Month: January 2019

Greece will bring Macedonia’s NATO accession agreement to parliament for ratification “in the coming days,” the government spokesman said Thursday, which will bring into effect the change of the country’s name to North Macedonia. Once parliament ratifies the NATO protocol, Greece’s Foreign Ministry will inform Macedonia’s Foreign Ministry of the result, a move which will automatically bring into effect the name change, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said. He didn’t give a specific date.   The name change deal, dubbed the Prespa Agreement after the border lake where it was signed last year, ends a 27-year dispute between the two neighbors …

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At St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Dubai, an effort to transcribe the Bible in the native tongue of its flock saw the holy book presented in 52 languages — a sign of the cosmopolitan welcome awaiting Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to the United Arab Emirates. The diversity among its parishioners can be seen in its pews and heard in the sermons of St. Mary’s priests, who celebrate Mass and offer prayers in Arabic, English, French, Tagalog, Tamil, Urdu and other languages. The church, they say, offers an anchor for the Roman Catholics among the UAE’s vast foreign labor force, many …

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British banking giant Barclays has drawn up plans to shift more than $200 billion worth of assets from London to Dublin amid mounting business alarm that Britain is more likely now to leave the European Union without an exit deal. With Prime Minister Theresa May’s ruling Conservative government now backing away from a contentious withdrawal agreement negotiated in November and locked in a standoff with Brussels, Britain is heading for a scheduled March 29 departure without any kind of negotiated exit agreement. That means tariffs would have to be imposed on goods moving back and forth across the English Channel. …

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Activists from an anti-globalization group have staged a protest at Google’s Paris headquarters to criticize the company for paying little tax.   Attac members gathered at Google’s offices Thursday and set up a pulley to pass bags of fake money between the firm’s premises and a public finance center across the street.   According to Attac, Google’s French subsidiary reported revenue of 325 million euros ($371 million) in 2017 and paid 14 million euros ($16 million) in income tax. The group says Google France shifts more than 85 percent of its French revenue to countries with more favorable tax regimes. …

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Britain, France and Germany are launching a mechanism Thursday to ease non-dollar business deals with Iran, an effort aimed at circumventing U.S. trade sanctions against Tehran after President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 international pact to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The entity is registered in France with German governance and funding from all three countries. It will allow European Union companies to trade with Iran despite Washington’s sanctions. U.S. officials said they were monitoring the development, but rejected the idea that the special payment mechanism would undercut U.S. efforts to use the sanctions to undermine Tehran’s economy. A …

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Marie Toussaint has launched a climate petition in France that has attracted skyrocketing support. Ludovic Bayle splits his days between working at a restaurant and moonlighting as a climate activist. And in Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium, students are skipping school, demanding more action against what many Europeans consider one of the biggest threats to their future: climate change. “Climate is one of the main concerns” in Europe, said Neil Makaroff, European Union policy adviser for the NGO Climate Action Network France. “Citizens are more and more mobilized today. They are taking different actions like marches, petition, litigation.” Several hundred thousand …

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A state-funded Russian film that lionizes a Soviet World War II tank and its crew has become the second highest grossing home-grown production since the collapse of the Soviet Union, part of a Kremlin-backed drive to instill patriotism in young people. The Kremlin has long put the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany at the heart of a patriotic push to accompany what it casts as the country’s return to greatness under Vladimir Putin who has portrayed Russia as a fortress besieged by the West. The new film, “T-34,” has been praised by the defense ministry which has shown it to …

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Athens is aiming to ensure that all the goods and services the local government provides to its residents are free of forced labor, under a pilot project launched on Wednesday that officials and activists hope will set an example across Greece.    The Athens municipality plans to create a level playing field for its suppliers by working solely with companies that monitor their supply chains and take action to prevent modern slavery, several officials told an anti-trafficking conference.    As the world strives to meet a U.N. goal of ending slavery and forced labor by 2030, major companies face growing scrutiny and consumer pressure to …

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The U.N. nuclear watchdog policing Iran’s deal with major powers said on Wednesday that attempts to pressure it on inspections were “counter-productive and extremely harmful,” though it stopped short of naming those responsible. Israel, which vehemently opposes the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit what it says is a “secret atomic warehouse” and other locations in Iran. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has pulled his country out of the deal, has made similar calls. The IAEA has bristled at such calls but used only guarded language in public, saying …

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France’s energy regulator is proposing a 5.9 percent increase in regulated power prices but faces opposition from the government which had promised not to increase the cost after the “yellow vest” protests. Following the first wave of protests in November over the cost of living, the government scrapped fuel tax hikes planned for 2019. It also said last month that it would prevent utility EDF from raising power prices this winter. But capping regulated power prices is more complicated as these are set by the independent CRE energy regulator via a formula which includes the cost of generation, transport and …

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