Riots have continued in the Spanish region of Catalonia for a ninth consecutive night as demonstrators voice their anger over the arrest of rapper Pablo Hasel for insulting the monarchy and glorifying terrorism on Twitter. Protesters pelted police with bottles and stones and torched refuse containers in the town of Vilanova i La Geltrú, in the province of Barcelona, according to a police statement on Wednesday night. Source RT
Author: The Board
Catalonia’s former leader Carles Puigdemont has told Euronews he will continue fighting after Members of the European Parliament voted to lift his immunity from prosecution. He fled Spain after the north-east region declared independence following a 2O17 referendum that Madrid considered illegal. Source Euronews
Spain’s public debt ended 2020 at 117.1% of gross domestic product as the coronavirus pandemic and the measures imposed to curb it lifted borrowing and led to a deep economic contraction, the Bank of Spain said on Wednesday. Source Reuters
- Spain’s Abengoa (OTCPK:ABGOF, OTCPK:ABGOY) says it filed a request for bankruptcy before the court in Seville, becoming the country’s biggest company to go bust.
- The renewable energy company had €7.9B ($9.6B) in liabilities as of March 31, of which €3.9B were net corporate debt, according to its latest earnings statement.
- Abengoa’s restructuring deal with creditors fell apart after it failed to secure €20M from Andalusia’s regional government. Source Seeking Alpha
Greek fighter jets “harassed” Turkey’s research vessel Cesme while it was sailing in international waters in the Northern Aegean, National Defense Ministry sources were cited as saying on Tuesday by Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu. Source Ekathimerini
Ireland is to extend its third coronavirus lockdown until April 5 but will partially reopen schools from March 1, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Tuesday. The country of five million people had managed to fend off the virus relatively well until December, but has since seen cases soar, particularly due to the spread of the highly contagious British variant. Source EuroNews
Iran has said it will stop sharing video footage of its nuclear facilities. The move was described by world powers as “dangerous,” and came as the UN’s nuclear agency said it was concerned by Iran’s uranium stockpile. Source Deutsche Welle
Prosecutors are considering bringing charges against Forum voor Democratie leader Thierry Baudet for breaching coronavirus restrictions on a campaign visit. Baudet, 38, was photographed embracing supporters and shaking hands during a rally in the Flevoland village and former island of Urk on Tuesday. His campaign team later ate dinner together in a seafood restaurant. Source DutchNews
The number of babies born in France in January fell by 13 percent, the biggest drop in 45 years which statisticians on Thursday linked to the coronavirus pandemic. The 53,900 babies born in January 2021, down from 62,180 in January 2020, were conceived at the start of the first nationwide lockdown imposed by France in March 2020 to halt the spread of Covid-19. Source France24
The police were ambushed in Les Mureaux (Yvelines) this Thursday evening. About 30 people attacked them with fireworks and threw stones at them. Everything had been prepared in advance. Source Actu17
A patrol of the anti-crime brigade (BAC) was attacked by about twenty individuals during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, in Montereau-Fault-Yonne (Seine-et-Marne) . Five suspects were arrested. Source Actu17
About thirty individuals attacked the Sarcelles police station located on avenue du 8 mai 1945 around 7:30 p.m. The attackers fired fireworks mortars at the building. They also threw projectiles.
Other police stations have suffered the same type of attack in recent months. In particular that of Grand-Quevilly , near Rouen (Seine-Maritime) last month, or that of Cahors (Lot), attacked with Molotov cocktails in November. In Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin), the Hautepierre police station was also attacked at the end of last year. Source Actu17
Greece is ready to welcome British tourists this summer regardless of whether they have had a coronavirus vaccine, Tourism Minister Harry Theocharis was quoted as saying on Thursday. Source Ekathimerini
Taiwan’s drive to plug a global shortage of microchips has hit a snag – a lack of water for its foundries caused by a drought.
Taiwanese high-tech chip foundries are some of the world’s biggest and most advanced, and European car manufacturers have been reaching out to Taipei for help. Source The Star
The police have put an end to the crowds in the Vondelpark. Due to the beautiful weather, thousands of visitors were present in the park. Mayor Halsema called the crowds ‘a massive violation of the corona rules’. In a statement, she writes: “Those present show no respect whatsoever for anyone in the city who is doing their best to prevent more infections.” Source AT5
France may need to impose new local restrictions to deal with a worsening Covid-19 situation as it scrambles to avoid a new national lockdown, a government spokesman said Wednesday. Infections have reached worrying levels in several parts of the country, spokesman Gabriel Attal told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting. Source France 24
European Union leaders will agree on Thursday to work on certificates of vaccination for EU citizens who have had an anti-Covid shot, with southern EU countries that depend heavily on tourism desperate to rescue this summer’s holiday season. Source Ekathimerini
Amnesty International no longer considers jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny a “prisoner of conscience” due to past comments he made that qualify as advocacy of hatred, the group said. “Amnesty International took an internal decision to stop referring to … Navalny as a prisoner of conscience in relation to comments he made in the past,” the group said in a statement sent to Reuters on Wednesday. “Some of these comments, which Navalny has not publicly denounced, reach the threshold of advocacy of hatred, and this is at odds with Amnesty’s definition of a prisoner of conscience,” it added. Source Reuters
The House passed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan early Saturday in a nearly party-line vote, advancing a sweeping pandemic aid package that would provide billions of dollars for unemployed Americans, struggling families and businesses, schools and the distribution of coronavirus vaccines. Source MSN
Exxon Mobil erased almost every drop of oil-sands crude from its books in a sweeping revision of worldwide reserves to depths never before seen in the company’s modern history.
Exxon counted the equivalent of 15.2 billion barrels of reserves as of Dec. 31, down from 22.44 billion a year earlier, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday. The company’s reserves of the dense, heavy crude extracted from Western Canada’s sandy bogs dropped by 98%. Source World OIl
German construction and engineering group Bilfinger has withdrawn from work related to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, German tabloid Bild reported, citing letters it has obtained. Source World Pipelines
Spain’s public debt ended 2020 at 117.1% of gross domestic product as the coronavirus pandemic and the measures imposed to curb it lifted borrowing and led to a deep economic contraction, the Bank of Spain said on Wednesday. Source Reuters
- Spain’s Abengoa (OTCPK:ABGOF, OTCPK:ABGOY) says it filed a request for bankruptcy before the court in Seville, becoming the country’s biggest company to go bust.
- The renewable energy company had €7.9B ($9.6B) in liabilities as of March 31, of which €3.9B were net corporate debt, according to its latest earnings statement.
- Abengoa’s restructuring deal with creditors fell apart after it failed to secure €20M from Andalusia’s regional government. Source Seeking Alpha
Global debt rose to a new record high of $281.5 trillion in 2020, driven by measures to curb economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), a global trade group of financial institutions. Source AA
Less than a month after a senior politician in Paris asked Germany to put a stop to the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, energy giant Gazprom has revealed that France has bought 43 percent more Russian gas so far this year. The latest financial report from the country’s largest company divulged that France’s underground gas storage facilities are less than 30 percent full. Source RT
The cryptocurrency’s value has jumped by nearly 75% since the start of this year as more companies, including Tesla, have lent their support. The surge also coincides with volatility on the markets during the pandemic. Source DW
- The federal budget deficit is projected to be $2.3 trillion in fiscal 2021, the Congressional Budget Office said.
- That’s smaller than 2020 shortfall of $3.13 trillion but larger than anything the nation had seen prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Federal debt will swell to $35.3 trillion in 2031, it said, the largest debt-to-GDP ratio in U.S. history. Source CNBC
- Mastercard said it will offer support for customers to transact in some select cryptocurrencies this year.
- The card-payments firm is “actively engaging” with major central banks to launch digital currencies.
- All crypto coins won’t be supported on its network because many still lack compliance measures. Source Businessinsider
Nearly 20 years after Spaniards adopted the euro, there has been no convergence with Germany while Eastern European economies are edging closer. In the 1990s, the Czech Republic was emerging from communism and it was producing just two-thirds of the wealth that Spain was. But in three decades, it has managed to beat the Spanish economy in terms of GDP per capita at PPP (or gross domestic product per person at purchasing power parity. Source El Pais
