by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Investing
New Delhi : With trade relations between countries being actualised at the state or regional levels, a Minister of the German state of Thuringia on Monday called for greater cooperation with Indian industry for the benefit of both.
Speaking at an Indian industry chamber Ficci organised business interaction here, Thuringia’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Science and Digital Society Wolfgang Tiefensee highlighted the advantages for Indian business in investing in his state located in the heart of Germany, as well as of Europe.
Thuringia is a world leader in the optics industry, while its automotive industry boasts of leading global majors such as Daimler, Opel, Magna, Bosch and BMW.
“Since 2012, there has been a major improvement in our business relations with Thuringia’s exports to India jumping 34 per cent in 2018 over the previous year to touch 150 million euros,” Tiefensee said.
The Minister said Thuringia offers excellent conditions in mechanical engineering for generating innovations and launching internationally successful products and technologies.
Around 10,000 scientists are doing research in the state in more than 40 institutes and universities in close cooperation with businesses, he added.
An MoU was signed on the occasion between Thuringian firm Gramme-Revit and Indian distributor WB for a new food supplement against arthritis called DuoVital.
In his address earlier, Jasper Weick, Charge de Affairs at the Germany Embassy here, said that India and Germany have strong commonalities in their adoption of democracy, federalism and the free market.
He said that the India-Germany bilateral trade had risen at a healthy 10 per cent last year to touch nearly $22 billion.
Investments in both directions were thriving and close to 1,700 German companies were doing business with and out of India, he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Ayhan Simsek,
Berlin: Germany vowed on Monday to continue legitimate business relations with Iran under European Union law, despite the U.S. move to reimpose tough sanctions on Iran.
Speaking at a press conference in Berlin, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Germany regretted the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement, known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal.
In May, U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew his country from the landmark nuclear deal signed in 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany).
“In close coordination with our European partners, we are monitoring developments and examining options on how to protect the economic basis of this agreement and protect our companies,” he said.
“Under EU law, legal business with Iran should continue to be possible,” he stressed.
Washington announced on Monday new sanctions targeting Iran’s energy and and financial sectors along with its shipping industry. More than 700 individuals, entities, aircraft, and vessels were blacklisted, including 50 Iranian banks and their domestic and foreign subsidiaries.
—AA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business Summit, Events, Social Round-up, World
Beijing / Jakarta / Paris / Kuala Lumpur: Saturday’s four-nation Istanbul summit on Syria between Turkey, Russia, Germany, and France garnered major coverage by the international media.
Chinese news agency Xinhua on Sunday reported Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks that the summit would succeed in “adopting a sincere and constructive approach,” under the heading “Turkey hosts 4-way summit to seek political solution to Syrian issue.”
China Central Television stressed the leaders’ call to establish a lasting cease-fire and assemble a committee to draw up a new Syrian constitution, underlining French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks on the need to abide by to the Sept. 17 agreement between Turkey and Russia to establish a demilitarized zone in Idlib, Syria.
Japanese public broadcaster NHK also stressed the issue of forming a constitutional committee in Syria by the end of the year to “lay the groundwork for democratic elections.”
Indonesian daily Tempo underlined the importance of the Idlib deal as well as Turkey’s proximity to the Syrian conflict and the difficulty in slowing or stopping a new migration wave should clashes resume.
Likewise, French media stressed the call to uphold a lasting and stable cease-fire in Idlib and gather a constitutional committee by year’s-end.
Le Monde reported the decision to underscore the need to “ensure humanitarian organizations’ rapid, safe and unhindered access throughout Syria.”
State broadcaster France Info reported on the reaffirmed commitment to the “safe and voluntary return of refugees to Syria” and to fight terrorism throughout the country.
Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron in a joint statement on Saturday called for a constitutional committee on Syria for free and fair elections in the war-torn nation.
The leaders “expressed their support for an inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process that is facilitated by the United Nations,” according to the statement.
Reporting by Fuat Kabakci, Mahmut Atanur, Omer Aydin and Omer Faruk Yildiz :Writing by Ahmet Salih Alacacı
—AA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, World
Berlin : Germany is preparing for the introduction of the new 5G mobile communications standard. “If we want to continue to play in the premier league of technology countries, we must now set the course for this,” said Dirk Woessner, management board member of Deutsche Telekom at a press conference at the consumer electronics fair IFA in Berlin on Friday.
The frequencies for 5G are expected to be auctioned at the beginning of 2019. The Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) had already presented first conditions for the auction on Thursday. “We always wanted to be in front when it comes to the allocation of frequencies,” agency president Jochen Homann told the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Xinhua reported.
The targets set by the network agency stipulate that by 2022 at least 98 percent of households in Germany should have access to an internet connection with a minimum of 100 megabits per second.
Motorways and federal highways are too be supplied with at least 100 megabits per second by 2022. With at least 50 Mbit/s, the speed target for mobile broadband on short and long-distance passenger railways is half as high.
Unlike 4G the current mobile standard, 5G will not have national roaming, as 5G providers will not be required to give competitors access to their networks. “It is legally not possible to oblige network operators to make their networks available to other providers,” emphasized Homann.
A quarter of the 5G frequencies will be reserved for local and regional applications and are not intended to be auctioned off. This should enable “as many business models as possible in the industrial and agricultural sectors”, as the Bundesnetzagentur resolution states.
The German Federal Network Agency is not expecting a bidding war like in 2000. Back then, almost 50 billion euros ($58.2 billion) were generated at the UMTS license auction. “The Bundesnetzagentur does not aim for maximizing revenues,” Homann said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Michael Hernandez,
Washington: President Donald Trump falsely claimed Monday that crime in Germany is on the rise in an attempt to defend his own controversial immigration policies.
“The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition,” Trump said on Twitter, referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition.
“Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!” Trump added.
Germany this year recorded its lowest crime rate since 1992.
Trump’s pronouncement comes as he faces widespread criticism at home for his hardline immigration policies, particularly his decision to require undocumented parents to be separated from their children if they are apprehended by immigration enforcement agents.
The result of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy has been met with universal opposition from Democrats, and over the weekend, several prominent Republicans decried the policy.
“I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart,” former first lady Laura Bush wrote in a scathing Washington Post op-ed, further likening the detention centers to internment camps the U.S. sent Japanese citizens to in a “shameful” period during World War II.
The Department of Homeland Security separated roughly 2,000 children from undocumented adults between April 19 and May 31, sending apprehended children to detention centers or foster care, according to the department.
Footage and photographs released by the department depict people, including children, housed in large metal chain-link cages within one of the administration’s makeshift shelters.
The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy refers all undocumented adults for criminal prosecution, a break with past administrations who limited criminal referral for most adults who illegally cross into the U.S. with their juvenile family members. The children, who are not charged with a crime, are separated as a result of their parents’ criminal case. As a matter of regulation, they are not allowed to be detained with their parents during legal proceedings.
First lady Melania Trump, whose immigration history remains murky, appeared to break with her husband in a statement issued to CNN by her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, in which she said Melania Trump “hates to see” families broken apart.
“She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart,” Grisham said.
Republican Senator Susan Collins further said the policy is “traumatizing” children, denying the administration’s rationale for the policy as a deterrent for future undocumented migration.
Collins said the Trump administration is trying to “send a message” with its policy but warned “using children is not the answer”.
Trump and his top officials have variously argued they are simply following federal law, which is not the case, while seeking to blame Democrats for their policy.
Trump did so again on Monday, asking rhetorically on Twitter: “Why don’t the Democrats give us the votes to fix the world’s worst immigration laws? Where is the outcry for the killings and crime being caused by gangs and thugs, including MS-13, coming into our country illegally?”
The “spectacularly cruel policy,” Amnesty International said, “will leave an indelible stain on the reputation of the USA”.
“This is nothing short of torture,” said Amnesty International’s Americas Director Erika Guevara-Rosas. “The severe mental suffering that officials have intentionally inflicted on these families for coercive purposes means that these acts meet the definitions of torture under both U.S. and international law.”
Earlier in the day, the UN strongly rapped the policy, urging the U.S. to carry out a full halt to a practice that punishes “children for their parents’ actions.
“I call on the United States to immediately end the practice of forcible separation of these children, and I encourage the government to at last ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in order to ensure that the fundamental rights of all children, whatever their administrative status, will be at the center of all domestic laws and policies,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.
Undeterred, the American president was unwavering in his commitment to his administration’s immigration crackdown.
“The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility,” Trump said at the White House.
In her own stern defense, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told a gathering of sheriffs that the U.S. “will not apologize for the job we do or for the job law enforcement does”.
She later told reporters at the White House that the separation policy is not child abuse while urging Congress to act on the matter.
“Congress could fix this tomorrow,” she said, repeatedly denying that the separation of families is administration policy after Trump’s senior policy advisor, Stephen Miller, told the New York Times “it was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period”.
It is unclear if Trump will support legislation that closes what the administration is calling “a loophole” if the bill does not also include funding to build his oft-promised border wall, which he initially said Mexico would pay for.
Nielsen further scoffed at the suggestion that the administration is trying to send a message with its implementation, saying: “I find that offensive. No, because why would I ever create a policy that purposely does that?”
In May, Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, explicitly said the policy would serve as a deterrent.
“It could be a tough deterrent — would be a tough deterrent. A much faster turnaround on asylum seekers,” Kelly told National Public Radio during a controversial interview in which he argued that undocumented migrants would not be able to easily assimilate into American society because “they don’t have skills”.
In an apparent nod to Trump’s immigration policy, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman said the UN chief “believes that refugees and migrants should always be treated with respect and dignity, and in accordance with existing international law”.
“Children must not be traumatized by being separated from their parents. Family unity must be preserved,” said Stephane Dujarric.
—AA