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

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
Technology, International, News

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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British Exam Board OCR Fined £175,000 for Shakespeare Error
2Jul By Alan LorenzNo Comments
Local, News, UK

British Exam Board OCR Fined £175,000 for Shakespeare Error

British Exam Board OCR Fined £175,000 for Shakespeare Error. A British graduation agency is fined £175,000 due to a mistake in the English Literature exam, posted by Citi News.   "How does Shakespeare see how Tybalt's hatred towards the Capulet family affects the outcome of Romeo and Juliet?" British students probably thought about this question for a long time in their final exam in English literature last year. Not that The Bard had made it so difficult in his tragic love story, but the compiler of the exam had been mistaken in the family feud. An expensive mistake, because the regulator filed a record fine of £175,000 yesterday. Tybalt, Julia's cousin, belongs to the Capulet clan, so the question should have been "How does Shakespeare show how Tybalt's hatred towards the Montag...
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Trump Threatens To Step Out Of The World Trade Organization
30Jun By Alan LorenzNo Comments
US, Europe, International, News

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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Snapchat wants to Offer Games in its App
27Jun By Alan LorenzNo Comments
Technology, News

Snapchat wants to Offer Games in its App

Snapchat wants to Offer Games in its App. Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is working on a platform on which users in the Snapchat app can play games, writes Dawn News.   The company has already made agreements with one game publisher, writes news site The Information from an anonymous initiator. Snap would not make the games themselves but would allow third-party developers to add the games to the Snapchat app. The social medium wants to offer the games in a kind of app store. According to the tech website, it is not yet clear how heavy Snap bets on the gaming platform. A source from the news site suggested that the company is still in an experimental phase. The Information writes that Snap is working on the platform for over a year. By offering games, Snapchat can attract new...
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Air France-KLM Wants To Invest In Budget Flights
27Jun By Alan LorenzNo Comments
Europe, Business, 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
UK, International, News, Technology

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
US, International, News, Technology

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
Europe, Amsterdam, Business, 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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