A steel complex at the river Rhine in Duisburg, Germany.jpg

Russia's recent invasion of Georgia has left the country in political turmoil. Now that the invasion has stabilized, political opposition against the government is strengthening.

As Europe's largest economy and second most populous nation, Germany is a key member of the continent's economic, political, and defense organizations. European power struggles immersed Germany in two devastating World Wars in the first half of the 20th century and left the country occupied by the victorious Allied powers of the US, UK, France, and the Soviet Union in 1945. With the advent of the Cold War, two German states were formed in 1949: the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). The democratic FRG embedded itself in key Western economic and security organizations, the EC, which became the EU, and NATO, while the Communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The decline of the USSR and the end of the Cold War allowed for German unification in 1990. Since then, Germany has expended considerable funds to bring Eastern productivity and wages up to Western standards. In January 1999, Germany and 10 other EU countries introduced a common European exchange currency, the euro.

Two men, a German citizen of Afghan heritage and a Turk, accused of being linked to a bombing plot that shocked Germany last year, were arrested recently. One of the men is a German citizen who converted to Islam. The other is a Turkish citizen.

A German bank on continued with a huge payment to Lehman brothers even as the company was declaring bankruptcy. The $426 million payment, described by the bank, KfW Bankengruppe, as an "automated transfer," provoked an outcry across the political spectrum. The largest-circulation German newspaper, Bild, splashed a headline across its front page Thursday calling KfW "Germany's dumbest bank"