Author: staff

U.S. manufacturers wanted to keep the shale revolution’s rewards for themselves. While in Western Europe at least, Wandel durch Handel (the lofty German foreign policy assumption that troublesome neighbors like Putin would “change through trade”) was conveniently aligned with the roaring economic benefits of cheap Russian gas. “The Germans, the French, the Italians, the Austrians, everybody from Western Europe was content with the status quo,” said Hutchison in an Idaho farm-boy drawl. But countries like Lithuania, Poland and the Czech Republic “understood their vulnerability. And having been former Soviet satellites, understood the risk they faced.” Russian gas will always win…

The EU’s “attack on our tech companies, that’s going to be on the table,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC on Tuesday, asked whether Sunday’s deal warranted further trade talks with the EU.   This underscores how the U.S. doesn’t seem intent on backing down from its months-long campaign against the EU’s rules on content moderation, digital competition and artificial intelligence — despite the bloc’s insistence that its regulations are not up for negotiation as part of the trade talks.    Even worse, lawmakers fear that the EU’s executive has already given up some ground or that the U.S. will…

The British prime minister, who once purchased a field in the leafy English county of Surrey so his mum could look after rescue donkeys, probably knows better than to mess with Britain’s animals. “One of the main platforms those who wanted to leave the EU stood on when campaigning for Brexit was that we would be able to improve animal welfare standards, it is therefore essential that any agreement that is entered into still allows the UK to have higher animal welfare laws,” Edie Bowles, executive director at The Animal Law Foundation said. “Not only that, we should ensure that…

A similar showdown had taken place in Spain earlier this year, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s partial obstruction of national lender BBVA’s move on the Catalan lender Sabadell to preserve support in Catalonia, a vital political constituency. Berlin, meanwhile, is also gearing up for a confrontation with UniCredit, which is seeking to take control of national champion Commerzbank. On the one hand, this all reflects tension between the EU’s efforts to promote the creation of homegrown global banking heavyweights and the immediate national priorities of governments. In Italy, for instance, the events were cast as an epochal struggle between free-market…

While expressing empathy with the plaintiffs who pursued legal action following the tragedy, the justices noted that criminal negligence accusations must be supported by evidence demonstrating “an abstract neglect of the victims.” The ruling also stressed that such cases cannot be based on evaluations of “discretionary decision-making” by the prime minister. Citing jurisdictional limits, the Supreme Court declined to rule on similar legal complaints filed against Valencian President Carlos Mazón, who has been criticized for downplaying the threat posed by the storms that sparked the disaster. The ruling noted that a judicial probe is ongoing in Catarroja, one of the…

LONDRES — Dominic Cummings, ancien conseiller de l’ex-Premier ministre Boris Johnson qui a orchestré le Brexit, a d’autres chats à fouetter ces jours-ci. Mais lundi, il a interrompu son flot de prophéties sur l’immigration, la censure et les échecs des élites politiques pour noter quel terrible accord commercial l’Union européenne avait conclu avec le président américain Donald Trump. “Grâce au Brexit, nous sommes à l’abri de ce désastre humiliant pour l’UE et des nombreux autres à venir”, a écrit Dominic Cummings dans un post sur X, précédé de deux émojis clown. Pour un homme connu pour son langage fleuri et…

Members of the selection committee also said Wednesday that the process was complete and that they could not legally revise their choice of Tsyvinskyi, as the government has demanded. They added that the cabinet has no legal authority to reject their nominee and is violating the law. But at its Wednesday meeting — the last before a July 31 deadline to appoint Tsyvinskyi expires — the Cabinet again refused to confirm him.  The EU had already cut some €1.5 billion in funding for Ukraine in July after the country failed to complete several other required reforms, the Commission spokesperson previously…

“This manbaby was not feeling it. … He was gonna pigeonhole the conversation into only things that he wanted to discuss, and anything else was gonna be shut down, because that’s what free speech, I guess, looks like to him,” Crockett said. She laughed: “There was a little bit of drama, and somehow it did not involve me or Swalwell.” The contentious London meeting comes after the U.S. delegation visited Brussels, where Jordan and Republicans raised concerns about the bloc’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. GOP lawmakers warned that those laws, aimed at requiring platforms to take more…

Still, Veldkamp ruled out unilateral recognition of Palestine, saying, “At this moment, there is no process underway. Recognizing a Palestinian state now will not make much of a difference on the ground.” ‘Political gesture’ Italy, another key player, is waiting to see the outcome of the U.N. meeting in September before deciding whether to back recognition. “If Hamas remains, then declaring the willingness to immediately recognize Palestine as a state is a political gesture, not an anathema,” said one Italian official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But we need to see what opportunities may arise in a week’s time. As…

Ukraine’s domestic security agency has arrested an air force officer accused of spying for Russia by leaking the locations and flight schedules of Western-supplied fighter jets, officials said Wednesday. The officer, identified only as a major in one of Ukraine’s air brigades and a flight instructor, was allegedly working as an agent for Russia’s military intelligence agency, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said Wednesday. He is suspected of helping coordinate missile and drone attacks against key Ukrainian air bases. The officer is accused of gathering data on the locations and schedules of Ukrainian jets — including U.S.-made F-16s and French Mirage…