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DAILY NEWS IN ENGLISH

German cyber defense body defends itself over massive breach Germanyʼs Federal Office for IT Safety (BSI) has said that it had only become aware of a massive data breach affecting hundreds of lawmakers on Friday, several weeks after a lawmaker had told BSI officials about suspicious activity on personal accounts. "Everybody assumed it was an isolated case," the BSI said. "Only by becoming aware of the release of the data sets via the Twitter account ʼG0dʼ on January 3, 2019, could the BSI in a further analysis on January 4, 2019 connect this case and four other cases that the BSI became aware of during 2018," it added. BSI head Arne Schönbohm said Friday that the agency had spoken with "some lawmakers" affected by the breach in early December. The statement prompted outrage among other hacking victims, who assumed BSI had known about the issue and failed to inform them.

Poland to shut down 13 escape rooms over safety flaws Poland will close 13 escape room entertainment sites due to safety flaws, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Sunday. The move came two days aftera fire killed five teenage girls locked in an escape room in the north of the country. Authorities carried out inspections at least 178 escape rooms across Poland over the weekend and found that 129 of them did not meet health or safety standards. Morawiecki ordered an evaluation of around 1,100 sites nationwide and urged people to report flaws to firefighters and police. "This was unprecedented," Morawiecki said. "Any sort of prevention is important." Escape rooms involve locking players into a room,where they then have to solve puzzles and find clues in order to obtain a keyto escape. Regarded as an intellectual challenge, the games have become increasingly popular among Polish teenagers in the past five years.

6/2019 • 8 JANUARY, 2019

Northern Irish DUP slams Theresa Mayʼs ʼtoxicʼ deal ahead of vote Brexit:

The deputy leader of Northern Irelandʼs DUP wants Theresa May to demand strong changes to a backstop provision in her Brexit deal. May faces an uphill battle in getting the deal passed without the DUPʼs support. British Prime Minister Theresa May should stand firm in demanding that the EU agree to changes to the Northern Irish backstop provision in a draft Brexit withdrawal deal, the deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) said on Sunday. The DUP — the Northern Irish party that props up Mayʼs minority Conservative government — strongly rejects the so-called backstop, a plan to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland if the EU and Britain fail to agree on a post-Brexit trade deal. "The EU has shown in the past that it will move but only if faced with a resolute red line on the part of the UK government," deputy DUP leader Nigel Doddssaid in a statement. "The coming days will show if this government is made of the right stuff." May has been struggling to convince the DUP and hard-line lawmakers in her own party to support the withdrawal deal amid fears that the backstop could threaten the integrity of the UK or force the country to accept EU rules indefinitely. The prime minister

has said she would work to get more EU "assurances" on the temporary nature of the backstop, but has repeatedly said that the current deal was final. May tried to sell her deal in a TV interview on the BBC on Sunday, roughly one week ahead of a crucial parliamentary vote on the agreement. "If the deal is not voted on [in parliament], then we are going to be in uncharted territory," she said. "The danger there is that we end up with no Brexit at all," May added, also dismissing calls from Brexit opponents to hold a second referendum. The prime minister also defended herself against critics by asking them to provide an alternative to the plan she had negotiated. "So far, nobody has put forward an alternative on all those issues," she said. May confirmed that debate would start next week on a "meaningful vote" to take place in the House of Commons around January 14 and 15. She had postponed a December voteafter it became clear she lacked the support with her own conservative party to get the agreement passed.

UN envoy in Yemen to push Hodeida truce The UN envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, was due to visit the port city of Hodeida on Sunday, as part of a trip to support a recent ceasefire in the war-torn nation. The Red Sea port in Hodeida is the entry point for the majority of imports to Yemen, where more than 22 million people now depend on humanitarian aid to survive. Griffiths arrived in the capital, Sanaa, on Saturday. He is scheduled to hold talks there with Houthi rebel leaders before heading to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to meet with Yemeni government officials. In Sanaa, Griffiths will also meet retired Dutch general Patrick Cammaert, who has been appointed by the UN to head a truce monitoring team. Yemenʼs warring factions agreed to the ceasefire in Hodeida during UN-led talks in Sweden in December 2018.

Congo election results delayed as US deploys troops to Africa The first vote tallies from the December 30 presidential election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will be delayed past Sundayʼs deadline, the head of the election commission has said. Electoral authorities announced that less than half of the ballots had been counted as of Saturday night. The election was stalled by delays and irregularities which triggered a violent political standoff that left dozens dead across the country. Both domestic and international observers appealed to the government to step up its efforts toward a peaceful electoral process.

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