Category: ENGLISH

From Beijing, the spokesman of the Foreign Ministry Zhao Lijian welcomed the decision by Presidents Biden and Putin to hold a dialogue aimed at reducing the danger of conflict and nuclear war. China, he said, is ready to join all efforts ultimately leading to “comprehensive and complete nuclear disar mament”. Prior to the June 16 summit, Chinese officials and media […]

The big surprise of the vote in Switzerland against the new CO2 law is that a majority of young people voted against it (cf. SAS 24/21). According to a survey commissioned by Tamedia and 20min.ch, and published on the latter’s website, 54% of those over 65 voted in favor of the law imposing new taxes and fees on greenhouse gas […]

More than 65% of French voters abstained in the country’s June 20 local and regional elections, a historic record! The mirror image conveyed by the results confirmed that, after months of stress in dealing with the pandemic, the French nation is in disarray. But the handling of COVID-19 is only the last straw of the long-term decline that has led […]

For five days in a row, from June 15 to 19, the city of Milan suffered prolonged blackouts, reaching up to ten hours in several districts, and hitting offices, shops and households, with ice cream melting and thousands of cell phones left uncharged. Whereas the provider, Unareti, attributed the cause of the blackouts to the increased demand of air conditioning […]

The European Union’s Green Deal and its predecessors have had devastating effects on Eastern European countries in particular, in respect both to the phase out of coal mining and to the requirement for all power plants to purchase “carbon certificates” to compensate for the amount of CO2 their production emits. In fact, under the so-called Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which […]

On June 18, a 400 meter long highway bridge nearly collapsed in the city of Wiesbaden. While all traffic was stopped before a catastrophe could occur, comparisons have been drawn to the tragic collapse of a highway bridge in Genoa three years ago. A large section of the A66 Autobahn in Wiesbaden will now remain closed for an indefinite time. […]

Ebrahim Raisi, the hardline chief of Iran’s judiciary and close collaborator of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was declared the winner of Iran’s presidential election on June 19. He was congratulated by the other three candidates – Mohsen Rezaei, Abdolnaser Hemmati and Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh – even before the official result was announced. According to the Iranian news agency IRNA, the turnout […]

Cutting through all the platitudes in the flood of words served up by participants at the G7 summit in Cornwall, U.K., was a simple statement issued by the Chinese Embassy in London: “The days when global decisions were dictated by a small group of countries are long gone.” This comment in particular shreds one of the conceits bandied about by […]

The two major points served up in the final communique of the G7 relate to economic/environmental policy and strategic issues: promotion of a “Clean Green Initiative” to counter China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI); and a strategic alliance to counter the “malign intent” of China and Russia, accused of using cyber-warfare and military threats, among other weapons, to disrupt the democracies. The […]

The House of Windsor Pushes Green Finance. The G7 summit in Cornwall, England, provided a useful venue for senior members of the Royal Family, including the Queen, to put in a highly mediatized appearance on June 11, and for Prince Charles to seek a private meeting with President Joe Biden, as well as to organize an event at his Eden […]