That story of that doomed Germanwings flight just will not die, and here is the latest revelation:

“Mobile video shows the last seconds before flight 4U9525 crashed.” Yes, while it is overwhelmingly likely that that Airbus 320 slammed into the side of a mountain at a typical airline-in-flight speed, it was still possible at least for a mobile phone’s removable memory-card (if not likely the mobile phone itself) to survive the impact and the resulting kerosene-fueled inferno (although the latter probably only by being thrown clear).

And so there has been a mobile-filmed video discovered of Flight 4U9525’s very last moments, filmed by somebody – whether crew or passenger – in a back row. It confirms much of what the French prosecutor’s office has been able to reconstruct by means of other evidence, for example that the airplane’s captain spent some time desperately trying to get back in the cockpit, including by hitting it with an axe. And that all on board were aware of their impending fate fairly early on; the video records all manner of anguished cries, of “My God!” and variations thereof in a number of languages. There is a new bit, though: apparently the airplane first hit the mountain with one of the wings, so that it was violently jerked to the side, or maybe swung around at high speed, before ultimate impact.

One quite curious thing here is the sheer phenomenon of someone whipping out their mobile in such a dire situation in order to film it. One could just say “Isn’t that just 2015 developed-country civilization for you?” although in my opinion the incident would only have truly reflected contemporary mores if what had been produced was rather a selfie-video, turned back on the phone’s owner to capture for posterity’s sake the facial expressions of his/her last moments on this Earth. We must offer heartfelt, if posthumous, thanks to that protagonist for resisting the temptation, turning the phone’s camera forward and thereby helping to fill in facts for the record.

Even more interesting, though, is the prospect of what happens next with this fortuitous video back in this world upon which the rest of us are left behind. Word slipped out about it in the first place after journalists from both France’s Paris Match and Germany’s Bild Zeitung were allowed to view it. The choice of the latter was particularly unfortunate, as the Bild has been an icon of (West) German culture for decades as the premier tabloid newspaper, by which I am not referring to physical form but rather to the rather older definition of “tabloid,” i.e. catering to a sensation-minded readership, featuring nude women upon its inner pages – that sort of thing.

Clearly, we “all” want to view that video, just as no one in the end turns out to be self-disciplined enough to avoid at least sneaking a peek while slowly driving past the site of a particularly gruesome highway accident. Yet “decency,” “responsibility” and, I suppose, respect for those who died militate against it ever being made more public than it already has been.

Early indications are not good: here is Paris Match’s “exclusive” account from that mobile-phone video, and here is Bild’s – both in English, as both publications have made sure that they have German, French and English versions on-line.

Again I ask: How long before the video itself is accessible to all on-line, somewhere? Probably not long.

Fear not, all you thousands of EuroSavant fans, whether on Twitter, by RSS, or simply frequent direct visitors to the site! While I’m always on the look-out for news of quirky Euro-events that I can pass on to you (see, for example, immediately below), especially if they provide fertile breeding-ground for puns, I do also regularly treat the major news of the day when I can add to the discussion a new insight or perspective as gleaned from the European press.

As of this Sunday, the world’s burning news is of course the recent election in Iran, the apparent plot by the authorities in that country to steal it, and the people’s reaction thereto. Unfortunately, all of this is occurring so far over a weekend, which might be another dastardly trick by the current Tehran regime designed to limit take-up of the story by the regular European press, some parts of which do not work on Sunday at all (although there’s also word that the American MSM has been similarly slow off the starting-blocks). (more…)

The time has come around again to address the issue of German radicalism. This has nothing to do with the national elections coming up there at the end of September. Nor does it have anything to do with the recent film The Baader Meinhof Complex, for that matter.

Rather, it’s about a guy – a fully-functioning adult, mind you, in this ninth year into the 21st century – who owns no mobile telephone whatsoever, and never has. Furthermore, he’s confident he never will. Can you beat that? His name is Selim Özdogan (Turkish, obviously; sounds like some sort of Middle Eastern radical to me), he writes for Die Zeit, and he tells us all about it in an article entitled Handy-Free Zone. (For those not in the know: Handy has been the literal German word for “mobile/cell phone” ever since they first appeared there on a widespread basis in the late 1980s.) (more…)

Ah great, a short-but-spicy piece to get us back into the blogging swing of things! From the Danish press this time: Berlingske Tidende has a notable account (taken from the Danish press agency, Ritzau) about standards of after-the-sale service provided in the Danish retail sector.

The article is actually entitled Flasher by Video Mobile Telephone, and tells the tale of a 40-year-old salesman in a mobile telephone store in Hillerod (a suburb of Copenhagen) who has confessed to the authorities to more than one hundred violations of public decency. Women who came to his store to purchase a mobile telephone with video capabilities could usually look forward to seeing him again, for he would take advantage of the telephone number information he had about them to take the initiative and call them. The problem was not so much that they were seeing him again, but that they were seeing him again in their new video phones naked. And he just wouldn’t stand there, either; he tended to, shall we say, use the occasion to handle his merchandise, by which I really mean “manhandle,” I guess.

This is Denmark, though, after all, and the accused was released on his own recognizance after interrogation. (I do hope they remembered to relieve him of his mobile telephone!) Still, as the article sternly ends, he can certainly “look forward to legal consequences.”

UPDATE: Another day passes, and the Berlingske Tidende editors are still interested in this story. Only they still haven’t quite reached the point where they’ll assign one of their own reporters to it; the account contained in this update (“Over 100 Women Exposed to Mobile-Flasher”) they credit to the Frederiksborg Amts Avis which, with all respect, really seems to be basically your run-of-the-mill pissant local-news newspaper. (No, EuroSavant will certainly not add it to the site’s Danish newspaper coverage list.)

Be that as it may . . . any further juicy details? Not really. The article recounts how around 100 women have complained about those specific performances by the suspect in their video mobile phone screens that they never expected to see, while the actual total of victims is reckoned to be considerably higher because of the natural reluctance in such a case to report the harassment. But the original Ritzau article essentially also said that. This new article does add details about how tough it was to track the offender down, since he was using an unregistered calling-card, so that investigators had to put together evidence about where the various calls had been placed to pin down the perpetrator.