The German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has *finally* been forced to resign after he was found to have copied large parts of his 2006 university doctorate thesis.
He had tried in the past couple of weeks to hold on to his position, labelling the whole affair as 'abstruse' even after it had been determined that about half of the 450+ page dissertation had been plagiarized. The Chancellor of Germany had also tried to defend keeping him on, arguing that she had hired him as defence minister, not research assistant.
This morning he finally announced his resignation. See an account in English on the BBC site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12608083Here's the site of the English-language version of the story from _Der Spiegel_:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,748383,00.html Chris Bruce, always giving credit where credit is due, in Kiel, Germany -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
