Finance

Loscher wanted to resign his office with a daily schedule. He is leaving the executive board "by mutual agreement," siemens explained. Kaeser now has one goal above all: after the stormy events of the past few days, he wants to smooth the waters at siemens again.

Kaeser now has to get to grips with the many problems at siemens very quickly. After his appointment as the new CEO, he said: "our company is certainly not in a crisis, nor is it in need of restructuring. But lately we've been too preoccupied with ourselves and lost some of the momentum we had against the competition."His declared goal now is to lead siemens back into calm waters "and to form a high-performance team".

"In view of the dramatic underfunding, the railroad has an investment backlog of over 30 billion euros in tracks, switches and signal boxes," grube told the news magazine "der spiegel" (monday). The federal states have been complaining for years that too little money is flowing into the network.

Although the federal government and the railroads invest three billion euros in the network every year, more than four billion euros a year are needed to maintain the current quality, the head of the federally owned group explained. "If nothing changes, the backlog will rise to a staggering 50 billion euros by 2020."

The president of the EU parliament, martin schulz, said on thursday that deputies were not prepared to accept the cut in EU spending demanded by national governments. Like him, the president of the EU commission, jose manuel barroso, argued for more of the EU’s own resources through revenues from value-added tax and a financial transaction tax.

A number of net contributors to the EU, including germany, have already called for the EU commission’s proposed spending to be cut by at least 100 billion euros between 2014 and 2020. Savings are needed not only in national budgets because of the financial crisis. The commission has proposed spending 1.1 billion euros.

More than 100 people marched on wednesday from the upper franconia reception center (AEO) in the east of bamberg to maxplatz to protest against what they see as inhumane conditions at the AEO. In front of the town hall, they got mayor andreas stark (SPD) to listen to their demands. "Even if the city is not the right contact, it must still have an open ear for the concerns", OB explained. He said he wanted to get the residents' list of demands and go over it with the AEO director to find out if the complaints were true and if any remedial action needed to be taken.

Among the mostly african refugees in the demo train were also women with small children. The 37-year-old david also wore a red ribbon, which showed who belonged to the demo and also expressed the problems of the refugees. "We suffer in the AEO", the nigerian made clear. The suffering must be so great that the residents decided to hold the demonstration.

Customers still frequently reach for very light plastic bags in supermarkets. In contrast to the thicker carrier bags, the use of these bags, which are often available at fruit counters, for example, has not decreased noticeably in recent years. Last year, 37.3 of these totes were used per capita, compared to 39.5 the year before and 36.3 in 2016. This is the result of a question from the FDP parliamentary group reported in the "neue osnabrucker zeitung" on tuesday reported. In total, slightly more than three billion of the small bags were consumed in germany.

Many retailers no longer hand out carrier bags to customers for free, but charge money instead. But this is not the case with bags whose wall thickness is less than 15 micrometers. These so-called shirt bags are not part of the agreement between trade and the EU.

"How much storage capacity we have? Here in repperndorf around 33 million liters. But we don't need them." christian baumann is cellar master at the franken winegrowers' association (GWF) in repperndorf. And he also explains why such large storage capacities are no longer needed. "Earlier", according to the 49-year-old, "we used to store two and a half harvests in the cellar. Today, the female wine of the last vintage is usually sold straight away."

times have changed at GWF. Previously known more for large quantities than for quality, frankens grobte winzergenossenschaft now focuses more on class than on quantity. Many a storage tank remains empty. Especially when, as in 2011, the grapevines freeze and the harvest is small. It is clear that such whims of nature spoil the balance sheet of a cooperative to which 1600 winegrowers belong. However, the vast majority of them run their wineries as a sideline or as a hobby.