Germany deports ISIS suspect to Nigeria

Germany has deported to Nigeria an alleged Islamic extremist, an ISIS suspect, deemed dangerous by authorities. He is a German citizen, not Nigerian.The German news agency, dpa, reports that the 22-year-old man, who was born in Germany and who had not committed a crime, arrived in Lagos Thursday.

The unidentified man was one of two detained in February in Goettingen during an investigation of suspected attack plans. His partner is a 27-year-old Algerian. Both of them lived with their parents in Göttingen.

When the two men were picked up, investigators found two weapons, at least one of them a firearm that had been altered to fire live ammunition.

Also found were ammunition, flags of the Islamic State group and a machete.

The man deported to Nigeria is banned from entering Germany for life.

Following attacks by Islamic extremists last year, German authorities vowed to step up deportations of foreigners deemed to be threats.

The two men, according to www.dw.com, were arrested after being under surveillance for some time.

After their arrest, the German interior ministry requested their expulsion after classifying them as a threat to national security.

Their deportation has no precedence in German history.

“We are sending a clear warning to all fanatics nationwide that we will not give them a centimeter of space to carry out their despicable plans,” said Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) following the court ruling authorising the deportation

“They will face the full force of the law regardless of whether they were born here or not,” he added.

In the case of the Algerian, the court made his deportation conditional on assurances from the Algerian government that he would not be tortured or subjected to any inhuman treatment.

German officials threaten Facebook with £425,000 fine for fake news items it posts.

German ministry wants to make social networking sites liable for illegal posts.Justic Minister Heiko Maas said Facebook could be fined for each fake news item
Facebook could also be compelled to distribute corrections that reach the same number of people as the original posts.

German officials are stepping up their criticism of Facebook, saying the social network is doing too little to stop hate speech and could face stiff fines unless it deletes illegal content faster.

In a recent interview, Justice Minister Heiko Maas said his ministry was checking whether it would be possible to make social networking sites legally liable for illegal posts.

Mr Maas has suggested that Facebook should be fined £425,000 (500,000 euros or $522,000) for each fake news item it posts.

German officials are stepping up their criticism of Facebook, saying the social network is doing too little to stop hate speech and could face stiff fines unless it deletes illegal content faster (stock image)

FAKE NEWS IN GERMANY


Germany has seen a sharp increase in vitriolic posts on social media in recent years amid a heated public debate over the influx of more than a million migrants since the start of 2015.

The country has laws against speech deemed to be racist, defamatory or inciting violence — a response to Germany's Nazi legacy.

But authorities have struggled with the deluge of often anonymous postings on foreign-owned websites.


'Of course in the end, we also have to think about fines, if other measures fail to work,' Mr Maas told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

'That would be a strong incentive to act quickly.'

Germany has seen a sharp increase in vitriolic posts on social media in recent years amid a heated public debate over the influx of more than a million migrants since the start of 2015.

The country has laws against speech deemed to be racist, defamatory or inciting violence — a response to Germany's Nazi legacy.

But authorities have struggled with the deluge of often anonymous postings on foreign-owned websites.

Facebook, based in California, says it takes the issue seriously and has hundreds of contractors reviewing posts at a Berlin office.

But Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that staff members there complain of inconsistent rules and overwork.

Thomas Oppermann, a senior lawmaker in Maas' Social Democratic Party, told German weekly Der Spiegel that dominant social media sites like Facebook could be required to delete illegal posts within 24 hours or face fines up to £425,000 (500,000 euros or $522,000).



In a recent interview, Justice Minister Heiko Maas said his ministry was checking whether it would be possible to make social networking sites legally liable for illegal posts

Facebook also could be compelled to distribute corrections that reach the same number of people as the original post, Oppermann suggested, something traditional media companies in Germany are already required to do.

The proposals come as German officials warn that the country's upcoming general election is likely to be heavily affected by hate speech and fake news spread on social media.

The nationalist Alternative for Germany party, which has a strong presence on Facebook, criticized the government's proposals as an attempt to limit free speech.

HOW COULD FACEBOOK REMOVE FAKE NEWS?

1. One option Facebook could adopt involves using existing lists identifying prescreened reliable and fake-news sites.

The site could then alert those who want to share a troublesome article that its source is questionable.

Facebook could use information the extensions generate to warn users before they share unreliable information - which is called a 'nudge'.
2. Facebook could also use the power of crowdsourcing to help evaluate news sources and indicate when news that is being shared has been evaluated and rated.
This indicates when news that is being shared has been evaluated and rated.

3. The third way that Facebook could help would be to reduce the algorithmic bias that presently exists in Facebook.

If Facebook's algorithms brought more of those views into our networks, the filter bubble would be more porous.

Source DailymailUK

German Transgender Man Becomes First In Europe To Have A Baby.

A transgender man is the first in Europe to give birth to a baby after becoming pregnant through a sperm donor.The unidentified man, who was born a woman, delivered the baby boy at home with a midwife in the poor Neukoellin district of Berlin.
He insisted on a home birth because he refused to be listed as the mother on any hospital documents - a legal requirement of in Germany.

The father, who maintained the reproductive organs of a woman, has been taking hormone replacement therapies for years to switch sexes.
Details about the sperm donor or any relationship information has been withheld from the public as the father wanted to protect his son from any attention.

Officially the child, who was born on March 18, does not have a mother, only a father.
A spokesman for the Berlin Senate Administration for Internal Affairs said: 'The person in question did not want to appear as a mother but as a father on the birth certificate and that request has been honoured.'

The expectant father also demanded that the gender of the child was 'not to be revealed under any circumstances'. But the authorities overruled this and announced it was a boy.
Germany's media reacted with astonishment at the news of the transgender birth.
'Baby belly instead of a beer belly!' was just one of the many headlines in German newspapers reporting on the birth.

Meanwhile Falko Liecke, the conservative councillor in the district where the baby was born, said: 'This is something I have never heard or seen of.'
In 2011 Germany's Supreme Court ruled that an individual no longer had to have his or her's reproductive organs removed 'to gain civil legal recognition in the perceived gender'.
That is why the father of this latest child became a man while retaining all the female reproductive organs.

Dr Tobias Pottek of the Asklepios West Hospital in Hamburg said: 'Even if a woman wants to live as a man and takes hormones to grow a beard, as long as the uterus and ovaries are present, it is also possible to become pregnant.
It is the first case of a child born in Europe of a transgender parent, but in the U.S. the case of Thomas Beatie, a transgernder man who has had three children, is well known.
Mr Beatie was seeking a divorce from his wife, but was refused because the judge could not prove if the he was a man when he married.
The judge decided there was no jurisdiction to grant a divorce if the marriage was not recognized.