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DAILY NEWS IN ENGLISH

Saudi Arabia introduces law banning sexual harassment The measure has been passed by the Cabinet and an advisory council, and will become law with a royal decree.

The country is making some piecemeal reforms, including ending its notorious driving ban on women. Saudi Arabia passed a draft law Wednesday that criminalizes sexual harassment less than a month before the stridently conservative country lifts a decadesold ban against women driving. The measure, which was passed by the Shura Council, carries a maximum 5-year prison term and fine of up to 300,000 riyals ($80,000, or €70,000).

"The law is aimed at combating and preventing the crime of harassment, enforcing penalty on perpetrators, protecting victims and safeguarding the individualʼs privacy, dignity and freedom ensured by the Islamic sharia law," the council said in a statement.

Syria recognizes Georgiaʼs breakaway regions in nod to Russia The Georgian government has hit back at Syria by severing diplomatic ties with the Arab republic.

Syria is now one of five countries that have recognized the Moscow-backed regions. The Syrian government has recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two Georgian breakaway regions backed by Russia, as independent countries. "A deal has been reached between the Syrian Arab Republic, the Republic of Abkhazia and the Republic of South Ossetia to exchange recognition and set up diplomatic ties at the embassy level," said a Syrian Foreign Ministry official in comments circulated by the state-run SANA news agency on Tuesday.

The move prompted the Georgian government to announce its decision to sever official ties with Syria, blaming Russia for orchestrating the diplomatic stunt.

125/2018 • 05 JUNE, 2018

Paris welcomes Merkelʼs ʼfirst answerʼ to Macronʼs EU reform plan They meet at a road-map summit near Berlin on June 19

Paris has welcomed remarks by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on EU reform – her first since President Emmanuel Macronʼs Sorbonne call for "a Europe that protects."

Is Trump giving the EU higher drug prices too?

Soaring drug prices keep Americans sick. Donald Trumpʼs new plan aims to bring down domestic costs at the expense of Europeans, but is the EU really to blame?

Lindsey Rae Gjording reports from New York.

Many Americans simply cannot afford the treatments they need. A longtime complaint of the American health care system — overpriced drugs — keeps pharmaceutical investors rich while the sick stay sick.

"Weʼre going to end global freeloading," promised Donald Trump while unveiling his American Patients First

plan to tackle the market. It is still not clear just how he plans to do this. On Wednesday, Trump again made big promises while signing the newly passed "Right to Try" law which allows patients with life-threatening illness to bypass the countryʼs Food and Drug Administration for access to experimental medication.

Trump predicted big pharma companies are "going to announce voluntary massive drops in prices" but the Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment or clarify the statement.

German university hospital defends auto firmsʼ nitrogen dioxide test ethics No experiments on animals or humans can take place in Germany without a go from an authorized ethics committee. Dr. Thomas Kraus from Aachen University Hospital says this was the case in the most recent NO2 scandal.

The European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector (EUGT) "did not impinge in any way on the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) research it commissioned Aachen University Hospital to do," Professor Thomas Kraus from the

hospital told the German press agency DPA on Monday. The EUGT is a now defunct organization that was funded

by German carmakers Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW plus partsmaker Bosch, thus raising questions of possible conflicts of interest. In 2013, 25 healthy volunteers were exposed to NO2 pollution for three hours, Kraus said. "None of them had any negative health effects," he went on, adding that the tests were meant to measure the impact of pollutants in the workplace.

Israel launches retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza after Hamas rocket attacks The fighting is the worst episode of violence since Israel and Hamas fought a brief war in 2014. The United States, European Union and United Nations have condemned the rocket and mortar attacks against Israel. Israel has launched airstrikes against targets throughout the Gaza Strip after the armed wing of the ruling group in the Palestinian territory launched dozens of rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel. The confrontation, which continued into Wednesday morning, is the worst episode of violence between Israel and Hamas since they fought a sevenweek-long war in 2014. The Israeli military said around 70 rockets and bombs had been fired into Israel by 8 p.m. local time on Tuesday (1700 GMT). One mortar shell landed near a kindergarten.Israeli forces intercepted most of the rockets and mortar shells, the military said, and tanks and bombers responded by targeting 55 militant locations within Gaza.

Saudi Arabia issues first driverʼs licenses to women Ahead of the lift of a decades-old ban on women driving, a group of women have received their driverʼs licenses.

The ban is due to be lifted on June 24.

Saudi Arabia on Monday issued driverʼs licenses to 10 women on Monday.

The announcement comes three weeks before a ban on women driving is set to be lifted followingKing Salamʼs decision last year to allow women to drive . Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed drive but this will change on June 24.

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125/2018 • 05 June, 2018

Helmut Kohl widow denied inheritance of posthumous compensation The former German chancellor had won a lawsuit against his ghostwriter, but passed away before the payments were settled. A court has now ruled that Maike Kohl-Richter may not inherit her husbandʼs compensation.

The high regional court in Cologne ruled Tuesday that Maike KohlRichter was not entitled to receive €1 million ($1.1 million) in damages awarded to her husband, the lateformer German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, shortly before his death. The compensation, which was not settled until after Kohlʼs passing, represented the largest sum ever won in a private lawsuit in Germany. The court concluded that damages-related compensation cannot be inherited. Such payments can only be awarded to the plaintiff directly, while that person is alive. Kohlʼs widow will now have the opportunity to appeal the decision.

The compensationwas awardedto Helmut Kohl in April 2017, following alawsuit against his former ghostwriter, Heribert Schwan. The focus of the suit was Schwanʼsunauthorized biographytitled "Vermächtnis - die Kohl-Protokolle" (Legacy - The Kohl Transcripts).

Wawrinka out after fiveset marathon, rains halts Rafael Nadal

Germanyʼs Bayer to drop Monsanto name in takeover Bayerʼs takeover of US seed giant Monsanto will be completed on Thursday, the company has said.

Although Bayer will acquire all of the weed-killer and seedmakerʼs products, the Monsanto name will be left behind.

German agrochemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer will complete its purchase of US seed company Monsanto on Thursday, the company announced on Monday. The $63 billion (€53.9 billion) deal — the largestever foreign takeover by a German company — will go ahead after Bayerreceived approvalfrom Europeanand US anti-monopoly authorities. As both companies have global operations, the deal had to be ap-

proved by 30 countries around the world. The additional conditions set out by the countries bumped up the costs for Leverkusen-based Bayer.

Under conditions set out by EU and US regulators, Bayer can only begin integrating Monsanto once it has sold off parts of its agrochemical and crop-seeds business to anotherGerman chemical giant, BASF. The company expects the sale to take around two months to complete.

Of ʼwhite guys on the Moonʼ and black America The Moon landings were a success for American science – but not for African-Americans, as historian Neil Maher tells.

The late 1960s must have been a manic time for the United States. On the one hand, there was this ambition to send peo‐ ple to the Moon, and on the other hand, there was this divided society, a little like today. So you had the civil rights move‐ ment and the antiwar movement. How ex‐ actly was that possible at the same time?

Neil M. Maher: Well thatʼs exactly what sparked me to write a book about the Apollo space program and

Rain eventually dampened the mood at Roland Garros but there was still plenty of action on day two in Paris.

Last yearʼs beaten finalist Stan Wawrinka slumped to defeat, while there were no surprises on the womenʼs side. Stan Wawrinka was the biggame casualty in the first round in Paris as the Pole was dumped out of the French Open by Guillermo Garcia-Lopez.

its influence on the political and social movements of the 1960s. The project grew out of my thinking about the summer of 1969, which is the summer of Apollo 11, when a million people flocked down to Cape Canaveral to watch the Apollo 11 liftoff, and then three weeks later half a million young people hitchhike up to upstate New York to the Woodstock Music Festival to have a very different sort of celebration, not a celebration about American progress, but rather quite a critical celebration, through music, that discussed issues like the Vietnam War and civil rights.

Cate Blanchett recites manifestos to Budapest audiences at National Gallery A piercingly provocative multichannel video installation should entice spectators to the Hungarian National Gallery this summer. Starring award-winning Cate Blanchett, the highly immersive Manifesto project

by German artist Julian Rosefeldt presents modern-day characters through 12 scenes, all played by the Australian actress and each projected on an individual screen.

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OECD: Trade war risks imperil economic upswing The prospect of increasing trade frictions is threatening the global growth outlook, the OECD has said in its latest biannual forecast. Nonetheless, it expects unemployment to hit a 40-year low in 2019.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Wednesday it expected global growth to reach 3.8 percent this year and 3.9 percent in 2019. The eurozone economywas forecast to grow by 2.9 percent this year and 2.8 percent in 2019. The Paris-based policy organization made up mainly of developed nations noted in its biannual outlook that budgetary easing had taken over from central bank stimulus as the main engine of economic expansion, with three-fourths of OECD member countries now likely to loosen their purse strings. The overall OECD unemployment rate was seen falling to 5 percent by the end of next year, which would mark the lowest level since 1980 and set the stage for higher growth in workersʼ wages.

MH370: Mystery of missing jet remains as fouryear search ends A US company has ended its search of the Indian Ocean for the remains of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. It disappeared in March 2014, with 239 people on board, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Efforts to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 drew to a close in the remote Indian Ocean on Tuesday, after a private company, hired to extend the search, admitted it had found no trace of the aircraft. Texasbased Ocean Infinity said in a statement it had "searched and collected high-quality data from over 112,000 square kilometers of ocean floor ... overcoming both challenging conditions and terrain," but without success.

Oliver Plunkett, Ocean Infinityʼs chief executive, said the failure to find any sign of the plane was "extremely disappointing." In January, the firm signed a 90-day "no find, no fee" deal with the Malaysian government to resume the hunt for the missing aircraft, a year after the official search was called off.