DAILY NEWS IN ENGLISH
UN urges Saudi Arabia to end blockade on Yemen Humanitarian flights have been refused access to Yemen, where millions of people face starvation. Saudi Arabia sealed all entry points to Yemen after Houthi rebels launched a missile attack on Riyadhʼs airport. The United Nations on Tuesday demanded that Saudi Arabia drop its newly tightened blockade on Yemenʼs borders. Saudi Arabia shut down Yemenʼs airports, land borders and sea ports on Monday following anattempted ballistic missile attack on an international airportservicing Saudi capital Riyadh. Saudi Arabia said the complete shutdown was a temporary measure but the blockade was slammed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). "The situation is catastrophic in Yemen, it is the worst food crisis we are looking at today,seven million people are on the brink of famine,millions of people being kept alive by our humanitarian operations," a spokesman for the office, Jens Laerke, told reporters in Geneva.
Paradise Papers: Apple shifted billions offshore to avoid tax New relevations about Appleʼs tax avoidance strategy are making headlines as the Paradise Papers scandal unfolds further. EU finance ministers are due to discuss the issue during talks in Brussels on Tuesday. Apple has denied accusations inthe Paradise Papers investigationthat it moved its operations from Ireland to an offshore center to avoid tax. Documents cited by German newspaper Süd‐ deutsche Zeitung on Monday suggested that offshore law firm Appleby, which is based in multiple tax havens, helped the iPhone maker move billions of dollars in revenues collected in Ireland to the Channel Islands to head off increased European Union scrutiny of its tax affairs in Dublin.
262/2017 • 9, NOVEMBER 2017
France’s Marine Le Pen stripped of parliamentary immunity over tweets A judge can now call her in for questioning over a series of tweets
The French parliament has lifted far-right leader Marine Le Penʼs immunity from prosecution.
Snap shares take a dive on disappointing results Snapchat is currently getting a redesign to make it easier to use. But the new look will not make the latest earnings report from its parent company any prettier for investors who had hoped for much better results. Shares in California-based Snap were down more than 16 percent in after-hours trading after the company posted yet another quarter of disappointing growth. The firm, whichbecame popular among young smartphone users for its disappearing messages, said it logged a loss of $443.2 million (€382.6 million) in its third quarter on revenues of $207.9 million, up from $128.2 mil-
lion a year ago. Analysts said Snap needed to show stronger growth to keep pace in the rapidly evolving social media sector dominated by Facebook. The company added 4.5 million daily users in the third quarter to 178 million, amounting to 3-percent growth — too little to impress investors. Snap does not report monthly user figures. CEO Evan Spiegel (picured above) said Snapchatneeded to grow its user base beyond 13-to-34-year-olds in the US, France, the UK and Australia. "This includes Android users, people older than 34 andrest-of-world markets," he said in a statement.
Self-driving bus starts first route in Germany German railway company Deutsche Bahn has introduced an autonomous bus to drive passengers along a pre-programmed route in Bavaria. In case of an emergency, a human driver can take control with a joystick. The electric vehicle delivered its first passengers on Wednesday in Bad Birnach, Bavaria, starting on its eightminute route from the townʼs hot springs to the central area and the railway station. The EZ10 bus has six places to sit and can take in a further six standing passengers, and the ride is free of charge. Itʼs the first time a self-driving bus has been incorporated in Germanyʼs public trans-
port system. Among the first group to ride the self-driving bus was Richard Lutz, the head of the German railway giant Deutsche Bahn (DB), the company behind the pilot project. "Weʼve just driven, completely autonomously, into a new era of transport," he said in a statement after the first trip. The bus was developed by the French start-up EasyMile. It is equipped with sensors which can detect obstacles and activate brakes.The vehicle moves along a pre-programmed route with its speed initially limited to 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) per hour on a road with a 30 kph speed limit. Also, the bus is not yet capable of avoiding obstacles on its own.
COP23: US absence felt on first day of UN climate summit As the 23rd annual UN climate conference kicks off in Bonn, people are already jostling to fill the climate power vacuum left by a retreating United States. The small city of Bonn, Germany, was inundated with thousands of delegates today for this yearʼs UN climate summit. Over the coming two weeks, negotiators will hammer out the rule book for the Paris climate agreement reached two years ago. The VIPs will not arrive until next week for the intensive final days of the summit. But already, the politicians are gearing up for a battle between people claiming to speak for the United States. Donald Trump announced earlier this year he will pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement. However, the withdrawal process takes three years, leaving the United States in as a signatory until then. President Trump is sending a small delegation to Bonn that will try to continue to shape the rules of the agreement.
Scottish parliament evacuated after suspicious package found The Scottish parliament building has been evacuated following the discovery of packages containing white powder. Parliament later announced that afternoon sessions would go ahead as planned. Scotlandʼs parliament building was evacuated on Tuesday after at least one package containing white powder was found. A package containing white powder was sent to a Conservative Party lawmaker, a source at the parliament told Reuters news agency.
weather today BUDAPEST
5 / 16 °C Precipitation: 0 mm
262/2017 • 9, November 2017
Anti-Semitic Anne Frank football
The Trabant, the iconic East German car, turns 60
stickers appear in Germany
On November 7, 1957, the first "Trabi" rolled off the line. Thousands of them crossed from East to West Germany in 1989, two years before its production was halted. Explore the history of the car thatʼs now cult.
Stickers displaying Anne Frank wearing football jerseys have appeared in Germany as an antiSemitic provocation by neo-Nazi fans. Dortmund and Leipzig ultra groups appear to be copying their Italian counterparts. An anti-Semitic campaign by far-right Italian football supporters appears to have spread to Germany, after stickers featuring murdered Jewish child diarist Anne Frank wearing a Schalke 04 football jersey have appeared in social media posts and stuck up around Düsseldorf, near the cities of Dortmund and Gelsenkirchen, where the club Schalke is based. The fake Panini-style stickers were first reported by local blog Ruhrbarone, which published a photo of them it said had been found on the Facebook profile of a neo-Nazi active in the local far-right scene. No one has taken responsibility for creating the image, but the fact that Anne Frank is pictured wearing the jersey of Schalke 04, biggest rival of football club Borussia Dortmund (BVB), seems to corroborate Ruhrbaroneʼs speculation that the neo-Nazis are BVB supporters.
Player power boosted by new FIFA contract rules A new "wide-ranging" agreement between FIFA and FIFPro aimed at protecting the rights of professional players was announced on Monday. Sports Player power boosted by new FIFA contract rules A new "wide-ranging" agreement between FIFA and FIFPro aimed at protecting the rights of professional players was announced on Monday. World football governing body FIFA and players union FIFPro have reached an agreement on a "wideranging six-year cooperation" aimed at improving the rights of professional players. New rules will ease dispute resolution between clubs and players in the instances of wages not being paid or players being banned from training with team-mates.
The "running cardboard," the "plastic bomber" or the "Saxon Porsche" — those are just some of the many nicknames that have been given to the Trabant. And thereʼs a grain of truth to every joke: The car, which was produced in Zwickau, Saxony, was made of a hard plastic known as Duroplast, made from recycled materials including pressed cotton fibers, synthetic resins and rags from the Soviet Union. Metal was in short supply in the GDR, so the Trabiʼs car-
maker used the raw materials that were available at that time — at least the car couldnʼt rust completely... Although there were plans for further development — and East German engineers even came up with prototypes — GDR leaders halted the production of new, enhanced models. Inevitably, the East German car industry could not keep up with the West, so the Trabi was condemned to remain the dirty, noisy exhaust blower weʼve known to this day.
Plastic is junk food for coral Coral behaves unexpectedly when it comes to consuming plastic. Although itʼs well known that they do swallow microplastic particles, what is really strange is that they seem to actually like it. Take a moment and try to imagine being a piece of coral. How does it feel to be sitting there, below the oceanʼs surface, swinging gently in a soft warm current, in a colorful and vivid environment (letʼs pretend everythingʼs still fine down there). You have fish passing by, a boat crosses over your head, maybe a diver drops down and starts to
explore your underwater hood. Now, letʼs get a little bit more realistic. From the boat, and maybe from the diver, pieces of plastic garbage tumble down into your neighborhood. Over time this happens more often, more frequently. Slowly the plastic starts to break down into smaller, later very tiny pieces. What would you do? Because you are a coral you would probably start to swallow some of those tiny pieces of plastic, just like the species around you do. But now something really strange happens. You actually start to like the taste of those plastic bits. Not of all of them, but some.
Martin Day Wine Festival in Hotel Gellért
Tamás Széll - the most well known gastro hero in Hungary, who proved to the world that Hungarian chefs are also artists of the “Culinarium” – will introduce the mysteries of fine dining at the Martin Day Wine Festival of Danubius Hotel, accompanied by the golden trio of the chefs from Gerbeaud, Gundel and Gellért, with plenty of wine and foaming beer, posing a drinking challenge to everyone. All that between November 9 and12.
H-1056 Budapest, Só u. 6. Telephone: +36 1 577 0700 Fax: +36 1 577 0710 bhzinfo@zeinahotels.com www.boutiquehotelbudapest.com
Published by: Mega Media Kft. 1075 Budapest, Madách I. út 13-14. +36 1 398 0344 www.hotelujsag.hu
Climate change: World way off track on Paris accord goals Existing national goals will only meet one-third of the Paris climate target, according to a UN report. The study comes less than a week before the world climate conference kicks off in Bonn. As the United Nations prepares to welcomedelegates from across the world to Bonnon Monday for the twoweek COP23 climate summit, it released a stark warning today. The national pledges currently on the table by the signatory countries will only bring a third of the reduction in emissions required by 2030 to meet global climate targets. The biggest roadblock is not with national governments, says the United Nations Environment Program report. Rather, the private sector and regional governments arenʼt increasing their climate action at a rate that would help close this gap. The Paris goal is to limit global warming to at least under 2 degrees Celsius — and to 1.5 degrees if possible — in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.
German police detain Syrian for ʼpreparingʼ explosives attack A 19-year-old Syrian has been detained on suspicion of planning to carry out a terror attack in Germany. The man was ready to carry out the attack using highly explosive materials, according to prosecutors. A Syrian man suspected of planning a terror attack was detained in the northern German city of Schwerin, the Federal Prosecutorʼs Office said on Tuesday in a statement. The suspect, identified as 19-year-old Yamen A., was taken into police custody. Prosecutors said in a statement that the teen is "strongly suspected of having planned an Islamistmotivated attack" that involved "highly explosive" materials. Authorities added that Yamen A. had already "concretely prepared" the attack. In July this year, the suspect made the decision to detonate an explosive device in Germany "in order to kill and injure as many people as possible," the statement read. Yamen A. then began to procure components to make an explosive device, including chemicals. It was not initially clear whether the suspect had selected a location to carry out the attack, prosecutors said.