April showers set to stay despite warm weather
Published: 23 Apr 12 12:29 CET
Germany is set
for April showers this week, and this time the UK has a helping hand in
the meteorological misery. A low pressure area over Britain will
condemn Germany to rain, the German Weather Service (DWD) reported on Monday.
- Taxi drivers protest new Berlin airport fees (24 Apr 12)
- Woman poisons elderly neighbours' yoghurt (23 Apr 12)
- Fears for three missing Germans on Lake Garda (23 Apr 12)
But there is better news in the steadily rising temperatures throughout the week, but that warmth is not here to stay, says Pätzold. She suggests that sun-worshippers will have to keep waiting for that big area of high pressure that might herald a prolonged upturn in temperatures.
Monday should be mostly cloudy with intermittent showers, and maybe even scattered thunderstorms in the north-east as the day wears on. Highs of between 10 and 14 degrees Celsius are anticipated, with the sun even coaxing the mercury as high as 16 in the east. Strong breezes are possible in the south-west and in mountain areas.
Overnight a band of rain thickens towards the east. The temperature will drop from seven to one, with some frost possible in high areas.
The west should see a rainy Tuesday, with thunderstorms forecast in the evening. The east may get away with a cloudy but dry morning, but rain is expected in the afternoon. The south will be predominantly windy. The east will again have the best of the temperatures, with a high of 15 degrees, while elsewhere temperatures will struggle to top 13.
23 April 2012 Last updated at 22:36
Facebook buys AOL patents from Microsoft in $550m deal
Facebook is facing a patent lawsuit from Yahoo
Facebook is paying Microsoft $550m (£341m) for some of the patents it recently bought from AOL.
Microsoft paid more than $1bn for most of AOL's patents, beating rivals reported to have included Facebook.Facebook was sued by Yahoo for patent infringement earlier this year.
The social networking site, which is preparing for a stock market listing, also reported a drop in its first quarter profits to $205m from $233m a year earlier.
A Facebook lawyer described the deal as: "Another significant step in our ongoing process of building an intellectual property portfolio to protect Facebook's interests."
Microsoft bought 925 patents and patent applications from AOL. It is now selling 650 of those patents to Facebook as well as licences to the other 275.
"Today's agreement with Facebook enables us to recoup over half of our costs while achieving our goals from the AOL auction," said Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith.
There has been a series of recent patent deals between technology companies as they try to defend themselves in lawsuits.
If a company successfully sues another it can demand a sales ban of its competitor's products, or force the loser to pay expensive licence fees.
Since the start of the year, Intel, Google and Facebook are among those to have bought significant numbers of patents from other technology companies.
Facebook bought a number of patents from IBM last month.
Chinese PM opens Hannover trade fair
Published: 23 Apr 12 07:46 CET
German Chancellor Angela
Merkel and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao officially opened the
Hannover Messe, the world's biggest industry and trade fair, on Sunday
evening.
- Volkswagen set to invest €14 bln in China - Business & Money (18 Apr 12)
As many as 500 companies are from China alone. And the motto of this year's Hannover Messe is "Green Intelligence" with the focus on environmentally sustainable innovations and technologies.
"As two of the most important manufacturing countries in the world, China and Germany are committed to working closely to promote dialogue and cooperation of the global industries," Wen said during a lavish and colourful opening ceremony held under tight security in Hannover's concert and congress centre.
Merkel, for her part, noted that it was her third meeting with Wen in less than a year and that "little by little, we're understanding better how things function in the two countries."
Bilateral trade between Germany and China stood at €144 billion last year and "we're working on making this even more," she said.
According to the head of the German VDMA industry federation, Thomas Lindner, China was staging "the largest single showcase of industrial technology ever outside the People's Republic" at this year's fair.
"This impressive and extensive presentation shows us China both as a trading partner, but also a business competitor," Lindner said.
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