International

Trump puts NATO Under Pressure Over Defence Budget
4Jul By Alan LorenzNo Comments
Europe, International, News, Politics, US

Trump puts NATO Under Pressure Over Defence Budget

Trump puts NATO Under Pressure Over Defence Budget. US President Donald Trump is putting NATO countries under pressure to spend more money on defence, writes Hope News.   At the NATO summit, next week in Brussels, he will tell the participating nations that the United States is not the "biggest piggy bank in the world", his spokesperson said. Yesterday, it was already known through The New York Times that Trump sent several NATO countries, including the Netherlands, a firm letter urging the countries to increase their defence spending to 2 percent of the gross domestic product, as agreed in 2014. In the letter, Trump would implicitly threaten with a reduced US military presence in Europe. Just last week it became known that the Pentagon is investigating the reduction of American ...
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Malaysian Ex-Prime Minister Sued in Corruption Case
4Jul By Alan LorenzNo Comments
Asia, International, News, Politics

Malaysian Ex-Prime Minister Sued in Corruption Case

Malaysian Ex-Prime Minister Sued in Corruption Case. In Malaysia, former Prime Minister Najib Razak has been formally charged with a large-scale corruption case, published by Express Paper.   Najib, who was head of government from 2009 to 2018, is accused of eclipsing about $ 4.5 billion from the 1MDB government investment fund, of which nearly $ 700 million would have gone to his bank account. Najib had to appear before the court in Kuala Lumpur. He charged him three times with abuse of trust and one charge of abuse of power. For each of the charges a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison applies. His lawyer condemns the court's decision as "political revenge". The 64-year-old Najib surprisingly lost on 9 May the elections of his former mentor and former prime minister (1981-2003...
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Facebook Buys AI Start-Up to Combat Fake News
3Jul By Alan LorenzNo Comments
International, News, Technology

Facebook Buys AI Start-Up to Combat Fake News

Facebook has taken over the British start-up Bloomsbury AI. The company develops artificial intelligence, which Facebook would like to use against fake news. Bloomsbury AI joins the London branch of the American company, reports Facebook head artificial intelligence Yann LeCun Tuesday on Facebook. Although Facebook does not want to use the expertise of Bloomsbury AI to counter fake news, according to TechCrunch this is the intention of the takeover. Co-founder Sebastian Riedel of Bloomsbury AI has previously started a company that traces fake news, that's what says Down Town News. According to Facebook, the acquisition should provide a better understanding of so-called natural language. For artificial intelligence, it is often difficult to interpret what people have written down in natu...
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Trump Threatens To Step Out Of The World Trade Organization
30Jun By Alan LorenzNo Comments
Europe, International, News, US

Trump Threatens To Step Out Of The World Trade Organization

Trump Threatens to Step out of the World Trade Organization. US President Donald Trump wants the US to step out of the World Trade Organization (WTO).   The American news website Axios writes this Friday by sources within the White House. Incidentally, Trump cannot decide to leave the WTO on his initiative. He can announce it, but for an actual departure, the Congress must implement a change in the law. "He has threatened to get out of the WTO a hundred times," said one of the sources who discussed the issue with Trump himself, posted by Right News. The US president would have told his advisers several times that the US is "always being sewn" by the WTO. According to Trump, the trade organ has been designed by the rest of the world to bother the United States. Trump's advisers w...
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Air France-KLM Wants To Invest In Budget Flights
27Jun By Alan LorenzNo Comments
Business, Europe, International, News

Air France-KLM Wants To Invest In Budget Flights

Air France-KLM wants to invest in budget flights. Airline Air France-KLM intends to develop a budget airline, especially for longer flights, says INC News.   The management hopes to compete with parties such as Norwegian, Level and Eurowings. That insiders tell the French newspaper La Tribune. Will discuss the plan on Tuesday and Wednesday during a strategic summit in the Netherlands. According to market experts, transatlantic budget flights (long haul-lowcost) are becoming increasingly important in the aviation world. Also evident from the success of Norwegian Air. In acknowledgement of the good results of this airline, IAG and Lufthansa Group have set up the long-distance budget companies Level and Eurowings, respectively. Air France-KLM does not have a budget subsidiary for ...
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Google Trains A Machine To Predict The Time Of Death
21Jun By Alan LorenzNo Comments
International, News, Technology, UK

Google Trains A Machine To Predict The Time Of Death

Google Trains a machine to Predict the Time of Death. Artificial intelligence from Google can predict how long to stay in a hospital, how likely it is for new admission and even when the patient will die.   According to Google, the system is more accurate than current solutions and costs less time and effort, Bloomberg and Vital News reports Tuesday. The news agency relies on research results published by Google in collaboration with Stanford University in Nature. Hospitals already make risk analyses of patients themselves, but there is a lot of manual work involved. All available information must be entered correctly into the system, which would take 80 percent of the time of the full analysis. The artificial intelligence of Google, however, works by a neural network. As a resul...
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CEOs Facebook And Microsoft Criticise Controversial US Immigration Policy
20Jun By Alan LorenzNo Comments
International, News, Technology, US

CEOs Facebook And Microsoft Criticise Controversial US Immigration Policy

CEOs Facebook and Microsoft criticise controversial US Immigration Policy. The CEOs of tech giants Facebook and Microsoft are critical of American border policy, Why children are getting separated from their families, reports Forbes News.   Both top executives endorsed this in messages to staff and users on Tuesday night. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called on the US in a note to "stop this new policy promptly". Microsoft boss Satya Nadella sent an e-mail to staff, which he later also posted on LinkedIn. In this, he called the border policy "cruel and a form of abuse". Earlier this week, Microsoft already discarded the new border policy of the US. Indeed the tech company provides software for the border surveillance of the country. That cooperation is still ongoing. In recent wee...
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Amsterdam’s Economy Is Growing Fast Thanks To Tourism And Construction
20Jun By Alan LorenzNo Comments
Amsterdam, Business, Europe, International, London, Netherland, News, Prague, Stockholm, Warsaw

Amsterdam’s Economy Is Growing Fast Thanks To Tourism And Construction

Amsterdam's Economy is growing Fast thanks to Tourism and Construction.The economy of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area is running at full speed and is expected to grow by 3.7 percent this year, raising the region 0.5 percentage points above the rest of the Netherlands.   The figure also shows that the City of Amsterdam presented on Wednesday, reported by EYE News. The reasons for economic growth are investments in ICT services, construction, increasing tourism and a strong international rival position. Unemployment in Amsterdam and the surrounding area is also falling from 4.9 percent in 2017 to 4 percent in 2018 and 3.6 percent in 2019. The unemployment rate thus drops to pre-crisis levels. With these new figures, the Amsterdam region now ranks among the five strongest growth are...
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Agreement On Reducing Energy Consumption In Europe
20Jun By Alan LorenzNo Comments
Europe, International, News, Paris

Agreement On Reducing Energy Consumption In Europe

Agreement on Reducing Energy Consumption in Europe. European countries must significantly reduce their energy consumption. The European Parliament and the Member States have negotiated a political settlement after months of negotiations, says Fortune News.   The plans state that by 2030, 32.5 per cent of energy must be saved compared to 2007. That target perhaps increased from 2023 onwards. The parliament had bet on 35 percent. Member States now have the legal obligation to plan for the achievement of the target. Also reported that Most EU countries are not much adaptive. D66 MEP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy has co-negotiated and is pleased that there is an agreement. "This is badly needed if we want to come close to meeting the climate goals of Paris in Europe." The European Commission ...
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No Breakthrough On US Import Duties At G7
11Jun By Alan LorenzNo Comments
Business, Canada, Europe, France, Germany, International, Italy, Japan, Mexico, News, UK, US

No Breakthrough On US Import Duties At G7

No Breakthrough on US Import Duties at G7: The countries of the G7 have not been able to make agreements about the import duties that the United States has recently forced on the other states. However, it has been agreed to stay in conversation with each other.   The leaders of Germany, France, Great Britain, Japan, Italy and Canada showed Trump in the common talk in Quebec in Quebec all the figures showing that the US import levies are inadequate for trade. Trump replied to his conversation partners by coming up with their values to prove the contrary, reports FOX News Point. After the big conversation, Trump met with French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. After the conversation with Macron, both leaders seemed carefully optimistic about pos...
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