European Union

With the victory of Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer in the first round of Austria's presidential elections the country has shifted to the right. The runoff vote is set for May 22. What are the causes - and consequences - of the FPÖ's electoral victory?

Europe is a multicultural society. But events like the attacks in Cologne on New Year's Eve and the resignation of a Swedish politician who refused to shake a woman's hand for religious reasons pose the question time and again: how can different cultures live together?

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The Australian businessman Graig Wright revealed on Monday he is the founder of Bitcoin to three media outlets: The Economist, the BBC, and GQ.

The revelation comes following a raid by the Australian Taxation Office in December 2015 at his home. The businessman is negotiating how much he owes in overdue tax since 2009, when the first Bitcoin transaction took place.

His claim on Monday leaves little room for doubt, as he provided technical proof to back up his claim, including the cryptographic keys to the first ten Bitcoins created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009.

Bitcoins are created by solving difficult mathematical problems, a process referred to as “mining.” The solving involves immense computer processing power with the difficulty of the problems adjusted to maintain a steady production of currency, thereby ensuring there is not Bitcoin oversupply and, therefore, devaluation. Miners can then sell their coins.

Wright’s claims were confirmed by key members of the Bitcoin project.

The first transaction in Bitcoin took place in January 2009. The project was founded on state-of-the art cryptography involving top names in the field, led by Hal Finney.

Gavin Andresen, scientist, and Jon Matonis, an economist, at the Bitcoin Foundation also confirmed the identity of the project’s owner.

The digital cash system currency is favored by organized crime and was recently forbidden in technology-savvy Estonia.

Money, bitcoin wallets, and bags of amphetamines lie on a table at the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in Wiesbaden, Germany, 29 February 2016. EPA/ALEXANDER HEINL

There are approximately 15,5 million Bitcoins exchanged online, each costing €392. There is no registry of their owners who therefore remain anonymous and their transactions virtually untraceable.

 

Craig Steven Wright, 47, is an Australian computer scientist and pioneer in e-business.

Wright worked in information technology for various companies and he designed the architecture for possibly the world’s first online casino, Lasseter’s Online in 1999.

He was also the CEO of the technology firm Hotwire Preemptive Intelligence Group, which planned to launch Denariuz Bank, the world’s first Bitcoin-based bank, though it encountered regulatory difficulties with the Australian Tax Office in 2014.

Wright is also the founder of a cryptocurrency company DeMorgan Ltd, as well as the founder of the cybersecurity and computer forensics company Panopticrypt Pty Ltd.

The post Bitcoin founder revealed appeared first on New Europe.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Share on LinkedIn+var sbFBAPPID = '457641991045477';Some 200 U.S. soldiers will arrive in Moldova for more than two weeks of exercises, in a show of U.S. military strength in the region.

The Moldovan defense ministry said the troops will arrive Monday from Romania in dozens of armored vehicles for the exercises.

Moldova’s pro-Russian opposition says it will stage protests against the May 3-20 joint exercises.

Some 165 Moldovan troops and peacekeepers will take part in the exercises in the country of 3.5 million located between Romania and Ukraine.

The U.S. embassy said medical treatment and evacuation, field maintenance, and basic demolitions will be among the training exercises, which mark ongoing cooperation with the U.S.

Moldova joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace program in 1994. Less than 20 percent of Moldovans want to join the military alliance.

Russia has had about 1,500 soldiers stationed in Moldova’s breakaway eastern region of Transdniester since a cease-fire deal brought an end to the separatist conflict there in 1992.

About 380 of those Russian soldiers are deployed under an international peacekeeping mandate while the rest are soldiers from Russia’s 14th Guards Army. (with AP, AFP)

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Egypt’s journalists’ syndicate called for the dismissal of the interior minister and an immediate sit-in at its headquarters in downtown Cairo on Monday, to protest the police detention of two journalists on its premises the night earlier.

After an emergency meeting early Monday morning, the group called for the “open-ended” sit-in to run through a Wednesday general assembly meeting and World Press Freedom day on May 3.

It described the police’s entry into the building as a “raid by security forces whose blatant barbarism and aggression on the dignity of the press and journalists and their syndicate has surprised the journalistic community and the Egyptian people.” Some senior syndicate members have said the raid was heavy-handed, involving dozens of officers and resulted in a security guard being injured.

Police denied they entered the building by force and said only eight officers were involved, who they said were acting on an arrest warrant for the two journalists — who were accused of organizing protests to destabilize the country. Unauthorized demonstrations in Egypt are effectively banned.

“The Ministry of Interior affirms that it did not raid the syndicate or use any kind of force in arresting the two, who turned themselves in as soon as they were told of the arrest warrant,” the ministry said in a statement.

The two journalists, Amr Badr and Mahmoud el-Sakka, are government critics who work for a website known as January Gate, also critical of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s government.

It was unclear what size any sit-in at the syndicate could achieve; the area surrounding the building has been barricaded by police and dozens of officers backed by armed troops have been preventing entry at both ends of the street. Hundreds of undercover police have been deployed across central Cairo in order to prevent any protests.

A day earlier, police prevented hundreds of workers from holding a meeting at the building to commemorate International Workers’ Day, prompting independent trade union leaders to urge the government to allow them freedom of assembly.

The syndicate has invited the trade union leaders to join the sit-in to denounce the “raid” and protest restrictions on freedom of assembly for labor organizers. It said the move was illegal and violated its charter, which forbids police from entering the building without the presence of a syndicate official, and is urging police to end their “siege” of the building and stop preventing journalists from entering.

The journalists’ syndicate has been a rallying point for demonstrations in the past, and was blocked in a similar manner ahead of planned anti-government protests last Monday.

The building drew particular attention because it was from there that some 2,000 demonstrators gathered last month to protest el-Sissi’s decision to hand over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. Police fired tear gas and arrested dozens to break up the protests, the first significant wave of street demonstrations since the former army chief became president in 2014.

A second round of mass demonstrations over the issue planned for last Monday were stifled by a massive security presence, with hundreds of arrests and only small flash mobs managing to assemble, drawing tear gas and birdshot from the riot police.

The post Egypt journalists call protest over police raid at syndicate appeared first on New Europe.

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Labour Day in Turkey was marred by bloody attacks against the police, street violence and arrests across Turkey.

Two attacks targeting the police took place in the southeast and one attack against civilians was averted in Ankara. Violent street fighting and arrests took place in Istanbul.

Two police officers died and 19 were wounded following a bomb blast in front of a police HQ in Gaziantep, southeast Turkey on Sunday. The powerful blast shuttered windows across the quarter.

The Chief Public Prosecutor soon imposed a media ban on pictures and video footage from the scene of the blast.

Also on Sunday, three Turkish soldiers were killed and 14 wounded in the border town of Nusaybin.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but it is linked with an ongoing conflict with the Kurdish minority since December 2015. Following the collapse of a two year long seize fire with the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), there is an ongoing conflict in southeast Turkey.

Meanwhile, 24,500 police officers patrolled the streets of Istanbul where violent clashes took place all Sunday.

Police in Ankara detained four suspects on Saturday evening, carrying Iraqi and Syrian passports. The men were trying to infiltrate the May 1st rally and the police believe they were planning an attack.

(CNN Turk, Anadolu, Reuters, AFP, AP, dpa)

The post Labour Day in Turkey: bombings, riots, and street fighting appeared first on New Europe.

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The ALDE group organised and hosted a hearing on 27 April about the proposed EU Directive on Digital Content, named Contract for the Supply of Digital Content. The purpose of the hearing was to discuss and explain aspects of the proposed regulation on the Digital Single Market. The European Commission published two proposals on 9 December 2015 concerning digital content under the European Commission’s Impact Assessment.

The framework for this action is the strategy published in May 2015, called A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe. In this note, the Commission noted the need for “better access for consumers and businesses to online good and services”. The next phase should be the approved within the year, however is still not clear how exactly this law will work and what exactly it will cover.

The hearing of the ALDE group was called to try to clarify some of these aspects. The hearing was hosted by MEPs Antanas Gouga and Jean-Marie Cavada and had the opening remarks of Simona Constantin, Member of the Cabinet of Věra Jourová, DG of Consumers Right.

Constantin explained some of the main reasons behind regulating digital content at European level. She noted that digital content is fast growing area, with an estimated value of 9 to 11€ billion over the past 12 months. Currently 1 in 3 internet users enjoy digital content, however many experience problems related to access or terms and conditions and only 10% of the customers receive a remedy or a compensation for their problems.

In addition to this, Constantin noted how several Member States have already started to deploy their own national laws on the subject. However, each of this law is different from the other, potentially leading to confusion and overlapping. Thence, she concluded, the need for a more unified law at European level.

However, during the hearings, representatives of several different organisations questioned the panel over the exact extent of the measures. Most of the representatives were from different industries that would be potentially effected by the new law, like TV channels and videogames, and all of them asked whether or not their field was included or not in the new EU Directive on Digital Content, showing a degree of uncertainty in the scope and description of this new directive.

Some of the question may have been for very specific cases, however they shows how unclear the Commission and the Parliament worked on this issue. At the hearing it was explained that one principle was to look at future developments, trying to create something that will be valid in future as well, in a sector that moves at increased speed and with few certainties. Given that the Directive may not be approved before December, maybe the Commission should try to clarify more the content of the Directive, to avoid doubts and perplexities like the ones the arose during the hearing.

 

 

 

 

 

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Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced that Puerto Rico’s government will not make nearly $370 million in bond payments due Monday after a failure to restructure or find a political solution to the U.S. territory’s spiraling public debt crisis.

Garcia said Sunday that he had issued an executive order suspending payments on debt owed by the island’s Government Development Bank, a default that will likely prompt lawsuits from creditors and could be a prelude to a deadline to a much larger payment due July 1.

The governor said Puerto Rico can’t pay the bonds without cutting essential services. Governor Padilla is scheduled to address Puerto Rico’s 3.5 million people at 5 p.m. EST (2100 GMT).

Puerto Rico, a tropical paradise in an economic hell, faces a $70 billion debt bill it knows it cannot pay, a staggering 45 percent poverty rate and a shrinking population as its U.S. citizens flee to the mainland.

Island officials spent the weekend trying to negotiate a settlement that would have avoided the default but apparently came up short. The development comes as Congress has so far been unable to pass a debt restructuring bill for Puerto Rico.

“Let me be very clear, this was a painful decision,” Garcia said in a speech. “We would have preferred to have had a legal framework to restructure our debts in an orderly manner.”

The Government Development Bank had $422 million in payments due Monday. Puerto Rico will pay $22 million interest and it reached a deal Friday to restructure about $30 million, leaving it short $370 million.

The administration also will be paying about $50 million in other debt payments due Monday owed by various other territorial agencies.

Nearly all the bonds are held by a variety of U.S. hedge funds and mutual funds.

Garcia said Puerto Rico’s government could not make the payment without sacrificing basic necessities for the island’s 3.5 million residents, including keeping schools and public hospitals open.

“We will continue working to try to reach a consensual solution with our creditors,” he said. “That is one of our commitments. But what we will never do is put the lives and safety of our people in danger.”

Puerto Rico has been suffering through more than a decade of economic decline since Congress phased out tax cuts that had made the island a center for pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturing. Garcia’s predecessors and the island legislature borrowed heavily to cover over budget deficits, causing a debt spiral that has already prompted several smaller defaults.

Creditors have accused the government of exaggerating the crisis to avoid upcoming payments of more than $1 billion due July 1 that includes general obligation bonds, which are guaranteed by the constitution.

Economists have warned that a default of this magnitude could cause Puerto Rico to lose access to capital markets and make the situation worse as the government faces the much larger payment due July 1.

Garcia lashed out at Congress for failing to pass a bill that would create a control board to help manage the island’s $70 billion debt and to oversee some debt restructuring. He said it has been held up by “internal partisan and ideological divisions” in the House of Representatives.

The Congress is in recess until the week of May 9th. (with AP, Reuters)

The post Puerto Rico to default today appeared first on New Europe.

Welcome to Monday’s edition of our daily Brussels Briefing. To receive it every morning in your email in-box, sign up here.

Another big Brussels week on migration is upon us. The flow of migrant boats to Greek islands has almost stopped, but Brussels is only in the foothills of the political trek to make the Turkey deal stick and the EU asylum system work properly. The European Commission will try to chivvy the pace on Wednesday with three contentious initiatives on visas, borders and asylum rules.

1. An overhaul of the Dublin asylum system

This revamp of the EU’s asylum rules is well-flagged but still hot politics. A Commission discussion paper last month raised two main reform options – and we understand the final proposal will be a blend of the two. So the first EU country an asylum seeker enters would still handle their claim (a crucial Dublin principle for immigration-wary northern states and the UK). But if a frontline state receives 150 per cent more claims than its set asylum capacity, a quota system automatically kicks in to distribute migrants around Europe (which is more to the liking of Greece and Italy). It is a halfway house that leaves plenty for EU states to fight about. There is perhaps even some fodder for Brexit campaigners (the question of whether Britain can stay in Dublin but remain exempt from automatic burden sharing will not be answered in the proposal).

Read more

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The Turkish military has reportedly hit Islamic State positions in Syria with artillery and drone attacks, killing 63 militants.

The state-owned Anadolu Agency said Monday the strikes took out multiple rocket launchers and gun positions.

Four drones deployed from the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey took part in the operation and killed 29 militants. The remaining 34 IS fighters were “neutralized” by rockets and shelling from Turkey, according to the agency.

The AP was unable to immediately verify the report.

The offensive started on Sunday when four rockets fired from Syria hit the Turkish border town of Kilis and wounded eight people.

The wider province of Kilis borders territory contested by IS militants, anti-government Syrian rebels and Kurdish factions.

The Turkish army typically responds to fire from Syria in line with its rules of engagement.

In the past year, Turkey has also witnessed suicide bombings linked to the IS as well as attacks linked to Kurdish militants.

The latest came Sunday, when a car bomb detonated outside a police station in the southern city of Gaziantep, near Syria. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for that attack but anti-terrorism units raided 20 Gaziantep addresses overnight in search for suspects.

The post Turkey hits Islamic State group in Syria, dozens killed appeared first on New Europe.

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Two men and a woman were charged in London for their involvement in the logistical support of the terrorist cell that realized the Paris and Brussels attacks.

All three defendants lived in the Small Heath area in Birmingham. Two more men have been arrested but not as yet charged.

Mohammed Ali Ahmed, 26, is a British national; Zakaria Boufassil, 26, and his sister Soumaya, 29, are Belgians. They were charged on Friday for collecting and delivering funds for the Brussels and Paris attacks.

The two men handed over Mohamed Abrini £3,000 (€3,800) in November 2015, ahead of the Paris attacks. Abrini, 31, was the “man in the hat” spotted alongside the two suicide bombers on March 22 in the Brussels airport.

Boufassil’s sister, Soumaya, 29, mother of four, was charged for collecting money for terrorist purposes. Mrs Boufassil had withdrawn £16,000 (£20.000) from three bank accounts in what is thought to be an attempt to make a run for Syria.

The Birmingham-three trial begins on May 13th in London.

A fourth man, Fazal Sajjad Younis Khan, 40, also from the same quarter in Birmingham has been arrested on possession of a CS spray. A 59-year year old was apprehended and later released on strict bail.

All five were apprehended in the evening of April 14-15

(AFP, France 24, The Telegraph, The Guardian)

The post Paris attacks support network charged in London appeared first on New Europe.

General : An upgrade of the EU lobbyist register is in the works after the European Commission launched a public consultation on switching from voluntary to mandatory registration for anyone interested in speaking to EU institutions to influence their work. EP Vice-President Sylvie Guillaume holds a debate with experts together with Commission’s First Vice-President Frans Timmermans on 2 May at 15.00 CET in Parliament’s premises in Brussels. Follow it online and watch our video to learn more.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : An upgrade of the EU lobbyist register is in the works after the European Commission launched a public consultation on switching from voluntary to mandatory registration for anyone interested in speaking to EU institutions to influence their work. EP Vice-President Sylvie Guillaume holds a debate with experts together with Commission’s First Vice-President Frans Timmermans on 2 May at 15.00 CET in Parliament’s premises in Brussels. Follow it online and watch our video to learn more.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : Plans to set up a mandatory EU lobbying register are discussed by MEPs and stakeholders on Monday. The next day Parliament President Martin Schulz is in Aachen to award the 2016 European Charlemagne Youth Prize and on Sunday the Parliament opens its doors to the general public in Strasbourg to celebrate Europe Day. Meanwhile political groups prepare for next week's plenary session in Strasbourg.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : Plans to set up a mandatory EU lobbying register are discussed by MEPs and stakeholders on Monday. The next day Parliament President Martin Schulz is in Aachen to award the 2016 European Charlemagne Youth Prize and on Sunday the Parliament opens its doors to the general public in Strasbourg to celebrate Europe Day. Meanwhile political groups prepare for next week's plenary session in Strasbourg.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP