title

DAILY NEWS IN ENGLISH

EU fails to agree on glyphosate license renewal The European Commission has again hit a wall in renewing the approval for the weedkiller glyphosate. The vote comes after 18 months of agonizing over the controversial herbicide. The European Union on Thursday voted on whether to prolong the use of the common but controversial herbicide glyphosate within its borders, but failed to reach a consensus.

The proposal to renew the EU license for glyphosate for another five years failed to a reach a qualified majority, meaning a decision has again been postponed, according to lawmakers. The current license is due to expire on December 15, but there is an 18 month grace period. Fourteen countries voted in favor of the renewal, nine against, while five, including Germany, abstained from voting. The proposal could now be referred to an appeal committee, or alternatively the Commission could draw up a new proposal to be voted upon.

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 Süddeutsche 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.

265/2017 • 13, NOVEMBER 2017

Spainʼs Rajoy travels to Catalonia for first visit since imposing direct rule His trip comes two weeks after he suspended the regionʼs autonomous status

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has used a trip to Catalonia to urge businesses not to leave the region despite its independence push.

BMW loses $158 million Swiss fine appeal It hasn’t been the best week for BMW. On Thursday, South Korea said it was fining the company for flouting emission rules and on Friday, a Swiss court confirmed a fine of $158 million for breaking competition laws.

German car manufacturer BMW has lost an appeal against a $158 million (€136 million) fine imposed on it by a Swiss court after it was found to have blocked Swiss residents buying its cars elsewhere in Europe. Originally imposed in 2012, the fine came about after the Swiss competition authority WEKO investigated several com-

plaints from Swiss car buyers that they had been stopped from buying BMWs in other European countries,with the Bavarian companyʼs intention being to divert prospective customers into the far more expensive Swiss market. Switzerlandʼs competition authority was told by more than 20 customers with Swiss addresses that they had been prevented from buying cars at BMW dealerships outside of Switzerland, many of them in Bavaria in southern Germany, where prices were as much as 25 percent lower than in neighboring Switzerland.

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.

United States 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 / 14 °C Precipitation: 0 mm

265/2017 • 13, November 2017

Anti-Semitic Anne Frank football stickers appear in Germany 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.

US soccer star Hope Solo accuses Sepp Blatter of sexual harassment

Siemens plans ʼpainfulʼ revamp of power business

Climate change: World way off

The German engineering giant has revealed the scale of difficulties faced by its power and gas unit, where profits fell 40 percent in Q4.

Up to 6,000 job losses have been announced at its wind turbine business.

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 two-week 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 conglomerate Siemens saw a 10 percent drop in industrial profit in its fiscal fourth quarter due to its power and wind turbine businesses struggling with price pressure and overcapacity, the company admitted on Thursday. Industrial profit, which excludes earnings from its financial and corporate activities, fell to €2.2 billion euros ($2.6 billion) in the quarter to September, against expecta-

tions of about €2.49 billion. Profit from Siemens Power and Gas, dropped 40 percent to €303 million, forcing the firmʼs CEO Jo Kaeser to admit to a "painful" restructuring of the unit. "Our power and gas division has been struggling for some time with very difficult market conditions and structural challenges," Kaeser told a press conference in Munich on Thursday.

In the UK, a squirrel’s color matters With the native red squirrel under threat of extinction in Britain by the introduced gray species, new efforts are underway to kill the latter to save the former. Is that possible, and is it fair?

If you want a quick lesson on just how the color of a British squirrelʼs fur matters, then spend a morning trapping with Craig Shuttleworth. After an hour checking in lush wooded grounds near Penrhyn Castle in north west Wales we find a gray squirrel, scrabbling in a small, rectangular seed-baited cage. In

no time at all it is transferred to a large plastic bag and thwacked on the head three times with a large stick. Soon after, no more than half a mile away, we find a red squirrel in the same situation.

With the law on its side, the red springs out of the opened cage and scuttles off into the woods. As head of Red Squirrels Trust Wales, Shuttleworth spends a fair amount of his time killing grays classed an Invasive Alien Species by the IUCN - to "save” reds, which are classed as a native species and protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981.

Former US goalkeeper Hope Solo has said ex-FIFA boss Sepp Blatter groped her backside during the 2013 Ballon dʼOr ceremony. Sexual harassment wasnʼt just a problem in Hollywood but in womenʼs football as well, she said.

Hope Solo, a star goalkeeper and former member of the US football team, accusedformer FIFA President Sepp Blatterof sexually harassing her, in an interview published on Friday. "Sepp Blatter grabbed my ass, it was a few years ago at the Ballon dʼOr ceremony just before I got on stage," Solo told Portuguese newspaper Expresso.

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.

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

track on Paris accord goals

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. They added that there are no signs that Yamen A. was connected toany terrorist organizations. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the suspectʼs arrest prevented a "serious terror attack in Germany."