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Last Friday, the state statistics office in NRW published the figures for companies that went bankrupt in the first half of the year. With 2160 company bankruptcies, the number is about 20% higher than in the previous year. At the same time, the trend is forecast to deteriorate further for the rest of the year.

In the Austrian state of Carinthia, the Chamber of Economy caused a stir this summer with a campaign called "Danke, stimmt so" ("Thank you, that's all right"). Hosts were sent envelopes with advertising displays for their establishments, sending a supposedly "unobtrusive signal" to customers to tip enough. The restaurateurs themselves were largely outraged by this way of formally forcing customers to pay extra.

 

For 2.5 weeks now, a small but determined section of the Hagenbeck zoo has been on strike for a collective agreement and for uniform working conditions. The colleagues on strike at the zoo are thus defying the threats of managing director Dirk Albrecht, who even repeatedly announced that he would initiate criminal proceedings against the employees and the union because they would endanger animal welfare with their strike.

In Germany, one of the biggest attacks on students in recent years is taking place under the radar of the general public.This is about the abolition of the semester ticket, which is being pushed by the federal and state governments. The semester ticket is not a uniform, Germany-wide ticket for students, but looks different depending on the state and university and has different prices. The semester ticket is part of the annual semester fees and is negotiated by the respective Asta of the university. An Asta, or Asten, is the general student committee, a kind of small "pseudo-government" for students that is elected by the student parliament.

Aiwanger can remain in office. This was announced by Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder at a press conference on 03.09. A few weeks earlier, reports emerged that Aiwanger had allegedly written an anti-Semitic leaflet in his youth in which he referred positively to German fascism and the Holocaust.

A burnt excavator after the attack on a road construction company, source: thehindu.com

India:

August 19:
In the state of Jharkhand in West Singhbhum district,a police informer was killed by members of the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist). A poster was placed next to the killed informer urging people not to cooperate with the police or be recruited as police informers and instead engage in agriculture and wage labor. Furthermore, all individuals acting on behalf of the police were told to surrender and that they would be forgiven if they did so.

A total of 60,000 people were victims of forced sterilizations in the United States between 1907 and 1981, during the period when the procedure was legal, according to bourgeois estimates. Of these, 85 percent are believed to have been women and girls. During its peak, the 1960s and 1970s, masses of black and indigenous women were forcibly rendered infertile by state order.

Hamburg's Jungfernstieg is considered one of the most magnificent places in Hamburg, it is an attraction for tourists and the rich who spend time in the expensive restaurants and cafes around it. In summer, however, the beautiful view of the Alster also invites many young people to sit on the promenade and have a drink or two in the evening. But young people sitting in groups on the stairs at Jungfernstieg, listening to music and drinking alcohol, do not fit at all into the image of the magnificent promenade for bigwigs for the Hamburg Senate.