By escaping from the Group of Death at the World Cup, the United States finally gave the lie to the notion that Americans were bad at soccer. Except Americans were never bad at soccer. The good soccer players just didn't know they were Americans. 

It might not be fashionable to spew racial slurs during the World Cup anymore (though they do on a near-continual basis), yet fans apparently feel it's okay to accuse the German team of being goose-stepping, Heil Hitler-ing Nazis. Especially when they score against team USA. This graphic from Regressing shows that during the Germany-U.S. game (which Germany won 1-0), plenty of people were thinking about the former country's murderous past:

Under a new agreement, Israel and Germany will cooperate on museum research to establish the owners of Jewish-owned art stolen by the Nazis, AFP reports. Culture and Sports Ministry director general Orly Froman and German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters signed the agreement on Sunday, officials said. Under the accord, German and Israeli experts will go through training, and will set up join databases.

A statement from the Public Affairs Section of the United States Embassy said under a concluded agreement, USAID and GIZ would make available funds and technical assistance to PAC for the implementation of capacity building activities, advisory services, public hearings, and peer learning with public accounts committees of other West African countries.

Other countries are distorted by their failure to come to terms with brutal realities of their history. So are we.Listen to the next discussion you hear of tensions between Japan and two of its neighbors, South Korea and China. You'll hear again and again that an important root problem is Japan's difficulty in coming to terms with its history of wartime aggression in China and use of Korean "comfort women" as sex slaves for its troops.

A Turkish election campaign on German soil - once again. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is once again set to visit Germany to inspire loyalty in his Turkish-nationalist followers. And never before has there been so much bewilderment and resentment surrounding the controversial prime minister's campaign as now, a few days before his appearance in Cologne, planned for Saturday (24.05.2014). But what if the appearance is damaging to the efforts to integrate Turkey into Europe? Germany still cannot stop it from happening.

A group of 24 students from Hoesbach, Germany, and two of their teachers spent the past three weeks in Hudson experiencing American culture and education.  For the teens from Hanus-Seidel Gymnasium (the German name for a college preparatory school), it also was a reunion with Hudson High School students who visited Hoesbach for three weeks last June.