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.
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.
Amazon investigated for ʼabuseʼ by German antitrust authorities After logging "numerous" complaints from sellers on Amazonʼs marketplace, Germanyʼs competition watchdog is now taking aim at the e-commerce giant. Itʼs the latest blow to Amazon, which already faces a similar EU probe. Germanyʼs competition watchdog, the Bundeskartellamt, launched an investigation on Thursday into alleged "abuse" bye-commerce giant Amazon. Citing "numerous complaints" from third-party sellers on Amazonʼs German website, amazon.de, the Bundeskartellamt said it would be looking
into whether the company was exploiting its market dominance to obstruct competition. "Its double role as the largest retailer and largest marketplace has the potential to hinder other sellers on its platform," the authorityʼs president, Andreas Mundt, said in a statement. The list of complaints against the US giant is long — with the German watchdog saying it would look into complaints of delayed or withheld payments and blocked accounts. The probe will also look into the siteʼs product rating system as well as the companyʼs shipping conditions.
NASA: Faraway mini-world Ultima Thule is ʼsnowmanʼ-shaped New Horizons scientists on Wednesdayreleased photos of the most distant objectever reached by a space probe, revealing it had the form of a snowman. Detailed images beamed back from the New Horizons spacecraft showed that Ultima Thule, which lies some 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away from Earth, is composed of two spheres, or "lobes." New Horizons conducted itssuccessful flyby of Ultima Thule, which is
classed as a minor planet, on Tuesday. Before that, scientists only had a blurry image of the body and thought it was composed of two more elongated parts — resembling something more like a peanut or bowling pin. The new images, taken at a distance as close as 27,000 kilometers (17,000 miles) told a different story. "That image is so 2018," said lead researcher Alan Stern. "The bowling pin is gone – itʼs a snowman if anything at all."
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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6/2019 • 8 January, 2019
Police identify source of deadly Novichok nerve agent in UK deaths British police announced Friday that they found a bottle containing the Novichok nerve agent in the home of one of the victims of a nerve agent poisoning in Wiltshire last month. "On Wednesday, 11 July, a small bottle was recovered during searches of Charlie Rowleyʼs house in Amesbury," police said in a statement. The statement said scientists from Porton Down defense laboratory confirmed the bottle contained the Novichok nerve agent, the same poison used against Sergei Skripal and his daughter earlier this year. "Further scientific tests will be carried out to try and establish whether it is from the same batch that contaminated Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March," the force said, adding that a link to the Skripals remained "a main line of enquiry for police." Dawn Sturgess died in a hospitalon Sunday after exposure to the nerve agent. Her partner, Rowley, isstill in critical condition, but has regained consciousness. The Foreign Office said on Friday it had invited independent technical experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons early next week "to independently confirm the identity of the nerve agent."
UK Championship 2018: Ronnie OʼSullivan survives scare to beat Ken Doherty
Swiss feel Brusselsʼ Brexit Bern Switzerland is facing the prospect of losing recognition of its stock markets under EU rules. Some suggest the EU is playing it hard as Brexit talks reach their end-game. Romeo Lacher, chairman of SIX Swiss Exchange, Switzerlandʼs main stock exchange,says that Bern has a contingency plan to avoid Swiss bourses being shut out of EU stock markets as a Brussels deadline approaches. Lacherʼs plan entails redirecting share dealing back to Switzerland — one of the EUʼs so-called ʼthird nationsʼ — by prohibiting Swiss shares from being traded in the EU. But time is running out. Swiss stock exchanges have temporary equivalence status under the EUʼs MiFID II (the Markets in Financial
Instruments Directive 2004 — an EU law that provides harmonized regulation for investment services across the 31 member states of the European Economic Area). These expire at the end of the year. Without access to EU bourses, Switzerland would likely retaliate with the same measures for EU traders on Swiss bourses, with potentially dire effects for the Swiss economy. Some 30 percent of trading in Swiss shares is in the EU, the rest in Switzerland and most activity in Swiss shares on SIX comes from traders in the EU.
Germany: Renewables overtake coal as main power source Germans broke new ground in 2018 by receiving more electricity from "green" energy sources than from coal power plants, a new study said. But experts warn that Berlin could still miss its energy goals for 2030. Renewable energy became Germanyʼs dominant source of electricity in 2018,beating coalfor the first time in history, experts from the Germanybased Fraunhofer Institute said on Thursday. "Green" energy sourcessuch as solar, wind, and hydropower accounted for 40.3 percent of German net electricity production last year,
rising by 4.3 percent compared to 2017. Experts said coal-fired power plants supplied about 38 percent of electricity in 2018. Germany has setambitious energy targetsfor the upcoming decade, aiming to have renewable sources provide 65 percent of energy by 2030. The percentage had grown from 8.5 in 2003 to 16.2 in 2008 and 27.2 another five years later. Even with the 2018 landmark, the change is "not happening quickly enough," Fraunhofer Institute professor Bruno Burger told Germanyʼs Der Spiegel magazine.
Defending champion Ronnie OʼSullivan survived a major scare by battling from behind to edge past Ken Doherty 6-5 and reach the UK Championship third round. OʼSullivan looked like heading out as Doherty surged into a 4-1 lead.
Sting to return to Budapest for summer 2019 Sting is head over heels for Budapest. After a successful free show with Shaggy a month ago on Heroes’ Square, the former Police frontman has just announced another Budapest concert for next summer. On 2 July, the Grammywinning singer brings his My Songs tour to the Papp László Aréna, where he will be taking the stage with his own band. From “Englishman In New York” to “Every Breath You Take”, the set should include Sting’s biggest hits. Tickets are on sale now.
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T-Mobile reports cybersecurity incident T-Mobile US and its unit Metro PCS told customers that cybersecurity staff found and shut down unauthorized access to certain information on August 20 and immediately reported the matter to authorities. The company added that no financial data, social security numbers or passwords were compromised during the attackon its networks, admitting, though, that other personal information like names, email IDs, phone numbers as well as account numbers or account types (postpaid or prepaid) may have been exposed. T-Mobile said that about 3 percent of its 77 million customers could have been affected (roughly 2 million people potentially affected).
Outcry in Uganda over compulsory HIV test 19-year-old Methia Nalukwago, a student at Makerere University in the capital Kampala, is excited by the proposal to have all students undergo compulsory HIV/AIDS testing. Some students, she says, have been living in denial. "Our friends, we study with them but you look at someone and you are like, ʼare you sure you are not sick or something like that?ʼ Of course you never come out to tell them but you feel it deep down inside you, this person must be sick because of the symptoms that show," Nalukwago told DW. "Compulsory testing for HIV will help us know our HIV status and where we stand." Studies conducted by the Ugandan AIDS Commission show lack of sufficient information among the youth is contributing to an increase of HIV. Jane Were, the head teacher of Forest Hill College in Mukono district located 21 kilometers (13 miles) east of Kampala, said they are grappling with HIV in schools. She said the situation has been made worse by parents who mislead their children on what they are actually suffering from. "We have situations where parents lie to students about these [antiretroviral] drugs. There are parents who tell children they have other ailments other than HIV," Were said.