The "birthers" doubt that the president is really a US citizen. The White House is now publishing his birth certificate.

Calm down, please: Obama must prove that he is a real American. Picture: dapd

"Birther" – the word is not yet in any dictionary. But in the U.S., it is dominating – and poisoning – the early stages of the presidential campaign. The word is derived from "birther." It describes people who doubt that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen. Presumably with the political calculation of picking up potential voters on their resentments. This week, the "birthers" managed to get the White House to release the president’s birth certificate.

The US Republican field is thinning out. Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina are two more candidates who have dropped out. That leaves six.

Two go, one stays: Chris Christie (from left), Donald Trump(h.l) and Carly Fiorina. Photo: reuters

After their poor performance in the primary election in the U.S. state of New Hampshire, two more Republicans are dropping out of the race for the White House. Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina ended their campaigns on Wednesday. Christie declared he was saying goodbye without a shred of regret. He said he was proud of his team and the campaign.

It’s a tiny design decision that messaging service WhatsApp has made: If the person you’re talking to has not only received a message, but also read it, two grayish checkmarks recently turn blue.

A banal change. But one that puts adults back into the sovereignty status of pimply teenagers: Is he not answering now because he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore? Six hours without an answer? An affront. Or the texted lies dead in the ditch.

We have enslaved ourselves. Apps and services dictate, we follow. Voluntarily. Yet the idea is that this actually works the other way around.

The Deutsches Theater in Gottingen is staging Juli Zeh’s surveillance text "Corpus delicti" in an underground car park. The audience sits in the car.

The only downer of the play is that the car is experiencing a boom as a place to experience art. Photo: Thomas M. Jauk

"Dear DT, we miss you," someone wrote on the portal of the Deutsches Theater (DT) in Gottingen. And was heard. In times of social distancing, even the stage artists want to play among people again, in front of spectators. And the Gottingen theater is the first in the north to show that more is currently possible than using social media formats and streaming performance recordings: a premiere with live actors and audience members physically present.

Jan Bohmermann and Klaas Heufer-Umlauf quote headlines about Greece. And find: Most of the media are behaving like assholes.

Bon vivant Jan Bohmermann knows everything about the Greeks. Screenshot: www.youtube.com/channel/UCLht2x-uqofs-7Kvq6ts-5Q

Once the Tatar please on the luxury room. Oh, that’s only for dogs? Never mind, then just half. Lacoste the world? Money doesn’t play Rolex. A hotel room, Jan Bohmermann in a white bathrobe and a telephone line to Klaas Heufer-Umlauf, also in a white bathrobe. That’s the setting of a new video of the two presenters, which has been online since Friday.

There is a new final storage authority. But its purpose is not clear to critics: the new federal office will not have anything to do until the end of 2015.

Already time for a Knoppers? It’s quite possible that the employees will pass their time like this until the end of 2015. Picture: artiva / photocase.de

The search for a final repository for highly radioactive nuclear waste has been enriched by a curiosity: On Monday, the new Federal Office for Nuclear Waste Disposal (BfE) began its work. But it remains nebulous what the authority is actually supposed to do.

The German Press Council has presented an update of the "rules of the game" between the police and the media. It’s a shame it’s necessary.

Police operation in Berlin Photo: Omer Messinger/ZUMA/imago

The relationship between the media and the police is complicated. That’s why there are the "Principles of Conduct for Media and Police to Avoid Obstructions in the Performance of Police Tasks and the Free Exercise of Reporting." This is formulated in such a bureaucratic way because the interior ministers of the federal states, as – attention, gender trap – the supreme authority of the police, have to sign off on everything.

After almost 40 years, the search for a final repository is to begin anew. It is a historic compromise, but now the difficult implementation begins.

Where to, where to? Picture: dpa

It was quite a crowd: After the federal government, the states and the parties agreed to restart the search for a nuclear waste repository, no fewer than seven politicians wanted to get on stage and take to the microphone. After all, there was a success to celebrate – and their own part in it to praise.

The Minister of the Interior does not want to report taz author Yaghoobifarah. Editor-in-chief Barbara Junge criticizes Seehofer for taking too long to make the decision.

He finally decided in favor of freedom of the press: Horst Seehofer Photo: Markus Schreiber/ap

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) has decided not to press charges against taz employee Hengameh Yaghoobifarah. This was announced by the Interior Ministry in Berlin on Thursday. Yaghoobifarah had previously made derogatory comments about police officers in her column. Seehofer now wants to talk to the taz editor-in-chief about the controversial column and turn to the Press Council, the self-regulatory body of the German press.

Is the wealth tax dead in Germany? Maybe not. A hearing at the Willy Brandt House raises eyebrows.

Modest second car for the super-rich: Rolls Royce Photo: Reuters

The SPD and the wealth tax, that is a long, checkered history. At times, leading Social Democrats praised it as an instrument for more distributive justice, at other times they rejected it. Former party leader Sigmar Gabriel declared the tax "dead" in 2014 during a panel discussion with economist Thomas Piketty. He had learned that it had "no chance in Germany."