Unfortunately, though, once such incident on the German vacation island of Sylt came to just such a tragic end. Two as-yet-unidentified men ate in a restaurant owned by 57-year-old Miki Nozawa, a highly-regarded chef known primarily for his particular Japanese-Italian fusion style. For unknown reasons, they were unhappy with the beef and fried noodle dish Nozawa prepared. After a brief confrontation, they left the restaurant without paying.

Ordinarily, that would be the end of such a story – frustrating for all parties, but neither tragic nor newsworthy. Unfortunately, however, it seems that Nozawa encountered the two men later that evening in a bar. The men exchanged words, and then blows. Nozawa suffered at least one blow to the head and was rushed to the hospital, where he died of trauma to the brain and internal bleeding.

Nozawa was, according to his ex-wife, good-natured man who would not have started a fight with the two men. She said that the men asked for a refund on their meal and believes that the attack was racially motivated.

No charges have been filed against the two men, as authorities on the island are still investigating the incident.

According to an Australian Associated Press (AAP) report, Japanese chef Miki Nozawa died on Monday after a fight with two “disgruntled” customers. The incident took place on the German island of Sylt, and the argument was reportedly about the quality of a fried noodle dish. The customer did not like dish, and left the restaurant without paying. The AAP report states that Nozawa ran into the two customers later that same day at a “table-dance bar,” where the fight broke out.

The 57-year-old Nozawa was taken to a nearby hospital with brain trauma and internal injuries, but died while in intensive care. The specific cause of death is not yet known, though a German prosecutor has stated an autopsy is being performed.

The customers suspected in Nozawa’s death had not yet been found by authorities as of Wednesday.

But that hasn’t stopped plenty of people from going after Google when they don’t like what they see appearing next to their names or businesses. And sometimes successfully, I might add. The latest case to spring from a disputed autocomplete result comes from Germany and is bad news for Google.

A German court has ruled that Google must manually remove autocomplete results if they are determined to be defamatory. This wide ruling could have an effect on not only cases in Germany, but in other countries who could use the decision as a model.

As the AP reports, the case stems from an unidentified plaintiff, only known as “R.S,” whose company sells nutritional supplements. R.S. filed a complaint when they saw that Google autocomplete results associated the name of the company with “fraud” and “Scientology” – both of which they considered defamatory.

A lower court dismissed R.S.’ claim, but the Federal Court of Justice overruled. According to the ruling, Google isn’t being directed to turn of autocomplete or even interfere preemptively, only required to eliminate defamatory autocomplete suggestions when they are brought to the company’s attention.

This isn’t the only case in Germany involving Google’s autocomplete to make headlines. Last year, former German First Lady Bettina Wulff claimed that Google destroyed her reputation with their autocomplete suggestions. Wulff, who has battled rumors that she worked as an escort prior to marrying former German president Christian Wulff, has her name associated with “escort” and “prostitute” in multiple languages in Google autocomplete.

Of course, those suggestions only exist because of the high volume of Google searches. But this new ruling could affect that case, which is still pending.

In April, Google lost a case in Japan over their autocomplete function. A man sued Google over suggestions relating to criminal activity – activity he denied. A Japanese court ruled that Google must alter their results and they also issued a 300,000 yen fine (roughly $3,100).

Google has also faced autocomplete complaints in France.

This morning, Bloomberg reports that a German regulator has fined the company 145,000 euros ($189,230) over the debacle. From Bloomberg’s Karin Matussek:

Hamburg data regulator Johannes Caspar said in an e- mailed statement today. He had reopened the probe after prosecutors dropped a related criminal case last year.

“In my view, this is one of the biggest data protection rules violations known,” said Caspar. Google’s “internal control mechanisms must have severely failed.”

In 2011, France fined Google $142,000.

Last year, Google was fined $25,000 by the FCC for obstructing an investigation into its related practices, though the Commission ended up dropping the investigation.

Last month, Google settled with 38 states in the U.S. over the issue.

The actor is protesting the removal of a section of the Berlin Wall. The section is one of the last pieces of the wall to remain standing, after it was dismantled from 1989 to 1991.

Hasselhoff is now backing a Change.org petition to prevent the “East Side Gallery” from being taken down. According to the petition, a developer is seeking to move the wall to make way for a “luxury housing development.”

Hasselhoff echoes the text of the petition on his blog, saying that the wall is now part of German history and should be preserved as a symbol of freedom. From the blog post:

In 1989 on New Year’s Eve I sang on the top of Berlin Wall, you all know that, it’s no secret. I sang for freedom and for all people who were going through a terrible things living “behind the curtain” or behind the Wall if you prefer. Now they are trying to tear down the wall to put up an apartment complex.

The Berlin Wall is not just a symbol and part of German history, it’s a symbol for every single person who lived in fear for their lives and in horrible conditions that we, who were lucky to live in countries that represent democracy in its full meaning, couldn’t even imagine and the fall of the Wall represents a new beginning and a hope for all of them.

Hasselhoff did indeed sing on the Berlin Wall shortly after the wall’s gates were opened for East Germans. The blurry footage of the event seen below features Hasselhoff singing and wearing a light-up leather jacket, with Brandenburg Gate in the background.

Nanoscribe, a newly founded Germany 3D printing company, has recently shown what its latest 3D printer – the Photonic Professional GT – can do. The machine was able to create a microscale model of a spaceship in less than 50 seconds. Here’s how they did it:

This video shows a realtime recording of the 3D micro printing process by two-photon polymerization. We start with the CAD model of a Hellcat spaceship from Wing Commander Saga and use our 3D printer Photonic Professional GT to print a polymer model on the microscale. The final structure is then inspected with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Overall printing time was less than 50 seconds for the ship with dimensions 125µm x 81µm x 26.8µm (l x w x h). The length of the spaceship is approximately equal to the diameter of a human hair.

The most amazing part about this new technology is that it’s not a prototype. This printer is for sale, and is being marketed to biotechnology firms. Other biotech firms and schools that are working with 3D printing have had to build their own machines. If the price is right, Nanoscribe could be seeing a lot of business coming its way from schools and biotech firms wanting to take advantage of 3D printing.

[h/t: SingularityHub]

According to reports out of MobileGeeks, Samsung will stop selling the Windows RT ATIV Tab in Germany. The device is reportedly not selling well at all, and retailers have told Samsung that there’s no demand for it. Even worse, Samsung may be pulling out of other European countries as well.

You could say that the weak demand for Samsung’s ATIV Tab could be blamed on Samsung’s hardware, but the reality is that consumers don’t care about Windows RT. Back at CES, Samsung said that Microsoft needs to do a better job of communicating the merits of Windows RT to consumers. Microsoft hasn’t exactly made a case for why Windows RT is more preferable to Windows 8 Pro and the hardware is suffering as a result.

Obviously, Microsoft will not be pulling its Surface RT out of Europe anytime soon. The company is invested in making its new hardware a success, but it really does need to work harder on conveying the merits of not only Windows RT, but Windows 8 in general. Dance parties aren’t going to do that.

If Microsoft can get its act together, you can expect to see Samsung and other OEMs flooding back to the market with new Windows RT devices. Until that happens, however, expect to see more instances of Windows RT failing to meet expectations.

[h/t: Engadget]

According to a report by The Independent, the new documentary, to air Thursday on the U.K.’s Channel 4, states that static electricity may have set the zeppelin ablaze. In this scenario, an electrical storm had charged the airship while gas had somehow leaked into the Hindenburg’s ventilation shafts. Crew members who took up the zeppelin’s landing ropes may have grounded the ship’s frame, but not its skin, causing the spark that set off the fire at the tail end of the ship.

According to the Independent, a group of experts led by aeronautical engineer Jem Stansfield set fire to quite a few scale models of the Hindenburg before reaching this conclusion. The research team recreated different scenarios for the disaster using the replicas, and tested multiple theories, including sabotage.

The Hindenburg, a German passenger airship, caught fire on May 6, 1937 over an airfield at the Lakehurst Naval Airstation in New Jersey. The blaze took down the airship in under 20 seconds, causing the deaths of 35 of the 97 people on board the ship. Newsreel footage of the disaster, featuring commentary from radio reporter Herbert Morrison, has become famous and is the origin of the popularization of the phrase, “oh the humanity!”

We discussed the proposed law last year, which Google had spoken out about. At the time, it looked like, if passed, it would have required search engines and aggregators to pay to license content from publishers in order to display headlines (with links) and snippets of text.

At the time, A Google spokesperson told WebProNews, “We don’t have any sympathy for these plans, as an ancillary copyright lacks all factual, economic, and legal foundation. And we are not alone with this opinion: The Federation of German Industries (BDI) and 28 other associations vehemently oppose an ancillary copyright for publishers. The German parliament is divided on the issue as well. For a good reason: An ancillary copyright would mean a massive damage to the German economy. It’s a threat to the freedom of information. And it would leave Germany behind internationally as a place for business.”

“Publishers should be innovative in order to be successful,” the Googler added. “A compulsory levy for commercial internet users means cross-subsidizing publishers through other industries. This is not a sustainable solution.”

“In difficult economic times, the Internet is thriving, generating economic gains, creating jobs and giving struggling businesses a vital lifeline,” they said. “It is important that any legislation supports, rather than hinders innovation on the internet to encourage new jobs and economic growth.”

It appears that things went a lot better than they could have, but the law still leaves question about how much text can actually be used in a snippet. As TechDirt points out, the wording says that quotations will still have to be licensed unless they are “single words or the smallest excerpts,” without defining what “smallest excerpts” actually means.

I guess we’ll see where it goes from here.

A few months later, the folks at ZETA, a German zoophile-rights group, put together a peaceful protest/march that would make its way through the street of Berlin. The group used the march to highlight the persecution that zoophiles face every day. The civil rights group, Equality for All, showed up to the protest as well. Here’s a picture of their display from Germany’s largest newspaper The Bild, courtesy of Free Thinker Unlimited:

It remains to be seen if ZETA’s efforts will have any effect on the national dialog regarding bestiality, but this first march may have inspired other zoophile groups around the world to go public. We may even start seeing other marches in other countries that ban bestiality.

That being said, it’s hard to believe that any progress towards legalization will actually happen. The core argument here is whether or not bestiality is animal abuse, and there’s no easy way to prove either scenario. Most lawmakers are probably going to err on the side of caution in the debate, however, and outlaw it until compelling evidence can validate either side’s argument.