October, 2016

• 12 October

  EU urges laggards to accelerate anti-terror preparations

  

    Brussels / AFP EU officials on Wednesday urged nearly a dozen laggard member states to accelerate their preparations to join by 2018 a bloc-wide system to share passenger information to help detect terrorists. Spurred by a wave of extremist attacks in France and Belgium, the European Parliament in April adopted the Passenger Name Record (PNR) system after resolving privacy concerns …

  Read More »
• 12 October

  UK Brexit red-line plans seen incompatible with EU market

  

    Bloomberg The red lines Britain has signalled it will adopt in Brexit talks are “fully incompatible” with its aspiration to keep membership in the single market, and there won’t be any negotiations until the U.K. triggers the process, Slovenia’s prime minister said. Miro Cerar, premier of the former Yugoslav Republic of 2.1 million people, echoed other EU leaders, saying …

  Read More »
• 12 October

  Scotland faces independence dilemma as Brexit looms

    Edinburgh / AFP Scotland’s ruling nationalists gather for their annual conference on Thursday with the issue of independence back on the table following Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), has vowed to explore “all options” to protect Scotland’s place in the EU after Scots bucked the …

  Read More »
• 12 October

  America’s N-power generation hits a 10-year seasonal low

    Bloomberg The amount of electricity generated by U.S. nuclear reactors hit its lowest seasonal level in a decade as malfunctions and closures tied to Hurricane Matthew combined with routine maintenance to drag down production. The nation’s nuclear output fell on Tuesday to 81,600 megawatts, or about 79 percent of capacity, according to U.S. government data. That’s the lowest level …

  Read More »
• 12 October

  Spanish bonds dip as focus turns to political, fiscal risks

    Bloomberg Spanish bonds dropped, pushing the 10-year yield to the highest in more than three weeks, amid speculation that caretaker Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy could face a confidence vote this month. Spain’s securities led declines among euro-region sovereign debt. The country has been through two inconclusive elections since December and has repeatedly missed European Union targets to cut its …

  Read More »
• 12 October

  Activists ask German court to block EU-Canada trade deal

  

    Karlsruhe / AFP Germany’s top court on Wednesday heard complaints from some 200,000 citizens and campaigners who want to stop a planned EU-Canada free trade agreement set to be signed later this month. They are asking the Constitutional Court to prevent the government from endorsing the so-called CETA accord at a gathering of EU ministers next week, arguing that …

  Read More »
• 12 October

  BMW sees electric cars pushing into mainstream in Tesla race

  

    Bloomberg BMW AG expects sales of its electrified cars to surge in the next decade as the technology hits the mainstream, putting it in a race against Tesla and Mercedes-Benz. Plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars across the BMW and Mini brands could account for between 15 percent and 25 percent of sales in about 10 years, BMW Chief Executive …

  Read More »
• 12 October

  Trump is the symptom of world’s coarsening climate

  

    Watching Donald Trump skulking behind Hillary Clinton on the debate stage Sunday night, muttering about locking her up if he wins, was a reminder that we are drifting toward a kind of bullyboy-world, where power is everything. You see this coarsening climate of relations around the globe, in the debasement of the norms that make civilized life possible. Dictators …

  Read More »
• 12 October

  Why biologists don’t put too much stock in race

    Race is perhaps the worst idea ever to come out of science. Scientists were responsible for officially dividing human beings into Europeans, Africans, Asians and Native Americans and promoting these groups as sub-species or separate species altogether. That happened back in the 18th century, but the division lends the feel of scientific legitimacy to the prejudice that haunts the …

  Read More »
• 12 October

  Britain doesn’t need a new kind of conservatism

    You’d think managing Britain’s exit from the European Union would be enough to keep Theresa May busy. But it seems the U.K.’s prime minister wants to design a whole new kind of conservatism as well — one that works not just for Britain’s frequent-flyer elite but also, as she puts it, for “the whole nation.” Whether her ideas are …

  Read More »