"The Smuggling Scandal"

SPIEGEL cover story: For years, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer promoted something that Interior Minister Otto Schily is now fighting against: an edict signed by Fischer brought hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into the country - and strengthened the parallel society of prostitutes and people smugglers in Germany. For more than five years the government, under the overall control of the Foreign Office, pursued a policy which led to a situation where it was virtually impossible to check visa applications in German embassies and consulates. Warnings and reports by the security authorities were ignored, requests for help by the overtaxed embassies were brusquely turned down. The extent of the neglect of duty on all levels is only gradually becoming apparent. The Chancellor and his men thought the committee of inquiry would soon founder. Now they are no longer so sure; they admit that they underestimated the political dynamics.

"Deeply Distrustful"

Democracy: The German government and the opposition feel that the Federal Constitutional Court has encouraged them to try once again to ban the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany). However, the politicians - and the court - also fear a second attempt. The heated debate, which cuts across all party lines, is fueled by worries that the extreme rightists may become a permanent fixture on the parliamentary landscape.

"A Free Market is Essential"

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with Russia's Minister for Economic Affairs German Gref about the breaking up of Yukos, the fears of a return to an authoritarian state and his relationship with Vladimir Putin:

"Our course continues to be headed towards privatisation. I agree with Ludwig Erhard in the sense that one ought to have as much of a free market as possible and as much state control as necessary. ... We have 13 large oil companies. If you were to take away their property, the result would be a revolution. That's not the right approach. We have changed the tax laws. It is now twice as hard to evade taxes. Anyone who does not abide by the new rules, will pay for it. ... My line is our president. I believe in Putin."

"The City of Girls"

China: They fled from villages in which daughters never counted for much; now they are building refrigerators and photocopiers and raising no complaints about the low wages. The economic miracle of Shenzhen has been brought about by young women - a place of dreams, as they say in this province. In May 2003 the Chinese "Worker's Daily" announced that 5.5 million migrant workers were working in Shenzhen and its industrial suburbs, 70 percent of them women. In Nanshan, the high-tech district in the west of the city, 80 percent of the 400,000 immigrant workers were women, with an average age of 23. They are skilful, more so than men. They are able to concentrate well and for long periods of time. They are hard-working. They are uncomplaining. They are at work all over the place. They have been sent by families in which daughters still don't count much, and sons mean everything. They have come from villages in which female offspring are to this day considered a calamity, because sons are still sacrosanct as those who will one day feed their parents.

"We Are Heroes Too"

Berlin Film Festival: The US film industry is not putting in much of an appearance at the Berlin Film Festival, which begins this week. Instead, numerous European film-makers will be attending with fresh determination. In screen epics they are celebrating resistance heroes and heads of state - and appealing to the identity of the new Old World. It is not by design that festival director Dieter Kisslicki is having to do largely without the big US stars that he has managed to lure to Berlin so successfully since he took office four years ago. He blames this lull on the glamour front on the fact that the Academy Award ceremony has been brought forward by a month for the second time running, and will be taking place on 27 February in Los Angeles. This has curbed the wanderlust of actors and film directors. However, the strong European presence at the film festival is not simply a result of Hollywood's absence. Many European markets have been seeing increases in turnover of up to 10 percent in recent years - particularly due to domestic productions.

"Wildly Jagged Temperature Curve"

Series about World War II: Dresden is regarded as a symbol of senseless destruction. To this day no one knows how many people fell victim to the bombs. New research now suggests that 25,000 were killed - distinctly fewer than hitherto assumed. Only now, 60 years afterwards, is a line finally to be drawn under decades of uncertainty: a commission of ten historians put together by the Lord Mayor of Dresden Ingolf Roßberg is to put an end to the debate and present definitive numbers: it may well adjust previous estimates dramatically downwards. One of the reasons for calling upon the experts is that the city's destruction in the fire storm has always been instrumentalised politically - in particular quoting the number of victims.

"Deceit and Malice"

Commemoration: Dresden before 13 February - the remembrance of the city's destruction 60 years ago is becoming a hazardous balancing act. Right-wing and left-wing forces both want to exploit the legend. The NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany) will be omnipresent on the day. Now that they have entered the local parliament as members of the Landtag and Dresden's City Council, these right-wing extremists can no longer be excluded from the memorial service at the Heide Cemetery. And Holger Apfel, the leader of the NPD parliamentary group, has even assumed the patronage of the funeral march. The far right will be running into several hundred left-wingers and autonomous groups who have already announced a firm "intervention against the bourgeois mob and Nazi parade" under the slogan of "No Tears for Krauts". Dresden's authorities are trying to rescue the contemplative atmosphere.

"The Child Warriors"

Poland: In August and September 1944 the people of Warsaw rose up against their German occupiers. Among the rebels were thousands of boys and girls. To this day the people of Warsaw are proud of their youngest warriors. Alongside the old town wall they have erected a monument to them: the statue of a young boy wearing a helmet that is far too large for him and holding an equally oversized machine gun. Nevertheless, the involvement of the children was not uncontroversial. Adult fighters protested, parents tried to hold back their offspring, and the statutes of the Polish boy scouts, whose members often acted as medical orderlies or messengers, only allowed members above the age of 18 to carry guns. It was calculated that some 40,000 insurgents would suffice - even if inadequately armed - to push back the German occupiers and welcome the approaching Soviet soldiers in Warsaw as masters of the house. But the dream of liberating themselves by their own efforts ended in an inferno of bloodshed.

"Chaos in the Icy Body"

Natural disasters: French researchers are reproducing the descent of an avalanche in a simulator perched at an altitude of almost 3000 metres, and hoping to unravel the mystery of the physical laws underlying the snowy tumult. Now they have hit upon a mathematical formula which makes the disaster predictable.

"Land of the Steel-Collar Workers"

Robots: At this year's Expo, Japan wants to impress the world with an army of novel robots. Big corporations like Toyota and Sony have been developing humanoid automata. With this huge contingent of robots, the world's second largest industrial nation is hoping to upgrade this year's Expo - an event whose purpose has been called into some doubt since the World Fair in Hanover. In particular the host nation wants to swear its domestic industry to an ambitious technological vision: in just ten years, such automata are to be put to work in private households, hospitals and companies throughout the country. There is a deeper reason behind the Japanese obsession with robots. The population of the island nation is ageing more rapidly than any other - by 2050 a third of its citizens will be over 65 years old. Instead of bringing foreigners into the country, the nation, which has concerns about its culture, wants to meet its needs in terms of workers and nurses with domestic robots.

"Look Back in Colours of Anger"

Art: The Berlin artist Amelie von Wulffen is creating a sensation internationally. The Centre Pompidou in Paris is devoting a solo exhibition to her mysterious, wonderfully bizarre collages. Some items seem odd, many are creepy, nothing is transfigured. Instead Amelie von Wulffen shows how the images and stories of the past have forced their way into the present day with a mind of their own. Experts are noting, almost with awe, that here is someone who is tackling the über-subject of 'remembrance' with enormous self-assurance, while at the same time renewing the old avant-garde principle of the collage.