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Wall Street Journal launches German edition

The Wall Street Journal launched a German edition on Tuesday, breaking into the German business news market with what its editor promised would be a new, international, perspective.

Wall Street Journal launches German edition
Photo: DPA

“We asked hundreds of our potential readers what they lack at present in the German business press. The answer came loud and clear: A global perspective not only on what happens in Germany, but also on the latest events in Washington, London, Tokyo and in the emerging markets of Asia or Latin America,” wrote Wall Street Journal Deutschland editor Knut Engelmann.

The new edition, which is only on the internet, follows several other forays by the Rupert Murdoch-owned American newspaper into foreign markets – the Journal has English-language editions targeted toward Asia, Europe and India and runs Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish websites.

Its first German edition featured plenty of coverage of the euro crisis, an original interview with a top Siemens executive and a story on Apple CEO Tim Cook taken from the Journal’s English edition.

The Journal has not said how much of the Wall Street Journal Deutschland will be exclusive and how much will be translated stories from the paper’s main edition. But it has a dedicated team based in Frankfurt working alongside reporters and editors from sister company Dow Jones.

It is also not clear whether it will be able to carve out a niche in the competitive German business news market, which is already dominated by the Handelsblatt and Financial Times Deutschland (FDT).

Handelsblatt chief editor Gabor Steingart has said he takes “every competitor seriously.” And FTD head Steffen Klussmann also said he was watching the Journal’s expansion closely.

The launch comes after American news website The Huffington Post announced in November that it wanted to create a German edition by the middle of this year.

The Local/DAPD/mdm

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Emergency numbers fail in several German states

Callers to the emergency numbers 110 and 112 weren’t able to reach operators Thursday morning in several German states.

The 112 emergency number on an ambulance.
The 112 emergency number on an ambulance. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Boris Roessler

The emergency number 110 for police and 112 for fire crews failed around the country early Thursday morning, with callers unable to reach emergency operators for urgent assistance between about 4:30 am and 5:40 am local time.

The Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Aid is looking into these outages, which were reported in states including Lower Saxony, Baden-Württemberg, and  Brandenburg, and in major cities like Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, and Frankfurt. Cologne was further affected by cuts to electricity, drinking water, and regular telephone services. Lower Saxony also saw disruptions to the internal phone networks of police and hospitals.

Emergency services are not reporting any more disturbances and people should be able to once again reach 110 and 112 around the country as normal.

Investigators are looking into the problem, but haven’t yet established a cause or any consequences that may have happened due to the outage. Provider Deutsche Telekom says they have ruled out the possibility of an attack by hackers.

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