A decade after Spain faced economic crisis, prompting hundreds of thousands of people to flee the country, its population has reached its highest ever level as immigrants and returning locals flood into the eurozone’s fastest growing major economy. Source: Financial Times
World Policies
A Maltese armed forces patrol boat picked up 216 economic migrants in the Mediterranean and was bringing them to Malta on Saturday, a spokesman said. One pregnant woman and a couple of children were believed to be among the 200 men. Source: Euronews
- Italy’s government has written to the European Union asking it to prepare a plan of action to address the risk of a new wave of migrants escaping from the armed conflict in Libya;
- Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero spoke on Wednesday at a joint news conference in Rome after meeting with the United Nations envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame.
The Mars against Marrakech planned for next Sunday in Brussels should not take place. That is what the mayor of Brussels Philippe Close and Rudi Vervoort, Prime Minister of the Brussels-Capital Region, have decided today. The ban applies to the entire Brussels region.Source HLN
Some have called it a U-turn, others see it in less dramatic terms. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has said that “Muslims are a part of Germany” on the opening day of the German Islam Conference. Source: Deutsche Welle
A Spanish fishing vessel has been stranded in the Mediterranean for days because no country has agreed to accept the 12 migrants on board which it rescued last week, the boat’s captain said Tuesday. Source: The Local
Mexico will deport Central American migrants who attempted to storm the US border, its interior ministry said. Source: BBC
Turkey and the European Union were set to discuss the renewal of a 2016 migration agreement during a meeting late on Jan. 21, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said ahead of the meeting.
“We conveyed our proposal to update the migration agreement. We will discuss the details of this,” Çavuşoğlu said at a joint press conference with the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, ahead of their meeting in Brussels. Source Daily News
The Tokyo District Court ruled Thursday that the country’s nationality law, which forbids citizens from holding multiple nationalities, is constitutional, in a judicial decision believed to be the first concerning the regulation. Source JapanTimes
French President Emmanuel Macron has ruled out issuing an official apology for abuses in Algeria, his office said Wednesday, ahead of a major report on how France is facing up to its colonial past in the country. Source France
The deep economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic has contributed to the political minefield on the Czech-German border. Are Czechs the dangerous neighbors that a German newspaper called them? Source Deutche Welle
In last night’s riots in the migrant center in Blazuj near Sarajevo, 20 vehicles of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Sarajevo Canton and several IOM vehicles were damaged. This information was confirmed for Klix.ba by the Minister of the Interior of Canton Sarajevo, Admir Katica. Source Sarajevo Times
Taiwanese troops using tanks, mortars and small arms have staged a drill aimed at repelling an attack from China, which has increased its threats to reclaim the island and stepped up its own displays of military might. Source Aljazeera
Jack Ma, the founder of China’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba, on Wednesday made his first public appearance since October when he spoke to a group of teachers online.
The Jack Ma Foundation said in a statement Wednesday, “Jack Ma participated in the online ceremony of the annual Rural Teacher Initiative event on January 20.” Source Deutsche Welle
The teenagers quickly fled before the police arrived. Stupor at the Paul Eluard college in Vigneux-sur-Seine (Essonne) this Monday morning around 10:40 am. A group of four or five teenagers fired twice in the air with a handgun. They were in front of the entrance gates of the school. The latter also exhibited a tear gas canister at the time of the events. Source Actu17
Cities, towns and villages across France were practically empty on Saturday as residents stayed home and businesses shut to observe a nationwide curfew intended to help stem the spread of coronavirus, especially a more infectious variant. Source France24
U.S. officials who have engaged in “nasty behaviour” over Chinese-claimed Taiwan will face sanctions, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday, after Washington lifted curbs on exchanges between U.S. and Taiwanese officials. Source Reuters
Unrest was recorded in the night between Sunday and Monday as young demonstrators clashed with police in several areas of Tunisia. Clashes were recorded for the third consecutive night in Cité Ettadhamen, Mnihla and al Intilaka, low-income districts of the capital, as well as Sbeitla, Nabeul, Beja, Kasserine, Jelma, Menzel Bouzalfa, Sousse, Gafsa, Bizerte, Sidi Bouzid, Korba, Tebourba. Violence, looting and attacks against police forces were reported. At least 600 people were arrested. Source Ansa Med
Fraport Greece reported a 71.4% annual decline in passenger traffic last year at the 14 regional airports it operates in Greece. The total number of passengers who used the airports of Thessaloniki, Corfu, Hania, Cephalonia, Zakynthos, Aktio, Kavala, Rhodes, Kos, Samos, Mytilene, Mykonos, Santorini and Skiathos reached 8,611,780, of which 5,994,180 were on international flights – a year-on-year decline of 74.2%. Source Ekathimerini
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
