Category: business-economy

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump on July 17 threatened to sue The Wall Street Journal after it published a story about an alleged off-colour letter written by him to late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that featured a drawing of a naked woman. The Journal story, which quickly reverberated around the US capital, says the note to Epstein bearing Mr Trump’s signature was part of a collection of notes for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The newspaper says it reviewed…

When a major study appears in JAMA Psychiatry—a high-profile journal that shapes headlines and clinical decisions—its findings carry weight. So when Kalfas and colleagues released what they billed as the most comprehensive analysis of antidepressant withdrawal to date, it drew immediate attention. The study concluded that symptoms were generally “mild,” short-lived, and possibly amplified by nocebo effects—positioning itself as the last word on the subject. The authors mobilised a rapid media campaign to shape the public narrative, with the Science Media Centre issuing…

LONDON – Details of more than 100 British nationals including spies and special forces soldiers were included in one of the country’s worst ever data breaches that led to thousands of Afghans being relocated to the UK, British media reported on July 17. The leak by the Ministry of Defence in early 2022, which surfaced on Facebook a year later, prompted the relocation of more than 16,000 Afghans to Britain as of May this year amid concerns that they would…

BUCHAREST – Romania’s top court on Thursday struck down a challenge brought by centrist President Nicusor Dan against a bill seeking harsher punishment for antisemitism and hate speech after a divisive election in which the far right gained ground. Parliament updated legislation outlawing the celebration of fascist leaders or imagery in June, introducing prison sentences for the promotion of antisemitism and xenophobia via social media platforms. The bill also increases jail terms for creating or belonging to racist organisations. However,…

By Emmanuel Kwada ‎TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media giant, is under fire again as Austria-based privacy group Noyb (None of Your Business) filed fresh complaints against the company on Thursday, accusing it of violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). ‎The complaints, also targeting AliExpress and WeChat, claim the companies failed to comply with data access requests, obstructing European users’ rights to understand how their personal data is processed. ‎Noyb, a prominent advocate for online privacy, previously filed complaints…

ATHENS – Greek police have arrested five people over the killing of a University of California at Berkeley professor who was shot dead in an Athens suburb earlier in July, police said. The professor’s ex-wife, who has denied any wrongdoing, her Greek partner, and three other people – one Bulgarian and two Albanian nationals – were arrested on Wednesday evening over the incident, a police official said on Thursday. The woman’s partner has confessed to shooting the academic, a 43-year-old…

WASHINGTON – In clearing the way for President Donald Trump’s efforts to transform American government, the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders that often lacked a fundamental characteristic of most judicial work: an explanation of the court’s rationale. On July 14, for instance, in letting Mr Trump dismantle the Education Department, the majority’s unsigned order was a single four-sentence paragraph entirely devoted to the procedural mechanics of pausing a lower court’s ruling. What the order did not include…

BRUSSELS – The EU’s General Court upheld on Wednesday a European Parliament (EP) decision requiring the estate of late French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen to repay 303,200 euros ($352,380) for wrongly claimed expenses during his time as a member of the parliament. After Le Pen died in January 2025 aged 96, his daughters Yann and Marie-Caroline and granddaughter Marion continued the legal challenge he had begun in January 2024. Le Pen, who founded the National Front political party that…

BRUSSELS – The EU has imposed sanctions on eight people and one entity responsible for the targeting of Iranian dissidents for assassination on behalf of Iran’s government, the European Council said in a statement on Tuesday. The sanctions, over what it called “serious human rights violations” and “transnational repression”, included asset freezes and travel bans, the council said. The Council listed the Zindashti Network, which it said was a criminal group connected to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security…

Uber and China’s Baidu will partner to deploy thousands of Baidu’s Apollo Go autonomous vehicles on the Uber platform across several international markets outside the US and China, the companies said on July 15. The first roll-outs are expected in Asia and the Middle East later in 2025. The tie-up brings together Uber’s massive ride-hailing network with Baidu’s fleet of more than 1,000 fully driverless vehicles across the world. It is the latest in a series of efforts by Uber…

By Lucia Sinatra at brownstone dot org. It was nerve wracking, to say the least; having a high school student who had gotten into his dream college in mid-December 2020 but was uncertain if he could attend the following fall due to Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Those harrowing days and nights we spent focusing on little else as we scoured college websites to eventually find what we pretty much expected would come to pass. It started in April of 2021 when…

WASHINGTON – For many years, Netflix executives bristled at the notion that the company really had a rival. Not Hollywood powerhouses like Disney, nor tech giants like Amazon. Instead, Mr Reed Hastings, the company’s co-founder, insisted at one point that Netflix competed with people’s desire to socialise, or to go to sleep. But there’s no hiding from YouTube. Netflix and YouTube are increasingly locked in a fierce battle for control over the television set, a rivalry that even Netflix’s executives…

AUSTIN, Texas – The official tally of storm-related deaths across Texas rose to 131 on July 14 as authorities warned of yet another round of heavy rains 10 days after a Hill Country flash flood that transformed the Guadalupe River into a killer torrent. A National Weather Service flood watch forecasting heavy downpours of up to half a foot of rain was posted until July 15 morning for a wide swath of central Texas extending from the Rio Grande east…

WASHINGTON – The US Supreme Court on July 14 cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s administration to resume dismantling the Department of Education, part of his bid to shrink the federal government’s role in education in favor of more control by the states. In the latest high court win for Mr Trump, the justices lifted a federal judge’s order that had reinstated nearly 1,400 workers affected by mass layoffs at the department and blocked the administration from transferring key…

TORONTO – Over two months, Canadian officials scrambled to advise and reassure Canadians wanting to travel to the U.S. after President Donald Trump’s executive order on gender, documents show. The order, issued January 20, states the U.S. only recognizes two sexes, requires the government use the term “sex” rather than “gender” and mandates identification documents issued by the government, including passports and visas, be based on what it described as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”…

ROME – Italian anti-Mafia author Roberto Saviano wept in court on Monday as judges upheld a conviction against a notorious mob boss who was found to have threatened him. Francesco Bidognetti, a former leader of the Neapolitan Camorra mafia who was already serving life for a slew of other serious crimes, was sentenced to 18 months for intimidation. The Rome court of appeals confirmed a 2021 ruling by a lower court, as it also upheld a 14-month sentence for Bidognetti’s…