A brilliant innovation or a sad day for journalism? On Deadline reports, you decide:

Germany's Bild newspaper plans to partner with a supermarket chain to distribute $89 cameras that readers can use to take pictures and shoot videos for use in the publication's print and web editions.

"We can't cover everything," Michael Paustian, an editor at the paper, tells AP. "We think it is an advance for journalism."

It's commonly known that vast quantities of vice leave Afghanistan's borders each year, but German forces are fighting back. Media reports show that German military bases in the country received shipments of more than a million liters of alcoholic beverages last year. That included 990,000 liters of beer and 69,000 liters of wine. If all of this were consumed only by the 3,600 German troops stationed in Afghanistan, that would come out to 275 liters of beer per soldier.

Back in the Fatherland, the opposition Free Democrats party, which requested these figures from the military, seized on the revelation as a sign that more must be done to relieve the boredom of German troops. But the Defense Ministry shrugged these concerns off, saying troops were "well within" the two-cans-per day limit. The ministry added that the drinks, which are for purchase, are also consumed by German police, journalists, and diplomats. Even Foreign Minister Franz Walter Steinmeier likes to kick back a cold one when he's in country. "When he visits Afghanistan occasionally one or two cans of beer will be downed," said one Foreign Ministry spokesman.

If President-elect Obama pressures Germany into sending its troops south to fight the Taliban, maybe they'll have fewer chances to tank up. But so long as Chancellor Angela Merkel adamantly refuses to let this happen, I say "Prost!"

Photo: MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images

Berlin's Tempelhof Airport saw its final flights take off yesterday. The aging facility has been closed in anticipation of a major new airport to be built in an outlying area of Berlin.

It may have been Orville and Wilbur Wright who brought us the machinery, but you might say Tempelhof is where the magic of flying was born. It opened as the first passenger airport in 1923 and became the largest and most modern airport in the world after the current structure was built between 1936 and 1941, during Nazi rule. In its 85 years of service, it hosted everything from the Beatles to round-the-clock airlifts during the Berlin Blockade.

It's a sad day for people who cherish those memories, but also for critics of the change, who say closing an airport with such proximity and convenience to the city center just goes to show politicians' apathy towards Berlin's economic well-being. We'll leave that fight to the Berliners. Let's just say that with so many superstar architects working on slickly designed, glorified shopping mall airports these days, it's sad to see a classic go.

Granted, there are only so many ways photographers can show a stock market in decline. Still, couldn't the folks at Getty Images leave this poor German trader alone and find someone else to use as a stand-in for an entire continent's economic fears?

Here she is earlier today, a terse, worried look on her face as Germany's DAX Index plunges to its lowest point since July 2006:

Mario Vedder/Getty Images

Here she was on Sept. 30 as the DAX crossed below 6,000 points:

THOMAS LOHNES/AFP/Getty Images

Here she was looking cautiously optimistic on Sept. 19 as the Dax rose on news of the Wall St. bailout:

THOMAS LOHNES/AFP/Getty Images

And here she was pursing her lips disapprovingly on a particularly grim Sept. 16, in a photo that made the front page of the Financial Times:

THOMAS LOHNES/AFP/Getty Images

I bet she wishes she can go back to the days of Sept. 15, when she could do her job in relative obscurity:

Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images

UPDATE: The woman's name is Simone Wallmeyer. The Independent interviewed her Friday. "I'm afraid I get photographed because of the board rather than me," she told the paper.

(Thanks to a sharp-eyed Passport reader for the name.)

This is shocking:

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 17 nations finds that majorities in only nine of them believe that al Qaeda was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Check out this graphic:

Among the many interesting findings here is that Palestinians are actually much less prone to conspiracy theories than Egyptians and Jordanians. Maybe it's because they have a more educated population, a freer press, and a less oppressive government. Egyptians tend to believe the opposite of whatever their government tells them. 

But wow, what's wrong with Mexico and Germany?

I once went to a party in college where the hosts had hung their furniture upside-down from the ceiling. But this takes the cake:

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The house, in the town of Trassenheide on Germany's Baltic Sea island of Usedom, is appropriately named "The World Stands on its Head." It opens today as a tourist attraction.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Here's what it looks like inside:

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The only thing that's right-side up? The stairs.

If choosing a U.S. president were up to the French, the Germans, and the British, Barack Obama would have a lock on the presidency. As Gallup reports today, large majorities in three countries the Illinois senator plans to visit this week would rather see Obama elected than John McCain. They also say that which candidate wins "makes a difference" to their country.

This poll fits well our intuitions about Europe's big three: They tend to favor Democrats, and they don't like George W. Bush. In 2007, Gallup found that approval of U.S. leadership in those countries had sunk to disturbing depths: -- reaching just 8 percent in Germany, 9 percent in France, and 20 percent in Britain. Gallup attributes the low numbers to the Iraq war, the U.S. stance on climate change, and anger over Guantánamo.

The differences between Obama and McCain on these issues, at least on a superficial level, appear to be narrowing. Both Obama and McCain have pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq -- they are now arguing over whether to set an explicit timetable for doing so or whether to allow "conditions on the ground" to be the determining factor. Both Obama and McCain want to join international efforts to combat global warming, though Obama would push for greater emissions cuts. And both senators would like to see Guantánamo shut down. From a European perspective, either senator would be a step up from Bush (or at least the Bush of 2004).

If Obama does win in November, the great expectations he is setting in Europe could come back to haunt him. As Anne-Marie Slaughter, quoting a German friend, wrote last year, "Underneath every America-hater is a disappointed America-lover." Last week, one European diplomat shared with me his fear that the real Obama can't possibly live up to the hype. (Try, for instance, counting the votes in the Senate for a climate-change bill with real teeth.) This is the moment, then, for Obama to tell Europeans that he is going to let them down. Better they hear it from his own lips now than figure it out on their own, two years down the road.

VOLKER HARTMANN/AFP/Getty Images

Billed as a clash of Germany's "two national teams," today's match between Germany and Turkey in the semifinals of the European Championship exemplifies the deep, yet often tense, ties between the two countries.

An estimated 2.7 million people of Turkish origin live in Germany, comprising the country's largest minority. Many Turkish immigrants, however, say they are not fully accepted in German society. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that most Germans of Turkish origin are backing their blood and supporting Turkey in today's match. Said Kahan Abay, who has lived in Germany his whole life:

It's all about heart, blood and passion. I'm preparing myself for defeat though, which is kind of symbolic of Turkish life over here.''

The leaders of both countries haven't done much to help the tensions, either. Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan told ethnic Turks at a rally in Germany in February that "assimilation is a crime against humanity," and German PM Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union Party opposes adding Turkey to the European Union.

Although most with Turkish ties will be rooting against Germany, some Germans are switching loyalties to support the Turkish team, which is something of a Cinderella after pulling off dramatic come-from-behind victories upsets over Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and Croatia. "It's only fair," one German told the New York Times while shopping for a Turkey T-shirt. "They've never won the tournament."

German police say they are "prepared for anything," but there are signs of calm and coexistence. The editors of the German Bild and Turkish Hürriyet newspapers co-wrote an edtiorial calling on fans to support the winner of today's match in the final against Spain or Russia on Sunday. Meanwhile, Merkel and Erdogan are scheduled to sit together at the match.

Hamit Altintop, one of two German citizens on the Turkish national team, told Spiegel online he hoped the game would be "another step toward the much-discussed goal of integration," but doesn't quite consider himself German at heart:

No. Maybe I'm both."

Germany is sending an additional 1,000 troops to Afghanistan.

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images

If you want to become a German citizen, you'll have to pass a new citizenship test as of September 1. The test has 33 questions on the country's politics, history, and society. To pass, you have to answer 17 questions correctly (52 percent of the total 33).

Seven sample multiple-choice questions were unveiled this week. I took the mini-test here and passed, but just barely (I got four questions right). How did you all score? Feel free to leave comments below.

And, for anyone planning to become an American, the United States will be using a redesigned citizenship test as of October 1 that is supposed to focus less on civics trivia and more on fundamentals about the country's government, history, and geography. Ten sample questions are here. I doubt many American-born citizens would know the answers to most of these questions. In fact, Gary Gerstle, a professor of American history at Vanderbilt University, told the New York Times that of those who take the test:

[T]heir knowledge of American history may even exceed the knowledge of millions of American-born citizens.

No word yet on whether the German or American citizenship tests' study materials will include a DVD of gay men kissing and a topless woman on the beach -- images found in the Netherland's test-prep package.

DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/Getty Images

Polish-born soccer player Lukas Podolski (left) scored the two goals that gave Germany a 2-0 win over Poland last Sunday in the Euro 2008 tournament.

That has enraged far-right Polish politician Miroslaw Orzechowski of the League of Polish Families. He told Polish newspaper Dziennik:

If someone performs in the colors of a foreign state, there's already a desire there to renounce citizenship.

Going a step further, he also told a Polish radio station that Podolski should be stripped of his Polish citizenship and that he would take legal action if the country's president didn't follow through, according to German media reports.

Podolski emigrated from Poland when he was 2 and has Polish and German passports, so he wasn't exactly playing in the colors of a "foreign state." Moreover, he bent over backward to show respect for his country of birth by refraining from cheering exuberantly when he scored his two goals.

The entire incident is an example of the complicated transnational identities that arise in a mobile, globalized, and interconnected world. I have friends who were born to immigrant parents in one country, married someone from another country, and moved to a third country -- mother, father, and child were born on separate continents. "Where are you from?" is no longer a simple question for such people.

Perhaps that's why U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama -- born in Hawaii to an American mother and Kenyan father, and raised for a while in Indonesia -- appeals to so many worldwide. We're entering an era of people with borders.

Johannes Simon/Getty Images

HOFSTETTEN, GERMANY - MAY 27: Farmer Jakob Moesl (C) blocks the access to his farm with a empty milk tank and a placard reading 'Stop milk delivery!!! For a fair price' on May 27, 2008 in Hofstetten near Landsberg am Lech, Germany.

Germany's dairy farmers are furious. Many have them have stopped shipping milk to factories because they want 43 eurocents a liter, rather than the 28 to 34 cents they get now. But there's a problem: What to do with all the milk they are still producing? The cows don't go on strike just because the farmers do.

According to Deutsche Welle, "the unsold milk is being fed to calves or dumped in farm-waste tanks."

It's a shame when so many people around the world are struggling to buy food, but Romuald Schaber, who heads an association of some 30,000 dairy farmers, says the boycott is the only tool in the farmers' arsenal:

All we can do now is use our milk as a weapon.... Milk is might, and we have the milk."

Sean Gallup/Getty Images News

A crane swings over the skeleton of the former Palace of the Republic (Palast der Republik) on April 24, 2008 in Berlin, Germany. The Palace of the Republic is the former parliament building of the former East Germany, and is to be completely disassembled by the end of the year. Many Berliners are against the move, citing the historical importance of the building.

I loved the film Good Bye Lenin! as much as the next guy, but sometimes you just have to move on. I mean, we are talking about a significant eyesore here, and one that's in a prime riverfront spot:

JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

JIM WATSON

While NATO allies publicly debate their role in Afghanistan, attendees say a secret memo is circulating around the conference that plans for the alliance's exit from the conflict. Der Spiegel reports that Germany played a major role in drafting the "master plan" for the eventual removal of 47,000 NATO troops.

The document is actually less dramatic than it seems. In the short term it "calls for soldiers to gradually focus their attention more on training Afghan police forces and to hand over responsibility for actual conflict situations 'as soon as external circumstances and Afghan capabilities allow.'"

Wasn't equipping Afghan forces to eventually handle their own security always NATO's plan in Afghanistan? How is this a major change in policy? Der Spiegel hedges that the benchmarks layed out the memo might keep a NATO presence in Afghanistan until 2015, so it's possible that the document is just a fantasy meant to assuage the skeptical German public.

While the paper avoids a specific date for withdrawal, Germany Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung is optimistic about its implementation:

According to everything I've seen and to everything that other countries have added," Jung said of the paper, "I am very hopeful that it can be achieved in the forseeable future."

Mission accomplished?

You may already have seen this incredible photo from a fire in Ludwigshafen, Germany, an industrial town across the Rhein from Mannheim:

AFP/Getty Images

The photo instantly told a heartwarming, if tragic, story: Fire-trapped Family Throws Baby to Safety.

Nine people died in Sunday's blaze, and a further 60 were injured. But incredibly, the 11-month-old baby survived without injury. In recent days, though, the story has taken a darker turn. Speculation is growing that the fire was not an accident, but racially motivated arson aimed at Turkish or Turkish-origin families living in the building. The accusations have been aired prominently in the Turkish press, and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is reportedly meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel today about it. There is some suggestive circumstantial evidence that arson was the motive:

The police confirmed Wednesday that the apartment building had already been daubed with neo-Nazi graffiti before the fire. The word "Hass" ("hate") was written twice on the wall next to the entrance to a Turkish cultural center on the ground floor of the building, with the last two letters written in the style of the Germanic runes of Hitler's SS organization.

Investigators have yet to issue their findings, however. For Germany, this is an extremely delicate topic. There are an estimated 2.5 million ethnic Turks in Germany, a relatively large minority in a nationalistic country of about 82.5 million. The good news? In the most recent state elections in Hesse, voters appeared to reject a xenophobic campaign waged by the incumbent, a Merkel ally. Tensions, of course, could easy flare up as a result of this incident. Stay tuned.

SEAN GALLUP/Getty Images

The excitement aroused by the World Cup soccer tournament in Germany in 2006 may have increased that country's birthrate as much as 15 percent nine months later. But the intensely emotional matches have now also been correlated with a spike in the number of cardiac emergencies.

A study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine examined the number of cardiac emergencies in the greater Munich area in the summer of 2006. It compared that number with the numbers in similar periods in 2003 and 2005, and for several weeks before and after the 2006 World Cup.

On days when the German team played, the incidence of cardiac emergencies was 2.66 times higher than during the comparison periods. For men, the incidence was 3.26 times higher; for women, it was 1.82 times higher. People with a history of heart disease were particularly affected.

The study's authors say emotional stress was the main trigger, but they add that sleep deprivation, excessive consumption of junk food and alcohol, and smoking might also be contributing factors. They suggest that spectators with heart problems should take preventive measures, such as consulting their doctors about increased medication dosages during intense sports events.

So should Americans be worried about this weekend's Super Bowl? Study author Gerhard Steinbeck says:

It's reasonable to think that something quite similar might happen.

Though if the Vegas odds-makers have it right, the greater danger on Sunday may turn out to be irate New York Giants fans.

Der Spiegel online has posted a candid interview with Germany's top military officer in Afghanistan. He admits that Germany needs to do more, mainly by getting rid of the caveats that restrict where German soldiers can go and what functions they can perform (Germans are posted mainly in the relatively stable north of the country):

The limitations that the Germans have placed upon themselves are not regarded as optimal here. If a country takes over reconstruction responsibilities, its teams can, in an emergency, be replaced by reserve units if the Afghans go into battle. That's what we're really talking about here. When all the countries on a mission go into conflict areas and then a few of them say that they're only going to do something very specific, it becomes difficult.

He also doesn't have much patience for the argument, heard so often in Europe, that the war-fighting element of the mission (largely but not exclusively done by the American-led force called OEF) is getting in the way of gentler peacekeeping and uncontroversial reconstruction.

It bothers the Americans when Europeans accuse them of waging the war in a brutal fashion. If there were no OEF, the insurgency would gain strength in the country and they would consider themselves unopposed here, which could also threaten ISAF's success. Here at ISAF we don't have the forces to go after the extremists alone.

Maybe somebody in the Green Party will listen. 

Germany may not be too gung-ho about the war in Iraq, but that doesn't mean the country is not serious about stopping terrorism and extremism. That said, the latest serious tool it has added to its arsenal for fighting extremist Islam is ... a comic book (pdf).

Created by the interior ministry of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the comic book features an adolescent German hero, Andi. Andi's frustrated Muslim friend Murat, a German resident of Turkish heritage, can't find an apprenticeship and blames his difficulties on xenophobia. Murat starts to become brainwashed by Harun, a Muslim youth who takes Murat to meet a radical sheikh who shows them extremist Web sites.

The story has a happy ending after Murat finally comes to his senses when his sister Ayshe—a modern, head-scarf-wearing, Muslim girl who staunchly believes in liberal democracy—is threatened by Harun.

Hamburg is planning to use the comic book in its schools; additionally, a second Andi comic is headed to schools soon. It's unclear how German kids will react, though, or whether the book will succeed in stopping the cultivation of homegrown terrorists, such as the three men—two German citizens who had converted to Islam and one Turkish Muslim resident—who were arrested in September for planning bomb attacks. It wouldn't be surprising if teenagers—being teenagers—find it cheesy and just roll their eyes. More importantly, though, is the impact on Muslims. The 2005-06 Danish cartoon outrage showed that cartoons and Muslims don't often go well together. (At least this comic book doesn't appear to have images of the prophet.) There's bound to be somebody who complains that the comic book depicts distorted caricatures of Muslims in Germany.

If the book gets families talking and makes youth more apt to peer-pressure their friends away from extremist recruiters, though, it may have well served its purpose. Only time will tell if placing the security of Germany on the shoulders of a teenage comic-book hero will protect the country from terrorism.

JOHN MOORE/Getty Images News

A recent report out of Germany indicates that alcohol abuse by elite German soldiers in Afghanistan is rampant. Members of Germany's Kommando Spezialkräfte openly flout alcohol restrictions, drinking heavily and trading booze with U.S. troops for snippets of intelligence and helicopter rides, according to Der Spiegel. One U.S. soldier says beer is a "currency ... To us, the German beer supplies were Big Rock Candy."

And drinking is not limited to rank and file soldiers. The behavior of a drunken German colonel during mission briefings in Kandahar, for instance, prompted complaints from U.S. military officials.

The Germans aren't the only ones with substance-abuse problems. A report in the New York Times earlier this year found that "alcohol- and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all Army criminal prosecutions of soldiers" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's easy to dismiss the drinking as "boys will be boys" behavior. And you can't blame soldiers for having a drink or two, considering what they go through each day.

But if history is any guide, the heavy drinking could indicate low morale. During Vietnam, substance abuse was widespread and tied to frustration with progress and battlefield stress. This was also the case for the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan. Facing extended deployments, up to 50 percent of Red Army troops turned to drugs.

Last month, I attended a discussion on the state of the Iraq war. One panelist said the troops still believed in the fight because, unlike Vietnam, they had not yet turned to drugs or alcohol. Unfortunately, these reports suggest otherwise.

Pool/Getty Images

Shimon Peres, Israel's president and former ... everything, denounced Columbia University this morning for hosting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday:

I think that Columbia University made a mistake ... With Hitler there was a dialogue. (British Prime Minister Neville) Chamberlain went to talk to him. What did it help? It helped cover the fact that Hitler prepared concentration camps and death camps."

Sure, Ahmadinejad may be strengthening his domestic position. But notice what happened today at the U.N.: French President Sarkozy called for "combining firmness with dialogue," reiterating his position, "if we allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, we would incur an unacceptable risk to stability in the region ad the world." And Germany's Angela Merkel came out in support of a new round of sanctions "if [Iran's] behavior doesn't change." She added, "Israel's security isn't negotiable," and referred to Ahmadinejad's history of comments on Israel as "inhumane".

These statements may well have been worked out on Friday, when the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany met in Washington to discuss the sanctions issue. But it sure was easier for Germany to toughen its stance after yesterday's farce at Columbia. Ahmadinejad had a chance to come across as a moderate, undercutting the unity of the EU3. Instead, he came across as a buffoon not ready for prime time. We'll see if he acquits himself better here at the U.N. in a few minutes, but suffice it to say that Iran is back on its heels today.