he European Union’s top court ruled Thursday that an agreement that allows thousands of companies — from tech giants to small financial firms — to transfer data to the United States is invalid because the American government can snoop on people’s data. Source ABC
European Union
Tens of thousands of Bulgarians kept protesting for the fifth day in a row on July 13, demanding the immediate resignation of the government and the chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev, accusing them of widespread corruption and shielding the interests of alleged criminals who, they claim, control the state authorities Source BNE
The deal between Ankara and Moscow has been signed and sealed and the first shipments of the S-400 air defence system have just landed on Turkish soil, at a military airbase located at the vicinity of the country’s capital. The second-largest NATO army is acquiring weapons and materiel from a state that by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is viewed as inimical.
Turkey occupies an area which is bridging Europe with Asia and neighbouring some of the war-ridden countries like Iraq and Syria in the volatile region known as the Middle East. It is also strategically important for NATO because it controls the Straits between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and because it outflanks Russia from the south. A NATO member since 1952 Turkey – although a Third World country – wanted to remain a loyal member of the Alliance with ever closer ties to the Western world. Not only did Ankara join its troops to the NATO but also lent its territory to the pact. The reader will have remembered that it was the American missiles deployed to Turkish territory which caused anxiety at the Kremlin and induced Nikita Khrushchev to retaliate by deploying Soviet missiles to Cuba, which led to the international conflict threatening to culminate in a third world war. The strained relations between the two superpowers were only eased when both the Soviets withdrew their missiles from the largest island in the Caribic and the Americans removed theirs from Turkey.
Turkey’s membership in the Alliance has never meant that Ankara was a patsy in Washington’s hands. It skilfully guarded its sovereignty and pursued its own interests. Thus in 1974 Turkish armed forces landed in Northern Cyprus, establishing there of a separate Turkish state and a permanent – as yet – division of the island predominantly inhabited by Greeks. Thus Ankara dared to thwart the interest of another NATO member – Greece – and Athens could do nothing about it. Turkey was strategically too important and that is why it could afford to act independently of NATO’s most important allies.
Austria on Wednesday became the first euro zone country to price a public sale of debt below the European Central Bank’s deposit rate, as expectations of more ECB stimulus and worries over the global economy push yields in the bloc to new lows. Source: Reuters
Matteo Salvini has called for a “fiscal shock” of tax cuts in Italy as he exerts his influence after a resounding victory in the European elections, but Brussels is preparing to hit back over Rome’s budget plans. Source: Financial Times
Euro zone industrial production fell in March for a second straight month as output declined in France and Italy but recovered in the bloc’s largest economy, Germany, data from the European Union’s statistics agency showed on Tuesday. Source: Reuters
The right-wing interior minister’s decree – which will be proposed to the council of ministers in the next few days and then voted upon by parliament – would allow NGOs to be fined “from €3,500 to €5,500 for each transported foreigner”. Source: The Guardian
BLM activist egged on Capitol rioters: Left-winger who told CNN he was there simply to document the siege is arrested after video shows he smashed window, wore gas mask, told rioters he had knife and shouted ‘we got to get this s**t burned’ Source Daily Mail
The National Rifle Association on Friday filed for bankruptcy, a sudden development that could help the gun rights group escape a lawsuit by New York’s attorney general seeking its dissolution. Source Reuters
Automakers around the world are shutting assembly lines because of a global shortage of semiconductors that in some cases has been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s actions against key Chinese chip factories, industry officials said. Source Reuters
Covid-19 vaccination associated with adverse drug reactions in elderly people who are frail 23 deaths associated with covid-19 vaccination of which 13 have been assessed. Common adverse reactions may have contributed to a severe course in elderly people who are frail. Source legemiddelverket
Several hundred people have begun a journey of housands of kilometers through Central America to the US. The migrants are hoping for a more humane approach to migration under President-elect Joe Biden. Source Deutsche Welle
Craft had planned to visit Taipei this week, in the teeth of strong objections from China which views the island as its own territory. But the trip was cancelled by the State Department as part of a bar on all travel ahead of the transition to the incoming Biden administration. Source Reuters
- Italy’s former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said two ministers from his Italia Viva party would resign, effectively triggering the government’s collapse.
- Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he hoped Renzi would not pull his ministers from the Cabinet, warning the country would not be able to understand why the government had collapsed amid the ongoing health crisis.
- The southern European nation is no stranger to political conflicts, tensions and scandals. Source CNBC
The investigators of the brigade of repression of banditry (BRB) of the DRPJ Paris arrested, this Tuesday, January 12, in the early morning, twelve people suspected of engaging in a vast traffic of arms throughout France. Source Actu17
A protest action in Brussels turned into riots on Wednesday evening. Demonstrators threw stones at officers and set fire to a police station, among other things. The demonstration was in response to the sudden death of a detainee. Source NU.NL
The former Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini on Saturday appeared before a Palermo judge in connection with a 2019 incident during which he blocked migrants at sea. He faces charges of abduction and of failing to carry out an act as public official. Source InfoImmigrants
A breakdown in Pakistan’s national power grid plunged the country into darkness on Saturday night, according to officials, leaving tens of millions of people without electricity in all main cities including the capital, Islamabad.
The electricity distribution system in the nation of more than 210 million people is a complex and delicate web, and a problem in one section of the grid can lead to cascading breakdowns countrywide. Source Pakistan
Russian oil drilling giant Gazprom Neft opened a crypto mining farm running on associated gas energy unlocking the power of Russia’s oil and gas resources for the needs of bitcoin (BTC) mining, reports Yahoo Finance. The venue for cryptocurrency mining is on one of the company’s oil drilling sites in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug in Siberia. It is using the associated gas from Gazprom Neft’s oil field as an energy source and has its own power plant to transform this gas into electricity. Source Realnoevremya
The United States’ trade deficit surged to its highest level in more than 14 years in November as businesses boosted imports to replenish inventories, offsetting a rise in exports. Source Reuters
U.S. bankruptcy filings hit their lowest level since 1986 last year thanks to unprecedented fiscal and monetary support from the Fed and Congress.
By the numbers: Total bankruptcy filings for the year fell to 529,068 filings across all chapters, while total filings in the month of December was 34,304, the lowest monthly total since January 2006, according to a release from legal services company Epiq AACER. The number of total 2020 filings was about 1/3 of the number seen in 2010. Source Axios
Italy is working on a plan to take on about 14 billion euros ($17 billion) of UniCredit’s impaired loans to make a takeover of state-owned Monte dei Paschi more attractive for the country’s second-biggest bank, sources told Reuters.
Volkswagen Group has liquidated its unit in Turkey after cancelling plans to establish its first factory in the country, Turkish television channel BloombergHT reported on Tuesday.
The decision to shutter the firm was registered with the Turkish Trade Registry and a call to creditors was issued on Monday, BloombergHT said. Source Ahval
The former head of one of China’s biggest asset management companies has been sentenced to death for corruption, in a relatively rare instance of the country meting out the death penalty for financial crimes. Source FT
Russian natural gas transported to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline touched 28.8 million cubic metres per day, as of Jan. 3, to feed homes and factories as northern China faces frigid weather conditions, national oil and gas pipeline giant PipeChina said. Source Business Recorder
Dec. 22, France’s national statistic agency INSEE reported that, the country’s public debt hit 2,674.3 billion euros (around USD3,255.93 billion) before the end of the July-September period of the present year, making up for 116.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Source MenaFN
14 December France has ordered a dozen public and private bodies to keep their deposits at the Treasury, government documents show, as it quietly builds up safeguards to reinforce its cash flow during the pandemic and ahead of Brexit. Source Reuters
“We have completed this work,” the consortium said in an emailed statement, referring to the pipe-laying in the German economic zone.
The consortium building the pipeline, led by Russian gas giant Gazprom with Western partners, has still to lay more than 100-km of pipeline, although more than 90% of the project has been completed. Source Reuters
GRNQ announced today that it believes in the ongoing mass adoption of $BTC by banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and institutions and endorses its belief that bitcoin, as the world’s most widely-adopted cryptocurrency, is a reliable future store of value. We believe the strategic management of our balance sheet, combined with the implementation of our $BTC Fund and crypto strategy will produce significant future value for the Company. Source Market Screener
