Hungria, Budapest Business Journal, Hungaro

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French Prime Minister Michel Barnier have similar problems at the moment: They would like to push through policies, but do not have enough funds from parliament to do so. On Tuesday, France’s lower house, the National Assembly, overwhelmingly rejected the first part of the budget for 2025, which involved revenues, by a large majority. While 392 lawmakers voted against it, 192 lawmakers from the government camp and from the far-right National Rally voted in favor. The vote came after a two-week debate in which the left-wing New Popular Front alliance, which makes up the largest political bloc in parliament, had reshaped the bill with amendments. These included wealth tax on billionaires, a tax hike on “super-dividends” from large corporations, a tax on multinationals and higher taxes for digital companies, as well as a new tax for particularly loud motorcycles. Lawmakers had also scrapped the government’s...

The leaders of Germany’s traditional parties are clearly nervous about the rise of populist parties. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured just over 30% of the vote in recent state elections in Thuringia and Saxony, which was partly attributed to the party’s effectiveness at reaching first-time voters on TikTok. Matthias Kettemann, an expert on internet regulation and media law at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, argues that it its impossible to say exactly what impact social media has in shaping public opinion and democratic decision-making processes more broadly. However, what is clear is that more and more people are using social media and that there is a general trend toward polarization. “The parties on the far right and far left tend to do much better on social media because they tend to have easier stories to tell, which in turn foster engagement together with the amplification algorithms of the platforms,” Kettemann told...

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles announced Sunday that Japanese troops will regularly deploy to northern Australia About 2,000 U.S. Marines are stationed in Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, for six months each year. The deployment is in response to growing worries among Washington and its allies about China’s increasing military strength in the Indo-Pacific region. “Having a more forward leaning opportunity for greater training with Japan and the US together is a really fantastic opportunity for our defense,” Marles said after a meeting with his US and Japanese counterparts, Lloyd Austin and Gen Nakatani. Alliance against Chinese threat Japan’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, an elite marine unit, will be deployed to Darwin to work and train alongside Australian and US forces regularly.  “It is a very important statement to the region and to the world about the commitment that our three countries have in working with each other. This is going to...

WHEN I learned from GMA-7 news of Max Soliven’s passing away on November 24, 2006, just three days before Ninoy Aquino’s birthday, I was very sad and tried to control my tears. My personal encounter with Max began on August 2, 1990, the day Kuwait was invaded by Iraq. He told me to join him first in a morning breakfast at the lobby of Manila Peninsula hotel in Makati City before I interviewed him about his fond memories of Ninoy Aquino for the Philippine Daily Globe’s August 21, 1990 special focus feature entitled “…Ninoy, the Men Who Remember Aquino”. (I actually got Max’s residence phone number through Mela Soliven-Pascual who I met during the birthday of Mother Socorro Reyes, former directress of St. Paul College of Manila, sometime in September 1989 at the house of Romy Reyes on breezy Acacia Street in Valle Verde, Pasig.) 1960 TOYM awardees (standing, from left) Oscar Yatco, Leonardo...

Bianca (43) zorgt samen met nieuwe vrouw voor ex-man: ’We staan altijd aan’ De Telegraaf

O Presidente eleito dos Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, planeia construir ou ampliar grandes centros onde imigrantes sem documentos ficarão detidos antes da deportação, segundo a CNN, que cita várias fontes não-identificadas com conhecimento desses planos. Uma das opções é expandir as chamadas prisões de condado, indicou no sábado a estação televisiva norte-americana, que não especificou onde seriam os novos grandes centros, mas assegurou que os responsáveis da Segurança Interna (‘Homeland Security’) já identificaram várias cidades, presumivelmente próximas da fronteira com o México. A CNN referiu ainda que há planos para comprar um grande número de camas e berços onde instalar os imigrantes durante o processo de expulsão. Para que as deportações possam ser levadas a cabo, Trump terá de tornar obrigatória a detenção dos imigrantes indocumentados, que são frequentemente libertados devido à falta de recursos federais para os manter. Para criar essa obrigatoriedade de detenção, está a ponderar emitir uma...