Author: staff

Cori Crider is a lawyer and a senior fellow at the Future of Tech Institute and Open Markets Institute. “Google’s unlawful conduct persisted for over a decade.” A decade ago, it would have been unthinkable to hear this sentence from the U.S. Justice Department. Not so today, as U.S. regulators are seeking to break up the company’s search monopoly once and for all, “not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.” Meanwhile, another U.S. case against the tech giant, over so-called adtech, is hard on its heels. Trust-busting, it seems,…

Opponents of the Italy-Albania migrant deal argue it is undemocratic because the people of both countries have not been consulted. A group of activists protested on Wednesday as the first Italian ship carrying migrants intercepted in international waters arrived in the Balkan country. The demonstrators gathered at the entrance of the port of Shengjin, one of the two centres Italy opened in Albania last week, and displayed a banner that read, “The European dream ends here.” “It is not the first time we have protested against such a deal. We have opposed it the moment we knew about it,” said…

KIEV — Les Etats-Unis ont déployé cette semaine un système de défense aérienne avancé et des dizaines de soldats pour protéger Israël des missiles balistiques iraniens. Mais l’Ukraine ne bénéficie pas d’une telle aide, alors qu’elle est confrontée quotidiennement aux attaques de drones, de missiles et de bombes russes. A Kiev, on dénonce ce deux poids, deux mesures. “Si les alliés abattent ensemble des missiles dans le ciel du Moyen-Orient, pourquoi n’a-t-on pas encore décidé d’abattre des drones et des missiles au-dessus de l’Ukraine ?” a demandé le mois dernier le président ukrainien Volodymyr Zelensky. Lorsque les systèmes de défense…

LONDON — England has scored an own goal, according to Nigel Farage. The Reform UK leader and self-appointed football pundit criticized the appointment of Thomas Tuchel as England’s new men’s national football team manager. “Why can’t we have an English manager?” he tweeted Wednesday. His post on X included a screenshot of the right-wing tabloid Daily Mail’s sports page, which labeled the move a “dark day for England” as the “three Lions gamble on a GERMAN.” “I think there are some big names out there who could do it,” Farage told the Independent newspaper. “This feels like a terrible mistake.”…

Though Russia’s gains have been incremental, its steady forward movement is slowly progressing — and Ukraine is pleading for Western help on a larger scale. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has remained noncommittal about Ukraine’s path to joining the alliance even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presents a “victory plan” that hinges on his country becoming a full member before the war ends. Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that his “victory plan” could bring peace to the country by next year. However, many of Ukraine’s NATO allies have stopped short of publicly voicing their support for the country completing the accession process…

People who deactivated their Facebook accounts scored slightly higher when asked about their well-being but knew less about politics. Deactivating Facebook increases your happiness but reduces your political knowledge, according to a new study.However, it didn’t impact political polarisation, researchers from the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po in France found after surveying over 2,200 people during the 2022 French presidential election.Half of those surveyed deactivated their Facebook account for a month during the two rounds of the election.Among them, two subgroups were created with half of them receiving “information treatment” and the other being assigned to only deactivation.This…

Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) is snared in another scandal after a national lawmaker admitted to teaching part time at a Kremlin-linked academy in Moscow. Matthias Moosdorf, a 59-year-old cellist who sits in the Bundestag for the eastern state of Saxony and also serves as the AfD’s foreign policy spokesperson, last week accepted a part-time honorary professor position at Gnessin Russian Academy of Music in Moscow. The school, financed by Russia’s culture ministry, made headlines just days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when a staff member performed a concert wearing a black sweatshirt with the…

Ireland is among EU member states that have been calling for the EU and Israel to hold an Association Council over human right concerns in Gaza. Taoiseach Simon Harris said on Wednesday that Ireland “will not wait” for a European Union decision and start the process to unilaterally suspend trade with Israel on products originating from the occupied West Bank within weeks.”Ireland now, in the context of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] advisory opinion of July, will not wait for everybody in Europe to move on the issue of trade in the occupied Palestinian territories,” Harris told reporters in…

Presenting next year’s budget, the Italian government seeks to honour election promises while also satisfying EU demands. Italy’s far-right government has approved a budget for next year of about €30bn as it reiterates its commitment to “place citizens at the centre”.In order to financing the spending, the government expects to raise some €3.5bn from a levy on banks and insurers.Late on Tuesday, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni argued the tax would go towards improving Italy’s public services, notably the healthcare sector, to help the most vulnerable citizens.”As we promised, there will be no new taxes for citizens,” Meloni wrote in a…

As the election nears, the US is once again confronting questions about the Electoral College system. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win, and a mere handful of swing states determine the outcome. With the US presidential election almost here, the debate on the Electoral College system has flared up again.The president is chosen every four years not just by the electorate but indirectly via the college, a system established by the framers of the Constitution.In modern elections, a candidate must obtain a minimum of 270 electoral votesfrom the states to claim victory. The framers set it up to…