LONDON — Wrapped in a turban and a mink-lined robe, the old man sits in his opulent home, smiling wryly. The pouch in his hand is full to bursting. Gold coins are scattered across his desk. The elderly figure is pictured at the center of a board game called the New and Fashionable Game of […]
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European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, just announced the EU’s third big antitrust fine against Google. The EU found the company guilty of breaking antitrust laws for a decade, when it prevented third parties (i.e. Google’s ad-brokering competitors) from using its advertising tool AdSense to display search ads. This has now resulted in a €1.49 […]
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LONDON — The chaos and dysfunction of the British government were on full display on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Theresa May preparing to request a short delay to Britain’s departure from the European Union after a bitter dispute in her cabinet over her plan for a lengthier extension. The deadlock in the cabinet underscored the […]
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Even by the standards of Brexit, things are such a mess that it’s hard to know where to begin. Nevertheless…. As the Brexit clock runs down, the Government lost a day by getting caught up in yet another internal row. May had planned to send a letter to the EU saying what she wanted in […]
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Just when you thought Brexit couldn’t possibly become more chaotic, those wily Brits manage to surprise. Theresa May tripped yet another landmine. Thanks to her decision to repeatedly put off votes and decisions in the hope of still getting approval for her detested Withdrawal Act, May was already set to go to Brussel for Thursday […]
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By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Our own Colonel Smithers was in Paris for the most recent Gilets Jaunes protests (“Gilets jaunes protests cause extensive damage on Champs-Élysées“; “Macron calls for ‘strong decisions’ after violent Yellow Jacket protests“)[1] and threw a series of emails over the transom. I’m going to put extracts from the Colonel’s mail […]
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Normally, when banks look into merging, the impetus is either opportunism, whether well informed or not, or desperation. The only thing that differentiates the possible combination of Deutsche Bank, long the sickest man of Europe, and not all that healthy Commerzbank is that the desperation isn’t driven by the usual urgency, that a bank is […]
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After a fiscally damaging year that Ford CEO Jim Hackett implored employees to forget, cuts are coming to the automaker’s workforce, and America won’t be spared. But America can wait, as that region remains a major profit generator. Other regions aren’t, and the automaker’s axe has already fallen in South America. Now it’s Germany’s turn, […]
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First, here’s the good news on Brexit. The Malthouse Compromise is dead. Britain has signed a post-Brexit free trade agreement with Fiji and Papua New Guinea. The irritating phrase “meaningful vote” has lost all meaning. Prime Minister Theresa May, who increasingly resembles one of those characters that just won’t die in a TV series, is […]
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BERLIN — In Germany, women are paid an average of 21 percent less than men, one of Europe’s widest gender pay gaps. In Berlin next week, for one day only, the public transportation system will offer them a corresponding discount. The BVG, which runs the city’s bus, tram and subway systems and is the country’s […]
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The massacre of 49 people in New Zealand on Friday highlights the contagious ways in which extreme right ideology and violence have spread in the 21st century — even to a country that had not experienced a mass shooting for more than two decades, and which is rarely associated with the extreme right. New Zealand […]
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The UK is rudderless as Brexit looms. Theresa May was never in control; her fundamentally wrongheaded approach to the negotiations of thinking the UK had the advantage, compounded by the massive own goal of calling snap elections, led to the EU steering the negotiations at key junctures. But May was still able to exert influence […]
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(Reuters) – Apple on Thursday responded to Spotify’s complaint with EU antitrust regulators, saying the audio streaming service “wants all the benefits of a free app without being free”. Spotify, launched a year after Apple unveiled its first iPhone in 2007, said on Wednesday the company unfairly limits rivals to its own music streaming service. […]
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For thousands of years, the Iberian Peninsula — home now to Spain and Portugal — has served as a crossroads. Phoenicians from the Near East built trading ports there 3,000 years ago, and Romans conquered the region around 200 B.C. Muslim armies sailed from North Africa and took control of Iberia in the 8th century […]
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WASHINGTON — Aleksej Gubarev is a Russian technology entrepreneur who runs companies in Europe and the United States that provide cut-rate internet service. But he is best known for his appearance in 2016 in a dossier that purported to detail Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election — and the Trump campaign’s complicity. Mr. Gubarev’s […]
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The Dutch Data Protection Authority just released its GDPR fining policy, being the first country to do so. GDPR allows for a maximum fine of 4 percent of global revenue or €20 million, whichever is higher, but little has been said about how to determine the exact fine amount and what the scale is. The […]
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Just when you thought the UK’s approach couldn’t possibly become more shambolic than it has been, its leaders manage to outdo themselves. Even though Parliament delivered the expected outcome of voting against a no deal Brexit, the process got so utterly out of control that the Government whipped against its own motion. And it probably […]
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Theresa May’s second go at getting her deal passed, where the only change of importance was the proximity of the vote to the crashout date, was like her first, an even bigger failure than anticipated. A loss of 100 seemed to be a magic number of sorts, since being ~50 votes shy seemed inevitable given […]
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By Marshall Auerback, a market analyst and commentator. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute After dramatically lowering its growth forecast for the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, announced that the ECB would keep interest rate rises on hold for at least another year, as well […]
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Western Europe doesn’t like Infiniti very much, so the Japanese premium brand has decided to hit the road. The brand’s residency in the competitive region only lasted a decade, and middling consumer interest, coupled with increasingly stringent emissions regulations, is all the reason it needs to take a hike. In doing so, Nissan’s premium division […]
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