World & Politics
French trade minister: France is not going to stop importing Turkish goods - 10/27/2020
France is not going to boycott Turkish goods in response to statements by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Foreign Trade Minister Franck Riester. "This is not on the agenda at all. We will not act as Turkey does today," said the Minister on Radio RTl. Radio Europe 1 had previously reported, citing sources, that France was working on a response to Turkey. "After calls for a boycott,...
US leaves WTO without new arbitrators, challenges decision in favour of China - 10/27/2020
Once again, the US has blocked nomination of new judges to the World Trade Organisation ( WTO) appeals court. Around the same time, Washington lodged an appeal against the arbitrators' ruling, which found that the $234 billion rise in US tariffs on Chinese imports was unjustified. The USA appealed the ruling of the World Trade Organization court of arbitrators on China's allegation on the...
Study: Millenials are disappointed in democracy - 10/21/2020
A large-scale analysis on attitudes towards democracy through different generations was carried out by the Center for the Study of Democracy of the University of Cambridge. The millennial generation turned out to be the most dissatisfied in democracy. The authors suggest that in many nations, the disappointment arose from a wave of populism. The researchers went through 3,500 surveys,...
Analysts name countries with best and worst pension systems - 10/20/2020
Analysts have rated countries with the best and worst pension systems. The pension systems of the Netherlands and Denmark were recognised as the most reliable, with Argentina and Thailand taking the last place. Because of the pandemic, residents of these and other countries will have to work longer and expect lower payments in their old age. Consulting company Mercer and the CFA Institute have...
WSJ: China threatens to detain US citizens - 10/19/2020
China has warned the US that American citizens may be detained in China in response to the detention of Chinese researchers in August, The Wall Street Journal writes with reference to sources. According to the sources, since the summer of this year Beijing officials have repeatedly made relevant statements through various channels, including the U.S. Embassy in China. "Chinese government...
CO2 emissions drop by record 8.8% in the first half of 2020 - 10/15/2020
Global greenhouse gas emissions fell by about 8.8% in the first half of this year, which is a record high since the 2008 crisis, the 1979 oil shock and World War II. This was announced on Wednesday by the press service of the Potsdam Institute for the Study of Climate (PIK) with reference to an article in Nature Communications magazine. “The largest emission reductions were associated with the...
IMF improves forecast for US GDP growth in 2020, downgrades for 2021 - 10/14/2020
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) improved its forecast for the growth rate of US GDP this year, but worsened the expected indicators for 2021. This follows from the report of the fund, presented on Tuesday in Washington during the autumn session of the governing bodies of the IMF and the World Bank. According to the IMF, this year the US GDP will decrease by 4.3%, in the updated June...
Italian Prime Minister allows fragmentary stop of the economy - 10/13/2020
The option of introducing a new national quarantine and stopping the Italian economy is completely ruled out, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Monday, October 12. The country has prepared to prevent such a scenario, while the option of "limited" quarantines affecting certain areas is possible, Conte said. As of October 12, 36,205 people died in Italy with a confirmed diagnosis of...
OECD proposes "a tax revolution" for international companies - 10/13/2020
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has presented a draft of a new approach to taxation of international companies, on which a group of 137 countries and jurisdictions has worked. This was reported on the OECD website. The proposal has two components. The first involves “a fundamentally new way of dividing taxation rights between countries.” The goal is for...
German government: Liquefied gas is as environmentally unfriendly as coal and oil - 10/12/2020
The use of liquefied shale gas is much more harmful to the climate than the supply of conventional gas via pipelines, according to the German Ministry of the Environment. The German government considers liquefied natural gas (LNG), produced using controversial hydraulic fracturing (fracking) technology, as harmful to the climate as coal. This is stated in the response of the German...
