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DAILY NEWS IN ENGLISH

Indonesia flash flood death toll rises Indonesiaʼs disaster agency on Monday raised the death toll from flash floods in the countryʼs easternmost province, saying at least 77 people had died.

Scores were injured and more than three dozen left missing after torrential downpours sent flash floods and mudslides through mountainside villages in Papua, the agency said. National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said rescue efforts had been hampered by the destruction of roads and bridges in several areas of Jayapura district after days of fierce rain. The worst-hit area was Sentani subdistrict, where rescuers evacuated more than 4,000 people after a river burst its banks early on Sunday morning, according to an official from the local disaster agency. In a stroke of good fortune, soldiers managed to save a 5-month-old baby from rubble inside a house and reunite him with his father.

The mother and siblings were killed in the disaster, a military spokesman said.

Cyclone Idai: Death toll rises in Zimbabwe and Mozambique More than 100 people have died in Mozambique and Zimbabwe in the wake oftropical cyclone Idai. Authorities in both countries have warned that the death toll could climb, as many more remain missing. According to local media, some 84 people died in Mozambique, while officials said at least 70 were killed in Zimbabwe, after the cyclone tore across the region on Friday and Saturday. Idai first made landfall on Mozambiqueʼs central coast on Thursday night before hitting Zimbabwe. Mozambiqueʼs environment minister, Celso Correia, told news agency AFP the deaths occurred in the hard-hit coastal community of Beira and nearby inland Dondo district. "We will certainly end with a higher toll," he warned. "I think this is the biggest natural disaster Mozambique has ever faced. Everything is destroyed.

64/2019 • 19 MARCH, 2019

Turkeyʼs Recep Tayyip Erdogan uses New Zealand attack video at campaign rally New Zealandʼs foreign minister has warned such actions could cause real damage

Turkeyʼs president is showing livestreamed footage of the mass shooting in Christchurch to his supporters at campaign rallies.

Germany minimum wage remains one of lowest in region At €9.19, the minimum wage in Germany remains among the lowest in western Europe, according to a report. Despite an increase earlier this year, the wage floor continues to sit far below median income levels.

Although minimum wages have grown across the EU, Germany ranks among the lowest for western European countries,a report on Thursday revealed. Produced by the HansBöckler Foundation’s Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI), the report showed that Germany came in second last place at €9.19 ($10.36) per hour — even after a 35-cent increase earlier this year. It was defeated only

by the UK, where the minimum wage of £7.83 now equates to €8.85, albeit partly as a result of the pound weakening since thereferendum vote to leave the EU. Although wages in Germany were higher than many southern and eastern European states, workers were still vulnerable to poverty. The minimum wage, which would equate to around €1,146 per month after taxes and social contributions,barely stood above the poverty line and only made up around 48 percent of the national median income. In comparison, countries like Turkey offered a minimum wage of almost 74 percent of median national income. In Portugal, the figure is 61 percent.

Nets ʼnʼ Lasers: some of our best hopes for mitigating the threat of space debris Space debris is a bit like space itself: We know itʼs up there, but beyond that thereʼs so much we know we donʼt know. The statistics are fun, though, if a little misleading. Itʼs a bit of a safari crunching the numbers, but here goes. Since 1957, the year the Soviet Union sent Sputnik into space, there have been 4,900 space launches. So far so good. In that time we have put 6,600 satellites in orbit

and/or created "an on-orbit population of more than 18,000 tracked objects." Elsewhere, ESA cites "more than 17,000 orbital objects" being tracked and catalogued by the US Space Surveillance Network. And in a third document itʼs 22,000 objects.

But you get the idea: Itʼs a lot. Of the 6,600 satellites, 3,600 remain in space, and less than a third (about 1,100) are operational.

Three dead, five injured in Utrecht shooting A gunman opened fire on a tram in the central Dutch city of Utrecht on Monday, killing at least three people and wounding five, said city Mayor Jan van Zanen. "At this stage, we can confirm three deaths and nine wounded, three of them seriously," van Zanen said in a video message on Twitter. He added that a "terror motive" was a plausible reason for the attack. The number of injured was later readjusted to five. Police said they had launched a manhunt for the attacker and were investigating the shooting as a possible terrorist incident. "Multiple people have been injured," Utrecht police said on Twitter.

"It is a shooting incident in a tram.

Several trauma helicopters have been deployed to provide help." The head of the Dutch national counterterrorism service, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg told a press conference that "a major police operation" was underway to arrest the gunman. He added that the terrorism threat level had been raised to the maximum of five in the province of Utrecht.

Paris police chief replaced, PM signals tougher rules on yellow vest protests Franceʼs prime minister said on Monday that anti-government ʼyellow vestʼ protesters would be banned from the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris if authorities deem that violent groups are taking part with a view to causing chaos. Edouard Phillippeʼs announcement followsone of the most violent weekends of protestsin the French capital.

weather today BUDAPEST

8 / 11 °C Precipitation: 0 mm

64/2019 • 19 March, 2019

Worried about Brexit, Brits stockpile food, supplies Nick Thomas, a 25-year-old hazardous waste operator from Cornwall, is insistent that Brexit will be fine.

Probably. "If ʼno dealʼ goes badly, thereʼll be rioting on the streets and looting, national uproar. If people canʼt eat, theyʼll rise up and fight. But I canʼt see it happening — thatʼs a very worst case scenario," he said.

Thomas, who voted to leave the EU because of the adverse effects of the common fisheries policy on his local area, is not ruling out the possibility of things going awry. He has stocked up with a substantial amount of dried goods – rice and pasta, primarily — as well as tinned beans and vegetables. "The main thing is the food supply chain," he said. "A couple of friends of mine have done the same as me and bought some big bags of rice and pasta, some long-life tins of food.

But weʼre all of the same opinion that thereʼs nothing really to worry about."

Anthony Joshua v Jarrell Miller: American challenger praises Tyson Fury Tyson Fury "looks more like a heavyweight champion" than Anthony Joshua, says Joshuaʼs next opponent Jarrell Miller. Unified world heavyweight champion Joshua, 29, will meet New Yorkʼs Miller at Madison Square Garden on 1 June. The Briton is a 1-10 favourite with bookmakers towin on his US debutagainst an opponent who is undefeated. "In my eyes, [Fury] is somebody who has been doing good in and outside the ring," Miller told BBC Sport.

Greece scrambles to clean up banks and bad loans Plagued by eight exhausting years of financial crisis, millions of Greeks are unable to pay off their loans. But there are also those who donʼt want to, as Anthee Carassava reports from Athens.

Walk into any Greek bank and ask for a loan, and chances are youʼll walk out jilted and empty-handed. But not if you are Pavlos Polakis. The chain-smoking health minister won almost instant approval for a mammoth €100,000 ($114,000) consumer loan this month, claiming he was in desperate need of the cash to cover personal and political expenses. The revelation has sparked fierce political debateand an urgent inquiry by an Athens prosecutor after the

countryʼs central bank governor accused Polakis of calling him to complain, but also making "a preposterous" attempt to block him from investigating the controversial loan. In an urgent judicial testimony this week, the banker, Yannis Stournaras, said the minister, also a leading apparatchik in Prime Minister Alexis Tsiprasʼ leftist Syriza party, recorded the heated telephone exchange and later leaked its content to local media.

Can machines make better decisions than people?

One theory suggests automated controls in the cockpit of the Boeing 737 MAX are culpable for the crashes. US President Trump says todayʼs aircrafts are simply too complex. Can human-machine relationships be better?

We will never know — and cannot begin to imagine — the mayhem that took place on board the Indonesian Lion Air flight 610 that crashed into the Java Sea in October 2018. The data from the recovered flight recorder offers an agonizing image of the 11-minute tragedy. Immediately after the Boeing 737 MAX 8 took off in the early morning of October 29,

2018 at 5:45 a.m. local time, problems in the cockpit became apparent.

Data shows the pilot tried to pull up the nose of the plane 26 times, but again and again it was pushed down.

There were also conspicuous patterns of the plane changing speeds. Read more: Ethiopians hold mass funeral for plane crash victims An infographic in thefinal report from the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) illustrates this dramatic conflict between human and machine, which ended abruptly after 11 minutes when the plane crashed into the sea at about 450 kilometers per hour and killed all 189 people on board.

Elegant Café Párisi breathes new life into Budapest’s splendid Lotz Hall Café Párisi is on the top floor of the building, with theAndrássy Entertainment Centreand, from tomorrow, an Avatar exhibition below. The café is open every day and the Lotz Hall can be rented for special events such as birthday parties, company gatherings or a fairy-tale wedding. Café Párisi Address: District VI. Andrássy út 39 Open: Daily 9am-9pm

H-1056 Budapest, Só u. 6.

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Merger between T-Mobile and Sprint on the line The $26.5 billion (€23 billion) merger,announced last April, would combine the United Statesʼ third and fourth largest wireless companies, creating a new firm the size of sector rivals Verizon andAT&T. It would also reduce the number of major carriers in the US from four to three. T-Mobileʼs German parent,Deutsche Telekom would take 42 percent of the new entity and Japanʼs SoftBank, owner of Sprint, 27 percent, with the rest held by the public. The combined company, to be called T-Mobile, would have 127 million customers.

But the deal must get the green light from US federal regulators. A hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Wednesday — Thursdayʼs scheduled meeting before the House Committee on the Judiciary was postponed — didnʼt have a direct bearing on the governmentʼs regulatory review. But optics matter and they can help or hinder in the final decision-making process.

Geely the car industryʼs rising ʼprofitability starʼ Ferdinand Dudenhöffer from the CAR Center Automotive Research at Germanyʼs Duisburg-Essen University called Chinese auto manufacturer Geely "the profitability star of the worldʼs car industry." A fresh study by the center points out that on average, a Geely car costs just €9,529 ($10,942), but the companysecures a 14.4 percent profit from revenues before tax and interest.

Dudenhöffer says thatʼs a lot more than, say, the profit margins of foreign rivals BMW, Toyota or PSAOpel. The worldʼs largest carmaker, Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen, logs a profit margin of only 8.2 percent, the survey says. Geely is part of the Zhejiang Geely Holding,which also owns Volvo Cars, London EV-Taxi and Lotus.The holding has also acquired a 10 percent stake in Daimler. According to the CAR researchers, Geelyʼs rapid rise is based on its successful compact car platform, which it developed together with Sweden-based Volvo.

"What Ferdinand Piëch managed to implement at VW from 1993 with the help of his platform strategyis in a way being copied now by Geelyʼs main shareholder and founder, Li Shufu," said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, adding that the Chinese were becoming major players in the global auto market.