”First Exposed to Radiation, then Abandoned”

Ukraine: Nuclear power station technicians and employees at Chernobyl are filled with anxiety about losing their jobs as they wait for the last reactor to be shut down for good. But even after the plant has been switched off, the Ukraine intends to stick to nuclear energy.

“There’s a Shortage of Everything”

SPIEGEL interview with German safety expert Siegfried Donner on the Chernobyl sarcophagus, the defects in the Russian nuclear power plants and the future of the Moscow’s television tower:

“The nuclear power stations are not blocks of concrete, as they are here, but lightweight halls. In a fire, a structure like this will collapse within 15 minutes. But what is much more dramatic is that energy and control cables are still unprotected there too, so that if there is a fire, vital systems can fail, including the coolant pumps. … The money has got to come from Brussels. All the steps have been laid down for a long time in the EU’s TACIS programme, but for three years the Commission has not been in a position to assign the contracts. So it’s not only in the East that things get held up. … In February 1988 we presented a report on the Ostankino tower, at the request of the Russians. … I very much doubt that the television tower can be saved.”

How will things continue after the failed merger of the London and Frankfurt stock exchanges? The electronic stock exchanges are going to emerge as the winners.

“Expensive Discounts”

Car industry: A shock for the head of the DaimlerChrysler group, Jürgen Schrempp: Chrysler’s balance sheet for the last quarter has slipped into the red. For the first time in years, the Chrysler brand stands to make a loss in the third quarter of this year. As the man who forged the group, Schrempp has to face up to the question, what benefits the merger with Chrysler actually offers – to customers, employees and shareholders. The Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler brands continue to exist side by side as if the merger had never taken place.

SPIEGEL interview with Vojislav Kostunica on his prospects in the forthcoming elections and Milosevic’s expected election fraud.

Olympic games: Marla Runyan has taken part in the Paralympics twice, and won gold both times. In Sydney the woman, who is almost blind, is taking part in the real Olympics – a story just made for America.

“In the Backyard of the Games”

Aborigines: A short walk away from Sydney’s resplendent city centre, native Australians live in ghettos. The Olympics did not make it this far. In these days of Sidney’s cheerful games, the chain of impoverishment is moving the Australian public. Last week, the “Sydney Morning Herald” claimed that what it was seeing was a “shame game”, an extra-Olympic competition for shame and disgrace, the outcome of which would determine how the host country fared in the eyes of the world.

“Killing for Wotan”

Neo-Nazis: US marshals have caught one of the cult figures of the German Satanist scene. The murderer and neo-Nazi Hendrik Möbius had been on the run from German plain-clothes police investigators for almost a year. Möbius would prefer not to return to the land of his forefathers – he has applied for asylum in the United States, on the grounds that he is being persecuted in Germany because of his political views. But last week his chances were looking bleak. Even his court-assigned defence lawyer anticipates a speedy deportation.

“In His Waters”

Contemporary history: A CIA agent still goes into raptures about her affair with Fidel Castro – now a documentary is furnishing the intimate details. Marita Lorenz claims a substantial share in the history of the 20th century for herself: the woman from Bremen was Fidel Castro’s mistress and was later meant to poison him on the CIA’s orders. She had a liaison with the Venezuelan ex-dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez and ties with one of the burglars in the Watergate Scandal. And she was also involved in some way or other with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. At least that’s what she herself has been saying in different variations for the last quarter of a century – in interviews, in courts of law and before investigating committees. However it has often been unclear how much of this is fiction and how much is actually true.

”Loyalty to the Fried Potato”

In the land of their dreams, new Australian citizens of German origin are regarded as being hard-working and adaptable. Their economic success, on the other hand, is limited. Many have had a career in middle management and are now settling on the waterside, in other words in clearly preferred locations. However, material Australian fortune is rather a relative affair. Some people can only make ends meet by taking on a second job several times a week.

“Kosher Flowers”

Israel: A cultural war is raging in the Holy Land. Pious Orthodox Jews and worldly liberals are fighting bitterly over whether public life should be governed by the commandments of the Bible or the needs of a modern democracy.