DAILY NEWS IN ENGLISH
Pro-refugee Italian mayor arrested over immigration fraud The mayor of an Italian town, once lauded for his integration efforts, was arrested on suspicion of fostering illegal immigration on Tuesday. Mayor Domenico Lucano of Riace was also charged with corruption, police said. The Guardia di Finanza (GdF), Italyʼs federal law enforcement agency for financial crimes, said Lucano was facilitating sham marriages between citizens of his town and foreigners, mostly foreign women. He is also suspected of fraudulent practices while handing out lucrative garbage collection contracts. Lucano has been mayor of Riace, a town in Italyʼs economically depressed and isolated region of Calabria, since 2004. He became famous during the 2015 European migrant crisis for welcoming 450 refugees in a village of just 1,800 inhabitants. The influx of newcomers revitalized the town, prevented the primary school from closing, and has been celebrated around the world as a paragon of integration.
Angela Merkelʼs coalition reaches deal on diesel crisis The German government reached a "highly complex" agreement early on Tuesday on a "concept for clean air and the protection of individual mobility in our cities," in the wake ofthe countryʼs diesel scandal. The compromise followed six hours of deliberations in Berlin, as members of Chancellor Angela Merkelʼs ruling conservatives and their junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), sought to avoidcity-level bans on diesel cars. The agreement will focus on retrofitting old diesel-engine vehicles currently on the road. The ministers for environment and transport are expected to present the exact details of the plan later on Tuesday.
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Italy and the EU clash over budget plan The future of the euro could be at stake
A war of words between the EU and Italy over its budget plan escalated on Monday, as Brussels reminded the government in Rome that its proposal must meet the blocʼs rules.
Elon Musk to resign as Tesla chairman, pay $20 million fine over fraud charges Tesla CEO Elon Musk will pay a $20 million fine and give up his board chairmanship for misleading tweets about the company. The Securities and Exchange Commission said he knew "the potential transaction was uncertain." US carmaker Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk on Saturday each agreed to pay fines of $20 million (€17.2 million) fine and have Musk step down as chairman of the Tesla board for at least three years in a
settlement over Muskʼs misleading tweets about the companyʼs future, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said. The SEC investigation was launched afterMusk tweeted on August 7that he had "funding secured" to privatize the electric automaker at $420 a share, causing a brief spike in Teslaʼs share price. "In truth, Musk knew that the potential transaction was uncertain and subject to numerous contingencies," the SEC wrote.
Eyeing a ʼthird womanʼ at the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics Wow. What a day to be awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics afterwhat just happened at CERN. You would have to be a steely old so-and-so — and totally not cynical — to think that the suspension of "a scientist" for alleged sexist — nigh on woman-hating — remarks would have had no impact on the Nobel committeeʼs decision. The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics recognized "groundbreaking inventions
in the field of laser physics." And CERN is the worldʼs biggest particle physics laboratory — its business is lasers, basically. And itʼs a quasiLaureate, having played a part in the detection of the once-elusive Higgs boson fundamental particle for which François Englert and Peter Higgs got the 2013 prize. So CERN is part of this male-dominated Nobel culture we slavishly celebrate once a year.
Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to American, Canadian, French scientists Arthur Ashkin, Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland have won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in the field of laser physics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Tuesday. "The inventions being honoured this year have revolutionised laser physics," the Nobel Committee said in a statement. "Advanced precision instruments are opening up unexplored areas of research and a multitude of industrial and medical applications." The academy honored Ashkin of Bell Laboratories in the US for developing "optical tweezers" that can grab tiny particles, like viruses, without damaging them. He was awarded one half of the prize. Strickland and Mourou will share the other half, after they singled out for helping develop laser pulses that can be applied to a broad range of industrial and medical devices. The two "paved the way towards the shortest and most intense laser pulses created by humankind," the committee said.
French police raid Islamic center suspected of terror links French authorities raided the headquarters of an Islamic Shiite association and the homes of its leaders near the northern city of Dunkirk during the early hours of Tuesday morning. According to regional officials, raids on the Zahra Centre France and about a dozen homes were staged as part of the"prevention of terrorism" procedures.
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227/2018 • 4 October, 2018
EU gives Facebook, Twitter ultimatum on consumer protection laws The European Commission said it "cannot negotiate forever" and plans fine social media companies that do not comply with stricter consumer laws. Facebook and Twitter have until the end of 2018 before sanctions kick in. The EU demanded on Thursday that social networks Facebook and Twitter update their "misleading" consumer terms in accordance with the blocʼs rules by the end of the year. Failure to do so would result in financial penalties for the social media giant, EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said. "My patience has reached its limit," Jourova added. "While Facebook assured me that they would finally adapt any remaining misleading terms of services by December, this has been ongoing for too long." She said the EU "cannot negotiate forever, we need to see the results." "It is now time for action and no more promises," Jourova said. She said she planned to call on all consumer protection authorities across the 28member block to act fast and apply sanctions to Facebook and Twitter, if they failed to comply.
Simona Halep: World number one suffers slipped disc
Moodyʼs plays down Italian risk to eurozone
Argentinaʼs President Mauricio
The ratings agency sees only a small possibility that Rome might exit the currency bloc, despite a senior official saying the country would be better off. The news comes as Italyʼs debt faced a fresh bout of selling.
Macri accused of ʼabuse of
International ratings agency Moodyʼs said in comments released for publication late on Monday that it would provide an updated decision on Italyʼs credit rating by the end of October, with any review for a possible downgrade depending on Italyʼs debt trajectory and economic growth. The agency currently rates Italian sovereign debt at Baa2 with a negative outlook, which is on the verge of falling below the investment grade category. Moodyʼs delayed its scheduled review from Sep-
powerʼ over IMF loan
tember 7 as it was waiting to see the outline ofItalyʼs budget for next year. "Italy has long had an elevated debt burden and has long had problems generating economic growth and the political environment that can allow structural reform efforts to take place is also in question," Sarah Carlson, senior vice president in the Moodyʼs sovereign team said in a conference call. "It comes down to the debt trajectory and growth which is linked to structural reform effort," Carlson added.
21 of last remaining Asiatic lions die in 3 weeks Conservationists are worried about the spread of a disease that killed 1,000 lions in Africa in the 1990s. Conservations for Indiaʼs Gir National Park in the countryʼs western region of Gujurat announced on Tuesday that 21 Asiatic lions had died in the park in the past three weeks. At least four of them were confirmed to be carrying a virus that killed 1,000 lions in Tanzania in the 1990s. The virus is called canine distemper virus (CDV), and can easily
spread from dogs in the wild to other animals. "A team of experts is working to ascertain the reason for the viral infection. Since all 21 lions have died in one Sarasiya grassland, it is a matter of concern," said park official Dushyant Vasavada. Another 31 lions from the same part of the sanctuary are currently under observation, though they have shown no sign of the disease thus far. Gir National Park is home to all the worldʼs remaining Asiastic lions, of which there are about 520.
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Argentinaʼs attorney general, Jorge Di Lello, announced on Wednesday that his office planned to investigate President Mauricio Macri for "abuse of power," stemming from a $50 billion (€42 billion) loan his administration secured from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The move underscores the repercussions that this yearʼs economic turmoil is having in Argentine politics. A formal complaint against Macriʼs government was made by former lawmaker Claudio Lozano and Jonatan Baldiviezo, of the NGO City Rights Observatory. They accuse members of the executive branch of being in "violation of public duties in bypassing congress" when they signed the accord with the IMF. "Our constitution has established that it is Congress who has the sole authority to collect public debt and to enter into agreements with international agencies," Baldiviezo told the EFE news agency. In particular, the plaintiffs highlighted that Argentinaʼs 2018 Budget Law also does not authorize the president to sign agreements with the IMF.
Chinese gangs fuel illegal South Africa abalone trade Demand for abalone in Asia is increasingly being met through illegal harvesting run by criminal gangs threatening the survival of the marine mollusk in South Africa, a report has said. TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network, said Wednesday that 96 million individual abalone worth nearly $900 million (€769 million) have been illegally poached off South Africaʼs shores in the past 17 years. Read more:Secondhand clothes, smuggling and the US-China trade war in Africa Nearly all of the large sea snails were sent to China and Hong Kong, where they are considered a delicacy. Only around a third of abalone harvested off South Africaʼs coast was fished legally in line with quotas and other regulations, the report said. Chinese crime syndicates working with South African gangs have taken advantage of poverty and joblessness in Western Cape Province, in many cases combining the illegal abalone trade with other highvalue wildlife products and drugs, the report said.