Genetically modified (GM) foods like soybeans are used all over the world, from North Asia to South America, and some of the largest biotech companies that produce them are in the United States. After years of struggle, companies like US-based Monsanto and Germany's BASF are eager to get approval in the EU, probably the most GM-resistant bloc in the world. This has the Bush administration -- weren't government and commerce once separate? -- leaning on Europe with increasing diplomatic muscle. This fall is a deadline for Europe to speed up approval of biotech crops, writes the International Business Times. Since a WTO ruling last year "found 'undue delays' in Europe's approval of biotech products, the EC has until November 21 to bring its system up to speed." But shouldn't they be speeding up the consideration process, not the approval process -- as if approval is already foregone conclusion? Just who are these WTO lawyers, anyway?

DW profiles new German books now available in English.

There's just something about Slate and Scientology: after Tom Cruise got called the Goebbels of Scientology by the German Protestant Chuch last week, Michelle Tsai explains why Germany has it in for the cult; Mark Oppenheimer explains why it's not a cult, it just seems weirder than other mainstream religions because it's newer. Xenu or not. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Signandsight does a press round-up of the German papers on the late Ingmar Bergman, who spent six years (1977-1983) exiled in Munich on charges of tax evasion, quoting the man himself, "Most of what came crashing down on me in the German theatre is not total freedom, but total neurosis. What can a poor director do to get audiences, and especially critics, just to raise an eyebrow?"