MAIN FOCUS: EU imposes record fine on major banks | 05/12/2013 In the scandal over the manipulation of international interest rates, the European Commission has imposed a record fine. Six major banks are to pay a total of 1.7 billion euros, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia announced on Wednesday in Brussels. Commentators welcome … Read more
Germany’s path towards new government fraught with dilemmas After losing out on her preferred coalition partners, Germany’s newly re-elected chancellor, Angela Merkel, faces a number of hurdles in securing a power-sharing deal with rival left-leaning parties. While Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won a resounding victory in Germany?s general elections on Sunday (22 … Read more
Golden Dawn loses support after rapper killing: poll Support for Greece’s Golden Dawn has fallen by 2.5 percentage points after the fatal stabbing of an anti-racism rapper by a supporter of the far-right party and most Greeks believe it threatens democracy, a poll showed on Monday. The poll by Rass for the Eleftheros Typos … Read more
Merkel romps to victory in German election Exit polls showed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU on 42 percent while Social Democrats stood at 26 percent German parties poised for coalition talks The chancellor insisted that she would not answer ?speculation? over the shape of the next government until the final result was clear Merkel leads in German vote, … Read more
France Sees Great Potential in the Chinese Tourism Industry The statistics this year for French tourism are a bit fuzzy. Minister of Tourism Sylvia Pinel remains cautious with the numbers while the results from Protourisme, the reference point for tourism studies, look gloomy [fr]. Vassiliou: ‘Europeans should get out of their chairs more often’ … Read more
Turkey’s ‘standing people’ protest spreads amid Erdoğan’s crackdown Protesters turn to passive resistance after four people die in Erdoğan’s brutal response to Taksim Square demonstration Lunchtime in the waterfront district of Beşiktaş in Istanbul on Tuesday and Ismail Orhan has been standing silently under a yellow parasol in the blistering heat for more than four hours. … Read more