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DAILY NEWS IN ENGLISH

Thousands march for refugee rights in Italy Several thousand protesters marched through the streets of Rome on Saturday to protest Italyʼs new antimigrant laws. Italyʼs new government has pursued a hard-line position on migrants, having shouldered a large burden during the influx of refugees.

Most recently, leader of the far-right League Party and Deputy Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Salvini spearheaded a move to tighten asylum laws. The so-calledSalvini decreestrips humanitarian protection for migrants not approved for refugee status but who cannot be deported.

About 25 percent of asylum seekers have two-year humanitarian protection permits, allowing them to live in state-run reception centers and access training and educational programs and find work. The lower level of protection is based on Italian, rather than international law and protects people who fail to meet the threshold for full refugee status.

285/2018 • 17 DECEMBER, 2018

Heart attack risk highest on Christmas Eve, study says While the researchers couldnʼt explain why, they did have a hunch

A study has singled out quite possibly the most dangerous holiday of the year: Christmas Eve.

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 ex-

ploiting 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.

At least seven journalists were beaten by police in Nicaragua on Saturday as authorities ramped up a campaign of media suppression. Independent journalism has been suffering under a months-long crackdown due to escalating protests against President Daniel Ortega. Journalists led by the well-known editor Carlos Fernando Chamorro had gathered outside police headquarters in the capital Managua on Saturday, to demand answers over the ransacking of Chamorroʼs offices.

Chamorro is the editor of the Confidencial news site, which takes a confrontational approach towards the government. Photographs of Confidencialʼs headquarters in Managua on Friday showed empty shelves, papers and folders strewn all over the floor.

Chamorro claimed that officials had confiscated numerous computers.

Buildings used by several civil society organizations banned by the government were also ransacked.

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries strike deal Almost 200 countries on Saturday reached an agreement on implementing the Paris Climate Accord after two weeks of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations. The result of the tortured negotiations in the Polish city of Katowice is a 156page rulebook on how countries will report and monitor their national pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions and update their emissions plans.

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German band Kraftwerk gets boost on ʼsamplingʼ copyright case In 1997, German rapper and hip-hop music producer Moses Pelham copied a two-second sequence from the pioneering electronic band Kraftwerkʼs 1977 track "Metall auf Metall" (Metal on Metal) without permission and placed it in an endless loop in the song "Nur mir" by rapper Sabrina Setlur. Ralf Huetter and Florian Schneider-Esleben, founding members of Kraftwerk, sued Pelman, cit-

Nicaragua journalists attacked by police

ing infringement. "Sampling" is a technique that extracts bits of another work, such as a rhythmic sequence, and incorporates them into a new composition. Copying and applying such excerpts interferes with the rights of the producer and, without permission, constitutes infringement, said Maciej Szpunar, an advocate general of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), on Wednesday.

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285/2018 • 17 December, 2018

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 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.

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.

Climate change forces Himalayan herders to search for pasture The Himalayan Gaddi community of pastoralists has long lived from the land. But with rising temperatures pushing them higher up into mountains in search of grazing pastures, their way of life is under threat.

It is fall in the Dhaulagiri range in the far north of India. Pine tree forests abound in this remote stretch of theHimalayas , where serpentine roads cling to steep mountainsides. But something isnʼt right in the picturesque hamlet of Kandral, inhabited by the semi-nomadic Gaddi community. The air should be filled with

bleating and the sound of bells. Instead, there is silence. Ranjit Singh and four other shepherds have left their flocks with relatives high up in the mountains so they can come down to celebrate the annual festival of Dham. In the past, they would have brought their animals with them and stayed for longer before descending to the foothills in the winter. "This used to be a time when our livestock would stay with us and eat the grass weʼve collected for them while we shear wool and sell it," says Singh. But the changing climate in this part of the mid-Himalayas has undone the pattern of his existence.

Visit Budapest’s most charming Basilica Advent Fair The Advent Fair by St Stephen’s Basilica is one of the most atmospheric in Budapest.

Centrepieced by a towering Christmas tree and a free ice-rink for kids, stalls offer delicious dishes and all things jolly, while special light shows projected onto the façade of the Basilica make every night special. See below for tips on what to eat, drink and buy – and find out what film star Antonio Banderas was up to here last year!

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

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 [anti-retroviral] drugs.

There are parents who tell children they have other ailments other than HIV," Were said.