Donald Trump is withdrawing US troops from Germany to ‘punish’ Berlin for buying Russian gas and for not contributing enough to NATO, but a fresh survey shows that people in that country are actually glad that’s he doing so. Around 47 percent of participants in research conducted by pollster YouGov on behalf of DPA news agency, said they were in favor of the Pentagon’s decision to pull out [...]

European prices for natural gas would drop by about one quarter if the Nord Stream 2 pipeline connecting Russia to Germany were completed, the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie said in a report on Friday. “If Nord Stream 2 remains unfinished, European benchmark TTF gas is expected to average about $4 per million British Thermal Units next year. But if the project can be completed as its backers hop [...]

While some in the German establishment fumed over the US presumably keeping Berlin uninformed about plans to withdraw thousands of troops, others envisioned it as a chance to loosen ties with their turbulent NATO ally. Washington didn’t bother to inform Berlin of its intent to redeploy thousands of troops from Germany to other locations, with the news coming out of the blue for the governme [...]

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned the US’ European allies against using Huawei tech, insisting privacy-loving Germans shouldn’t stand for such (alleged) spying. Never mind that time the NSA wiretapped Merkel. Pompeo pleaded with European governments on Fox News on Sunday that “the right thing to do for their people” was to kick Huawei’s cheaper and arguably more advanced techn [...]

China has faced numerous accusations over its handling of the initial COVID-19 outbreak from US officials, including President Donald Trump who claims that the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory and that Beijing was hiding the true information about the state of the outbreak in its early stages. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has vehemently denied a report by the German magazine Der Spie [...]

VIENNA -Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Friday delivered a speech timed with the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in which he recalled the responsibility of his own country for the events of 1939-1945. "The horrors of National Socialism were so indescribable that we should make sure to draw our lessons from that time. This is especially true for Austria, because not o [...]

Austrians will soon be able to walk with no restrictions and gather in groups of 10, as coronavirus measures will be gradually lifted starting next month. The easing of the self-isolation measures was announced by Health Minister Rudolf Anschober, who said that the spread of the novel coronavirus remains quite slow and the forecast for the upcoming month looks “very good.” He also said that th [...]

The European Union urgently requires financial injections to stay afloat and survive the coronavirus epidemic currently ravaging the continent, the European commissioner for economy, Paolo Gentiloni, has warned. A whopping €1.5 trillion ($ 1.63 trillion) could be needed to “deal with this crisis,” Gentiloni told Der Spiegel ahead of the EU leaders summit on the crisis sparked by the outbreak [...]

The INSTEX trading mechanism was previously created by European countries to bypass unilateral restrictions, imposed against the Islamic Republic by Washington, as the US threatened to hit those trading with Tehran via secondary sanctions. Iran, however, has repeatedly criticised INSTEX for not functioning properly. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have officially confirmed conclud [...]

As of Monday, Russia had sent fourteen Il-76 military aircraft to Italy to assist in the fight against the coronavirus. According to the Russian Defence Ministry, Russian military experts will engage in disinfection and COVID-19 prevention after coordinating their operations with Italian authorities. Poland's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs has confirmed via Twitter that Warsaw hadn’ [...]

Austria will massively expand coronavirus testing in the coming days to locate and isolate infected people and avoid an Italian-like overload of its health system, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has said. The Alpine republic with a population of 8.8 million has tested around 28,400 people so far with nearly 4,900 cases and 28 deaths confirmed, Reuters reported. It was one of the first European countrie [...]

Brussels has all but abandoned them to their fates, so is it any wonder that Italy, Spain and other European countries have turned to Moscow and Beijing for meaningful support in terms of expert advice and medical supplies? When this coronavirus pandemic has passed and the nations of the European Union are counting the cost of decimated populations, shattered public health infrastructures and [...]

The incompetence and hypocrisy of the European Union in dealing with the Covid-19 outbreak seems to have sobered up Serbia, a country that has previously slavishly committed itself to following orders from Brussels. For the past 20 years, every flavor of politician that ruled Serbia has signed on to the dogma that “the EU has no alternative” and that membership in that trans-national bloc was [...]

A senior German disease control expert has warned that the coronavirus pandemic could continue for two years, depending on how long it takes for an effective vaccine to be developed and if people develop immunity after illness. Speaking on Tuesday, the Robert Kock Institut's (RKI) president, Prof. Lothar Wieler, said pandemics tend to run their course in waves, and factors influencing how it unfol [...]

According to Sweden’s Data Protection Authority (the Datainspektionen), the fine is punishment for the search engine giant’s failure to remove search results ordered to be blocked three years ago. Sweden’s Datainspektionen has fined google 75 million Swedish kronor (equivalent to about €7 million or $7.74 million) for failure to comply with the data protection watchdog’s instructions, th [...]

The news comes as the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) spreads to over 130 countries and territories, currently infecting more than 156,000 people and with over 5,800 dead worldwide, prompting the World Health Organization to declare it a global pandemic. US President Donald Trump is said to be trying to track down German scientists working on developing a pilot vaccine against the COVID-19 coronaviru [...]

VIENNA (Sputnik) - Austria will introduce an entry ban for citizens of Russia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Sunday. The chancellor added that all restaurants across the country would be closed starting 17 March, while supermarkets and food delivery companies will continue to operate. [...]

The former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, has released a cache of audio files, secretly recorded in 2015 during the bailout talks with the Eurogroup – a powerful group of eurozone’s finance chiefs. The recordings and their transcripts were released by Varoufakis on the website of his ‘pan-European’ DiEM25 party on Saturday. [...]

US President Donald Trump said that trade in “no way” will be impacted by the 30-day Europe travel ban, despite saying less than an hour earlier the restrictive measures would apply to a “tremendous amount of trade and cargo.” [...]

The famed Rothschild family’s descendants have lashed out at the Austrian capital and local authorities over what they say amounts to expropriation of severely undervalued assets, as well as public trust in the private fund which was initially set up over 100 years ago to serve people by financing medical care projects. The great-grandson of the Rothschild family’s Austrian branch has launched [...]

On 31 January, the United Kingdom became the first country to leave the European Union after more than four decades in the bloc and its preceding organizations, marking the start of a new era as well as potentially spelling the beginning of new challenges for the political and economic entity comprised of 27 remaining states. The president of France’s National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, said th [...]

The budget changes follow after London and Brussels managed to sign off on the Brexit deal and avoid a further delay, withdrawing the United Kingdom from the bloc after 47 years. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has stated that his country would veto the European Union's long-term budget plan for post-Brexit Europe, stressing it should be lowered. [...]