and accounts were compromised but on tuesday it tripled to that figure it's understood to be the biggest data breach in history the stolen information includes names e-mail addresses phone numbers and birth dates but yahoo says passwords and banking details were not compromised. it was sixty years ago today that russia launched the sputnik satellite into orbit around the earth marking the beginning of space exploration and the space race sputnik which means fellow traveler in russian was tasked with sending radio signal messages back to earth. the tax man is coming and he means business the e.u. commission is demanding millions of back taxes to be collected from u.s. tech giants amazon and apple also the license for monsanto's cry for save is up for renewal in the and is facing challenges and

a swiss investment group is hoping to get iran's rail infrastructure back on track . welcome to d.w. business i'm christopher kober in berlin the european commission is turning the screws on us tech companies on wednesday it ordered amazon to repay a quarter of a billion euros and back taxes and the commission is taken ireland to court for failing to collect billions from apple. patience has run out of the european commission taking to the podium that you competition commission announced that brussels had on and in its sights taking the country's government to the european court of justice for its failure to collect taxes from us giant apple then a year ago the commission docked at the decision. requiring ireland to recover up to thirteen billion euros. from apple. however ireland has still not recovered any money not even in part apple is

currently appealing the case it argues that the revenues in question a subject to u.s. tax rules instead meanwhile luxemburg was also singled out by the commission on wednesday ruling that it has granted online shopping giant amazon on due tax benefits for the past eight years leading around three quarters of its profits untaxed the e.u. says that gave it an unfair advantage over other companies. not justified amazon now has to repay the tax benefit worth around two hundred fifty million euros plus interest the commission's position is clear it states that no matter your flag or ownership paying your taxes is part of doing business in the european union. the crisis in spain over the catalonia independence vote has investors on the edge of their seats most european markets finished wednesday's trading session with losses there was one notable exception. germany's benchmark

index the dax reached a record high in wednesday's session the only top european index to end in positive territory strong us stater in gains from carmakers helped the dax hit the high but it wasn't smooth sailing. i think the worries over catalona catalonia dampened the market and the market lost steam but recovered towards the end so kind of a funny day people are worried because they don't know what will ensue but on the other hand people had the time and let's say the inclination to look at the strong points of german economy for example but also low interest rates offering little alternative to investments in equities elsewhere though the catalan independence crisis weighed on markets spain's bex posting in the a three percent loss major catalonia based banks cash a bank and somebody sank the furthest in line with a rising political risk. the u.s.

was more or less unaffected by the turmoil in europe after a sleepy start the s. and p. five hundred reached its seventh straight gain with the dow also continuing to rise . and for some more analysis let's cross over to wall street yes u.s. markets continue with their record setting run what's behind that. you know it's the usual picture over here and other records pretty much every day at the moment and even news flow doesn't really seem to matter we've got fresh data from the labor market in the private sector a less jobs got created than expected but nobody really seems to a very also if you look at the earnings picture owning season is about to kick off next week we got numbers here on wednesday already from pepsi pepsi missed the revenue expectations but the stock traded to the upside anyway so nothing really

seems to stop the market at this point i believe it was the forty second record close for the s. and p. five hundred just within this year and years i want to return to our main story here the e.u. is cracking down on apple's and amazon's tax avoidance schemes how is this news received on wall street well i mean taxation is a hot topic all over the globe especially for to get knowledge even companies but when it comes to the european union going after amazon and apple the big question is first of all will they really get the money luxemburg island apple amazon they actually can. appeal this decision and then even if they have to pay three hundred million dollars for amazon sure it's a lot of money but not necessarily for her and isn't and the same is true for apple we're talking roughly thirteen billion dollars but apple just sitting on

on a cash load of about two hundred fifty billion and most of that money is parked over season especially in europe anyhow so wall street actually was not too current cern the stock of amazon gained almost one percent and epilogues so just traded slightly lower court in new york thank you. google has announced its first smartphone made fully and house the pics of to boast of google says as the world's highest rated camera as well as an ultra vivid display it's the firm's first foray into hardware since google acquired key parts of taiwanese electronics group h t c. the european commission has to decide on whether or not to extend the license for glyphosate before the end of the year glyphosate is a highly controversial chemical that the world health organization listed as cancer causing back in twenty fifteen years as reports. a cotton farmer from the us called john barton has

a stern warning for brussels he's fighting cancer and he's trying to prove in court that his disease was caused by the weed killer roundup like thousands of farmers worldwide he used the pesticide for decades and was always told it's safe. i expose my sons to round up when i was born you know i would backpacks and you know they would go out in the field and spray johnson grass so now as a father i'm thinking my god. did i harm my own children the class action lawsuit representing five hundred people comes as the e.u. is deciding whether to renew the license of the controversial weed killer the license expires at the end of the year to use food safety watch stock has declared that life was saved the key ingredient in roundup is safe but barton's lawyers claim pesticide maker monsanto is deliberately hiding evidence about the safety of clyde for say forty years ago we were seeing studies that smoking tobacco was good

for you that's what we saw big tobacco did that for years they bought scientists and monsanto has taken that playbook right from the tobacco industry the lobbying practices the u.s. lawyers criticized on their visit to brussels are a particular concern for the european parliament. in fact monsanto or organized the whole scientific evidence in such a way that that there was a real money palatial facts re written. scientific reports where it didn't write the reports themselves written by monsanto people the row with the acro chemical giant has become toxic after the company refused to participate in a public hearing all month suntory executives and lobbyists have currently been denied access to the european parliament. relations between iran and the west have been deteriorating in recent weeks with the rhetoric between washington and tear on

being particularly icy but that hasn't scared off foreign investor so far this company for example is currently building iran's biggest rail loading facility. the trucks wait in long queues at a logistics terminal near tehran in iran the overwhelming bulk of freight is transported by road traffic jams are normal especially around the iranian capital the eighteen million residents in the tyran metropolitan region and the automobile industry which is based here have a huge appetite for raw materials but driza shakopee head of the state run railway for the tehran region says there's an alternative he talks about the eleven thousand kilometers of railway routes that cross iran and about the same distance again is under construction. our goal is to be moving thirty percent of all freight by rail we're still a long way from that at the moment just over ten percent is travelling by rail if

we're going to raise that we have to improve all aspects of our rail infrastructure in a prison just south of tehran the two most important railway lines in the middle east cross each other one runs from the port of bund on the persian gulf in the south to azerbaijan in the north the other runs east west from afghanistan to iraq. the swiss trans invest logistics group wants to invest ferdie million u.s. dollars in the next two and a half years to build the country's most modern freight hub covering an area the size of eighty football fields. we are planning to will dry port here. like a country. what. now we are planning. if you meant white green from this. train because it's more economy and. it's more there.

to get long distance freight moving faster at lower cost rizza security see israel as the only practical solution but he says iran needs european logistical experience to make this happen that experience is being brought in by private investors. this kind of foreign private investment is a massive help you know we welcome it and would like to see more of it and we're trying to remove hurdles so that things can be done more quickly up till now a prince's traffic of between six hundred and twelve hundred goods wagons a day when the new freight terminal is completed check your e is counting on many times that number. for the latest business news and social media thanks for the company and see you tomorrow.

climate change. lucia. isn't it time for. africa.