BONN---Dismantling a cardinal principle of postwar Germany's protection of individual privacy, Parliaraent on Friday approved a law that would permit the police to bug private homes for the first time since the Nazi era.

Previously, the authorities were able to tap telephones in exceptional circumstances relating to crime and terrorism, officials at the Justice Ministry said, and to use listening devices to monitor such emergencies as hostage-taking. But the constitution guaranteed the inviolability of private hornes from all forms of eavesdropping including long-range or concealed electronic devices.

[continues 475 words]

BERLIN—Perhaps no other Western democracy is as highly regulated as Germany. The nation's voluminous legal code prescribes socially acceptable norms for almost every aspect of life. There are laws that dictate what names you may bestow on your children, what kind of waste you are allowed to produce and how much per week, and what times of the day you are permitted to wash the car or mow the lawn.

But when it comes to controlling behavior that may jeopardize public health and safety, German laws can be curiously lax. Foreigners are often amazed by the absence of speed limits on freeways, where a frenzied parade of Porsche, MercedesBenz and BMW automobiles roar recklessly down the pike at speeds of 150 mph. The antispeedlimit lobby proudly trumpets the slogan, "Freie Fahrt fur Freie Buerger," which roughly translates as "Full Speed Ahead for Free People."

[continues 685 words]

Indictments near for former E. Germany coaches, doctors who gave drugs to athletes

By PAUL GEITNER Associated Press

HAMBURG, Germany She was 5 years old when she learned to swim, and won her first competition a year later. Then came the special sport school, and later the candy boxes filled with brightly colored pills instead of chocolates.

"Every athlete had his box, with his name on it, and these tablets were inside, a small handful," recalled former East German swimmer Catherine Menschner.

[continues 875 words]

by Sheryl Oring 12:09pm 25.Aug.97.PDT Last year, Petra Namyslo and a few friends tossed around an idea: They wanted to organize a demonstration for the legalization of marijuana.

"We met each other at the Hemp Museum [in Berlin]," said Namyslo, a 42yearold former secretary. "We built the museum up together and we decided to try this too, to try to join people together from all over Germany."

Last week, in a oneroom office in a workingclass neighborhood of eastern Berlin, Namyslo and three others hammered out final logistics for an event they called the Hemp Parade. No one knew quite what to expect. More than 100 market spaces had been leased, Namyslo said with a bit of surprise. But who knew how many people would show?

[continues 934 words]

LUXEMBURG. The government of the Grand Duchy wants to relax its hitherto strict punishment for drug consumers, according to the Minister of Justice Marc Fischbach und the Minister of Health Johny Lahure yesterday. The proposal states that in the future consumers of soft drugs will only receive a fine of up to 5000 Marks instead of a prison sentence. Whoever consumes hard drugs is, however, still threatened with jail, but the maximum sentence of three years is to be reduced to one year. It is also new that harmreduction measures such as needle exchange and methadoneprograms will receive a legal basis for the first time. Further planned as pilot projects are both "Fixerstuben" and the controlled distribution of heroin to heavily addicted persons. The present drug law is already 24 years old and recently has been increasingly criticized.

[end]