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DAILY NEWS IN ENGLISH

AeroData software outage delays hundreds of US regional flights The Federal Aviation Administration told passengers to contact their carriers to assess delays as nearly 3,000 flights were delayed because of the outage which lastest 40 minutes on Monday morning. Airlines affected included Delta, United, JetBlue, Southwest and Alaska. Southwest experienced most of the delays (18 percent of the total) although that could also have been caused by ongoing issues around the grounding of Boeing 737 Max jets. Southwest delayed 620 early flights. SkyWest, a commuter airline affiliated with United and Delta Airlines, delayed 200 flights and United Continental had about 150 regional flights delayed. By midday the airlines were working to get their flights back on schedule.

Could Berlin schools give the army its marching orders?

Berlinʼs Social Democrats (SPD) were on the defensive on Monday over a proposal to ban the German military from using schools to recruit future members. The center-left party is seeking a ban on Bundeswehr (unified armed forces) recruitment in the cityʼs schools, claiming that the risks of signing up might not be made clear to young people. A Berlin SPD party conference on Saturday voted to ask members of the state parliament to add a clause to a state education act. "It is forbidden for military organizations to promote service and work for the military sector in Berlin schools," the clause read. In its reasoning, the Berlin SPD said that the pupils — as the target group — were at an age at which their values still needed to be developed. "Accordingly, they are vulnerable to military propaganda and trivializing the real dangers of military deployment."

76/2019 • 2 APRIL, 2019

Germany to prioritize women during UN Security Council presidency Germany will focus on the needs of women

During its month at the helm of the UN Security Council, Germany will focus on the needs of women in conflicts and arms control. "We are aware of the responsibility this presidency entails," Germanyʼs Heiko Maas said.

Germany minimum wage remains one of lowest in region At €9.19, the minimum wage in Germany remains among the lowest in western Europe, according to a report. Despite an increase earlier this year, the wage floor continues to sit far below median income levels.

Although minimum wages have grown across the EU, Germany ranks among the lowest for western European countries,a report on Thursday revealed. Produced by the HansBöckler Foundation’s Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI), the report showed that Germany came in second last place at €9.19 ($10.36) per hour — even after a 35-cent increase earlier this year. It was defeated only

by the UK, where the minimum wage of £7.83 now equates to €8.85, albeit partly as a result of the pound weakening since thereferendum vote to leave the EU. Although wages in Germany were higher than many southern and eastern European states, workers were still vulnerable to poverty. The minimum wage, which would equate to around €1,146 per month after taxes and social contributions,barely stood above the poverty line and only made up around 48 percent of the national median income. In comparison, countries like Turkey offered a minimum wage of almost 74 percent of median national income. In Portugal, the figure is 61 percent.

Nets ʼnʼ Lasers: some of our best hopes for mitigating the threat of space debris Space debris is a bit like space itself: We know itʼs up there, but beyond that thereʼs so much we know we donʼt know. The statistics are fun, though, if a little misleading. Itʼs a bit of a safari crunching the numbers, but here goes. Since 1957, the year the Soviet Union sent Sputnik into space, there have been 4,900 space launches. So far so good. In that time we have put 6,600 satellites in orbit

and/or created "an on-orbit population of more than 18,000 tracked objects." Elsewhere, ESA cites "more than 17,000 orbital objects" being tracked and catalogued by the US Space Surveillance Network. And in a third document itʼs 22,000 objects.

But you get the idea: Itʼs a lot. Of the 6,600 satellites, 3,600 remain in space, and less than a third (about 1,100) are operational.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to resign by April 28 President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is to resign before his mandate expires on April 28, his office said Monday. The president will take "steps to ensure state institutions continue to function during the transition period," Bouteflikaʼs office said in a statement relayed on television. The "resignation would occur before April 28, 2019."

The 82-year-old president has rarely been in public since he suffered a stroke in 2013. While he had declared his candidacy for a fifth term in February, he then withdrew andpostponed the election in response to massive protests. A new caretaker governmentheaded by recently appointed Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui had been announced on Sunday.

Germany presents law to make everyone an organ donor German Health Minister Jens Spahnpresented a draft law on Monday that seeks to boost much-needed organ transplants by overhauling Germanyʼs current organ donor system. The reform has sparked a heated debate in Germany,where people currently opt in to the registry voluntarily and where organ donation rates are low.

What the draft law says: The "dual opt-out" donation system would automatically make everyone in Germany a registered organ donor.People could still opt out at any time by putting themselves on a register that says they object to being a donor.

weather today BUDAPEST

8 / 18 °C Precipitation: 0 mm

76/2019 • 2 April, 2019

Worried about Brexit, Brits stockpile food, supplies Nick Thomas, a 25-year-old hazardous waste operator from Cornwall, is insistent that Brexit will be fine.

Probably. "If ʼno dealʼ goes badly, thereʼll be rioting on the streets and looting, national uproar. If people canʼt eat, theyʼll rise up and fight. But I canʼt see it happening — thatʼs a very worst case scenario," he said.

Thomas, who voted to leave the EU because of the adverse effects of the common fisheries policy on his local area, is not ruling out the possibility of things going awry. He has stocked up with a substantial amount of dried goods – rice and pasta, primarily — as well as tinned beans and vegetables. "The main thing is the food supply chain," he said. "A couple of friends of mine have done the same as me and bought some big bags of rice and pasta, some long-life tins of food.

But weʼre all of the same opinion that thereʼs nothing really to worry about."

Anthony Joshua v Jarrell Miller: American challenger praises Tyson Fury Tyson Fury "looks more like a heavyweight champion" than Anthony Joshua, says Joshuaʼs next opponent Jarrell Miller. Unified world heavyweight champion Joshua, 29, will meet New Yorkʼs Miller at Madison Square Garden on 1 June. The Briton is a 1-10 favourite with bookmakers towin on his US debutagainst an opponent who is undefeated. "In my eyes, [Fury] is somebody who has been doing good in and outside the ring," Miller told BBC Sport.

Greece scrambles to clean up banks and bad loans Plagued by eight exhausting years of financial crisis, millions of Greeks are unable to pay off their loans. But there are also those who donʼt want to, as Anthee Carassava reports from Athens.

Walk into any Greek bank and ask for a loan, and chances are youʼll walk out jilted and empty-handed. But not if you are Pavlos Polakis. The chain-smoking health minister won almost instant approval for a mammoth €100,000 ($114,000) consumer loan this month, claiming he was in desperate need of the cash to cover personal and political expenses. The revelation has sparked fierce political debateand an urgent inquiry by an Athens prosecutor after the

countryʼs central bank governor accused Polakis of calling him to complain, but also making "a preposterous" attempt to block him from investigating the controversial loan. In an urgent judicial testimony this week, the banker, Yannis Stournaras, said the minister, also a leading apparatchik in Prime Minister Alexis Tsiprasʼ leftist Syriza party, recorded the heated telephone exchange and later leaked its content to local media.

Russiaʼs forests threatened by illegal logging Almost half of Russia is covered with forests. However, much of the vast countryʼs woodlands, which absorb millions of tons of CO2, are under threat from mismanagement, illegal deforestation and corruption.

Forestry worker Oleg Shadrin is standing knee deep in snow. Stretching out behind him is an area as large as six football fields. Tree trunks peppered throughout tower up into the sky. "They should have been dug out, with young firs planted in their

place," says Shadrin, 35, struggling to conceal his anger. He claims that a few months earlier Chinese workers "illegally" cleared the forest, which which is located around seven hours drive north of Omsk, near the village of Yekaterinovka, of its firs and transported the wood away. The trees were felled with modern machinery. Such reports are painfully familiar to Nikolay Shmatkov from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). "Illegal deforestation is especially common in the far east and along the RussianChinese border," he says.

Elegant Café Párisi breathes new life into Budapest’s splendid Lotz Hall Café Párisi is on the top floor of the building, with theAndrássy Entertainment Centreand, from tomorrow, an Avatar exhibition below. The café is open every day and the Lotz Hall can be rented for special events such as birthday parties, company gatherings or a fairy-tale wedding. Café Párisi Address: District VI. Andrássy út 39 Open: Daily 9am-9pm

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Merger between T-Mobile and Sprint on the line The $26.5 billion (€23 billion) merger,announced last April, would combine the United Statesʼ third and fourth largest wireless companies, creating a new firm the size of sector rivals Verizon andAT&T. It would also reduce the number of major carriers in the US from four to three. T-Mobileʼs German parent,Deutsche Telekom would take 42 percent of the new entity and Japanʼs SoftBank, owner of Sprint, 27 percent, with the rest held by the public. The combined company, to be called T-Mobile, would have 127 million customers.

But the deal must get the green light from US federal regulators. A hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Wednesday — Thursdayʼs scheduled meeting before the House Committee on the Judiciary was postponed — didnʼt have a direct bearing on the governmentʼs regulatory review. But optics matter and they can help or hinder in the final decision-making process.

Geely the car industryʼs rising ʼprofitability starʼ Ferdinand Dudenhöffer from the CAR Center Automotive Research at Germanyʼs DuisburgEssen University called Chinese auto manufacturer Geely "the profitability star of the worldʼs car industry." A fresh study by the center points out that on average, a Geely car costs just €9,529 ($10,942), but the companysecures a 14.4 percent profit from revenues before tax and interest. Dudenhöffer says thatʼs a lot more than, say, the profit margins of foreign rivals BMW, Toyota or PSA-Opel. The worldʼs largest carmaker, Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen, logs a profit margin of only 8.2 percent, the survey says. Geely is part of the Zhejiang Geely Holding,which also owns Volvo Cars, London EV-Taxi and Lotus.The holding has also acquired a 10 percent stake in Daimler.

According to the CAR researchers, Geelyʼs rapid rise is based on its successful compact car platform, which it developed together with Sweden-based Volvo.