who decide for themselves whether to infiltrate Western countries as terrorists after completing their training. They can attack at any time, even without orders from Afghanistan. The Frankfurt defendants are a perfect example of how important reliable identification can be: only the identity of one of them, Fouhad Sabour, has been firmly established so far. The Frankfurt cell is a school-book example of how closely enmeshed crime and terrorism are by now. The operation was financed to a considerable extent using forged credit cards. It is believed that many more terrorists of this kind are still living in Germany. Months ago, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution estimated their number to be above 100.

“Why the Gondolas Are in Mourning”

Italy: Venice is sinking, inch by inch. Now, a huge steel wall in the sea is to save the “Serenissima”. But if the world heritage site isn’t submerged by water, it may become a victim of commercial exploitation. Last Thursday the government in Rome gave the go-ahead for what will be Europe’s largest current construction project: the “Moses” project – an acronym for “Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico”, meaning: experimental electromechanical module. However, Venice is still a long way from being saved by this measure, because apart from the destructive attacks from below, there are also above-water attacks from within. The city is being hollowed out, eaten up: by its inhabitants, who demand modern luxury flats, and by the tourism which Venice lives off and to which the “Queen of the Seas” is selling off her body bit by bit. What remains is a splendidly dressed up shell consisting of hotels and museums, souvenir shops and fast-food restaurants: a shopping mall behind an antique facade.

“The Riches of the Working Classes”

PDS: After German reunification, the PDS fiddled things to secure the assets of the SED for its own campaign work. Now the post-communists are to save Berlin from bankruptcy; and the questions about their management of state funds have to be raised once again. The Independent Commission for Investigating the GDR Party Assets, which was called into life by the East German parliament, has spent eleven years trying to establish what money flowed through which channels, and to determine what sums of money eventually landed back in the PDS’s coffers – and may still be landing there. So far, the other parties have passed over the findings lightly, with strange indifference. They have even abstained from making the SED/PDS financial transactions an election issue. Is this because the CDU and the FDP, at least, also profited substantially from the assets of the East German block parties?

“I’m Fighting against the Dark”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with UK-resident and writer V. S. Naipaul on the Nobel prize for literature, which he is to receive this Monday in Stockholm, his anger about warlike Islamism, and his latest novel “Half a Life” whch has recently been published in German:

“People who have been converted have to destroy their past, they mustn’t have one. That’s how the fundamentalism arises that you see in countries that have been converted. After September’s events in New York and the bombardment of Afghanistan, the demonstrations against the United States did not occur so much in the Arab countries, but rather in converted countries: in Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan. … Perhaps the view that people are being kept in poverty from the outside is right. But during my travels I have tended to observe the opposite. Malaysia became very rich, Indonesia became extremely rich in 1995. I have also seen my own small island of Trinidad become richer than it has ever been before. If the money was misused there and a lot of it was stolen, then no one was to blame other than the people who were there. … As a writer I am interested in people without the cloak of abstractions. For instance I wanted to find out how colonisation affects human thinking.”

“No One Is Going to Save You Up Here”

What really happened during the attack on America (Part 2): Next instalment of the detailed reconstruction of the attacks of September 11th.

“High Threshold Levels”

Mad cow disease: Bio-researchers all over the world are racing each other to produce the first BSE test for live cattle. Success is likely to lead to a billion-dollar business. But establishing the presence of the pathogens is difficult. About 50 of Europe’s top laboratories are struggling to find a new BSE test. The methods used so far are anything but ideal. The problem is that they only work on dead animals and can only register BSE six months before the first symptoms occur, at the earliest. However, it takes an average of five years from the initial infection of cattle to the outbreak of the disease, whereas most animals are slaughtered at the age of about two, which means in effect that current tests are blind when it comes to most beef cattle.

“A Squadron of Super-Midges”

Genetic engineering: In future, genetically manipulated insects are supposed to fight malaria and yellow fever, manufacture superstrong silk and new drugs, and revolutionise agriculture. What will really happen when biotech bugs leave the laboratory remains uncertain.

“Young, Blond, Evil”

Artists: In London, the German painter Sophie von Hellermann is being celebrated as a new discovery – specifically because she stubbornly continues to poke fun at the trends and quirks of the art industry. She paints quickly and colourfully, simplifying shapes and figures to a few sweeping brush strokes and nevertheless manages impressively to narrowly avoid pure comic-strip naiveté. There is something weirdly fantastic about her fleeting realism, the colourfulness of her works sometimes seems almost poetic, and her figures, which often whirl around in space forlornly, might almost remind one of the melancholy romantic, Caspar David Friedrich – if it weren’t for the fact that Hellermann enhances her pink pictures with a measure of black humour. While studying in Düsseldorf she founded “Hobbypop” with friends to give herself a change of scenery, and then a Hobbypop museum – this consists of a large hall in which they stage performance parties, with individual Hobbypops mutating into DJs and actors.

“Fighting Is My Destiny”

SPIEGEL interview with Austrian national hero Hermann Maier on his depression after his motorcycle accident, the pressure of his countrymen’s expectations and the deceptive feeling of invincibility:

“When the bandages came off for the first time I really did think: What am I ever going to be able to do again with that leg? … My environment is very impatient. It doesn’t leave me any time to be ill. That annoys me … Of course the races in Salt Lake City are the most important of the entire season. But I’ll only be at the starting line there if I’m in a position to win. And at the moment I’m still a long way from that. … When you’ve had so many triumphs you develop a feeling of invincibility. I felt a if I had a protective coat of armour.”