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The outcome of the first round of the presidential elections was predictable, the French voters picking independent candidate Emmanuel Macron, former economy minister and National Front Leader Marine Le Pen to advance to decisive May 7 runoff, French citizens set up a stark choice. They rejected the two political parties that dominated France’s post World War II political life, pitting an anti-immigrant firebrand against an unconventional centrist in a presidential election that could determine the future of the European Union and France’s place in the world.

Trump express support for French candidate Le Pen

By: EBR | Monday, April 24, 2017

The French presidential runoff is less important at this moment than North Korea's threatening and Mexico's border wall are

Another big trend is virtual reality (VR). Could we predict the implications that seamless and widespread VR will have on, say, profitability of today’s telecommunication and entertainment industry giants? The churn in the Fortune 500 index speaks for itself, and while we can’t easily forecast which tech startups will succeed and which will fail, what we can say with confidence is that the index turnover is going to accelerate.

We’re moving fast. But nobody knows where we’re going

By: EBR | Friday, April 21, 2017

Anyone who’s ever looked into retirement planning must have pondered the two basic questions: at what age does one want to retire and how does one estimate her life expectancy?

The future we see taking shape for the news business differs sharply from the norms of the past two decades. The fragmentation brought about by the digital revolution is not a reversible process, and the advertising revenue-driven business model, while still valid, will never be quite the same. Moreover, the fallout from the financial crisis (in which we include the electoral victories of Trump and Brexit) saw public trust in mainstream media plunge to historical lows. The Big Media brands still have meaning for many consumers, but competitors like Breitbart.com and Greenpeace.org are legitimising alternatives and creating their own networks of information and influence.

A future for the News Industry

By: EBR | Thursday, April 20, 2017

The decline of the news business is not inevitable, if we connect to our best customers

Fortunately, we are not doomed to repeat and transfer our unsatisfactory experiences within our significant relationships. A deep understanding of the roles we either naturally adopted or were forced into within our significant relationships could provide insight. Understanding these roles and common themes among them would help us to be more aware of our unconscious displacement of these issues to other aspects of our lives. By making the unconscious conscious, we can modify our roles within our relationships and our response to situations.

How your personal relationships impact your professional ones

By: EBR | Thursday, April 20, 2017

The roles we unconsciously adopt in significant relationships can result in struggles with colleagues, personal relationships or our careers

The one thing threatening this opportunity is trust. For example, the spread of ad-blockers (software that can stop your browser from loading advertisements) undermines the viability of the digital advertising model that sustains many of the world’s most popular websites. Further, according to Forum research, 31% of US digital media users have avoided or stopped using a service altogether because it did not provide enough control over their personal data. In China, this number is 70%. In another recent study, by KPMG, 55% of people said they had decided against buying something online due to privacy concerns.

We don’t trust the internet

By: EBR | Wednesday, April 19, 2017

And it’s putting our digital future at risk

Yet, Trump is working and he is working hard. During the first 70 days of his mandate, the President has taken more actions and signed more Executive Orders than any other US President before him ever did. The Dow-Jones has climbed to astronomic levels and unemployment in the US is already in sharp decline. Trump calls terrorists by their name. He uses the words “Islamist terrorists” because this is what they are and he vows for their complete eradication, from their ‘complete elimination from the surface of the earth’. Trump does not call Israel’s capital but Jerusalem and not Al-Quds. He does not regard the Jews and the Israelis as foreigners in the Holy Land, as fifty-six so-called ‘Islamic’ countries call them, in the very chart of their political body the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC). He does not regard them as usurpers, or culprits, or suppressors.

The first 100 days of Trump: decisiveness or unpredictable?

By: EBR | Monday, April 10, 2017

President Donald Trump delivered his first Commander-in-Chief moment as he ordered a strike on a Syria airfield use in that week’s chemical attack on civilians

But the use of fiction necessarily poses big questions for anyone in the business of doing journalism. Does imagining future scenarios ultimately distract readers (and writers) from the real issues at hand? Will the imagined truth provoke deeper thinking, or be just another way to escape?

When truth in politics is stranger than fiction, fiction can help uncover truth

By: EBR | Monday, April 10, 2017

Hats off to those busy debunking fake news and digging for true dirt

Think of people’s mental faculties as a set of concentric circles. At the core is the very essence of who we are: our values, how we think, what’s important to us, our personality and our behaviours. Over this layer, our skills are formed. Are we adaptable? Can we build relationships? Are we fast learning, good at music, great at languages, can we see things from different points of view? Around this we form technical abilities: the gathering of facts, vocabulary, and the processes of life.

Forget coding, we need to teach our kids how to dream

By: EBR | Friday, April 7, 2017

Life is becoming increasingly less predictable. From the political volatility of Donald Trump and Brexit to the vast societal changes of globalisation, drastic, seismic change is in the air.

The question is how can things be back on track, both in terms of substance and perception: how can we restore trust in Good Governance and present to a global audience both a new social contract and the best practices and ways to achieve it?

The renewed case for good governance

By: EBR | Tuesday, April 4, 2017

It's enough to spend a few hours per day watching local, regional and global news to have a growing sense of a increasingly huge mess

Despite the China-bashing during Trump’s presidential campaign and a recent tweet from the US president that the meeting will be “very difficult”, there are encouraging signs that it could be a success. By agreeing to meet within Trump’s first 100 days in office, both sides have shown their intention to avoid worst case scenarios, and a recognition that it is this specific counterpart that can help achieve their respective goals.

Trump and Xi can make their summit a success – here are 3 things they need to do

By: EBR | Tuesday, April 4, 2017

This week US President Donald Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in a high-stakes encounter for both the global economy and their own political careers

The businessman-turned politician is as dismissive of the other opposition parties in Ukraine as the government, saying, ”Unfortunately, today, except for the party ”For Life”, the other two, who consider themselves opposition, have already been in power. ”They returned, calling themselves opposition but they meet with the same people, continue to resolve matters in their own interests. They are all from the same Communist system - there are no new faces. People Yulia Tymoshenko and Petro Poroshenko were already at the same table 15 years ago but with different presidents. They can change nothing.”

Ukraine opposition leader outlines plans to revive country’s ailing economy

By: EBR | Tuesday, April 4, 2017

The leader of Ukraine's newest political party has proposed an ambitious manifesto, partly designed to tackle the country's ongoing economic ills

To harness the extraordinary power of the humanities, we must ensure they are widely accessible. Institutions like my own, as guardians of some of the world’s greatest cultural treasures, must work to share the joy and wonder of the humanities with the public. Otherwise, potential leaders of the future will lose out on the opportunity to learn from the humanities.

Why we need the humanities more than ever, by the President of Yale

By: EBR | Friday, March 31, 2017

In our complex and interconnected world, we need leaders of imagination, understanding, and emotional intelligence—men and women who will move beyond polarizing debates and tackle the challenges we face. To cultivate such leaders, we must value and invest in the humanities

Geography and Geopolitics must not be perceived however only at regional scale. Greeks do not live only on Greek territory, but globally as well, in the Diaspora. Although less visible, the Diaspora’s bearing on the fate of the country is very important, beginning with the very creation of the Greek State. The Greek Diaspora, in combination with the Greek merchant marine and the Christian-Orthodox international networks, many of which are Greek speaking, form an alternative geopolitical space which -in contrast to the Greek territory- rather than being influenced, exerts an influence on the dominant powers. Thus, in 1974, after the Cyprus crisis, the spontaneous mobilisation of Greek-Americans influenced US policy of military aid to Turkey.

Rethinking Greece: Georges Prevelakis on Contemporary Hellenism as a “cultural sediment” linking Europe with the emerging multipolar world

By: EBR | Monday, March 27, 2017

George Prevelakis is Professor of Geopolitics at the Panthéon-Sorbonne university in Paris and an Associate Fellow at the SciencesPo Center of International Research (CERI) in Paris. He specializes in European, Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean Geopolitics, in Diasporas and in Physical Planning

According to the Danes themselves, the key is to prioritize life over work. And when they are at work, they enjoy a high degree of flexibility. They can often choose when they start their working day and have the option of working from home. The lunch break is often at a designated time each day, enabling colleagues to interact and eat together, thus enabling them to leave their desks. There is a minimum five weeks’ paid holiday for all earners.

Denmark has the best work-life balance. Here’s why

By: EBR | Friday, March 24, 2017

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," goes the line in Shakespeare's Hamlet. But four centuries after the play was written, the analysis couldn't be less accurate. According to the OECD Better Life report, Danes have a better work-life balance than any other country surveyed

Fukuyama predicted that such restlessness and resentment would eventually need a political outlet – and when it came, it would be explosive. The anti-capitalist Left, however, was a busted flush. Communism was now a known fraud and failure, and post-Historical people driven by megalothymia would have no truck with its egalitarian pretensions, or its nakedly tyrannical realities. Far more threatening to the stability of liberal capitalist societies would be the emergence of demagogic strongmen from the fascistic Right, cynically feeding narrow self-interest and popular discontent, preying on human impulses for mastery and domination that the hollow comforts of consumer capitalism could not hope to appease.

The last hollow laugh

By: EBR | Friday, March 24, 2017

Since Francis Fukuyama proclaimed ‘The End of History’ 25 years ago, he has been much maligned. His work now seems prophetic

The theory goes that in a world of free capital flows, a country can have an independent monetary policy only by having its exchange rate float (Obstfeld and Taylor, 2004). While both emerging markets and advanced economies have increasingly opened their borders to financial flows, Rey argued in an influential speech to central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2013 that the scale of financial globalization had called this theory into question.

Agent Provocateur

By: EBR | Monday, March 20, 2017

Jeremy Clift talks to Hélène Rey, professor of economics at the London Business School

Nostalgia about the Empire and the Commonwealth makes for good films and excellent television. But a walk down memory lane is no way to conduct business in the 21st century. Reviving the Commonwealth will not compensate for leaving the EU.

The Empire strikes back

By: EBR | Wednesday, March 15, 2017

As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, the glorious memory of ‘Empire’ is back. You know, the one where the sun never set?

The World Bank will use the proceeds to support the financing of projects that advance its goals of eliminating extreme poverty while minimising environmental impacts and enhancing gender equality and public health.

World Bank launches first bond linked to the SDGs

By: EBR | Wednesday, March 15, 2017

The World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has issued its first bond linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the global effort to combat climate change, end poverty and promote equality

These are complex problems, and the solutions will not be simple. But a few broad paths to progress are already clear. We must work together with web companies to strike a balance that puts a fair level of data control back in the hands of people, including the development of new technology like personal “data pods” if needed and exploring alternative revenue models like subscriptions and micropayments. We must fight against government over-reach in surveillance laws, including through the courts if necessary. We must push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem, while avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is “true” or not. We need more algorithmic transparency to understand how important decisions that affect our lives are being made, and perhaps a set of common principles to be followed. We urgently need to close the “internet blind spot” in the regulation of political camp

3 dark trends that could destroy the web

By: EBR | Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Today marks 28 years since I submitted my original proposal for the world wide web

Citizen science – the convergence between science and society – already proved successful in EyeWire where people competed to map the 1,000-neuron connectome of the mouse retina. Also, the use of nanoparticles as coating of implanted abiotic devices offers great potential to improve the immunologic acceptance of invasive diagnostics. Brain-inspired neuromorphic engineering aims to develop novel computer systems with brain-like characteristics, including low energy consumption, adequate fault tolerance, self-learning capabilities, and some sort of intelligence. Here, the convergence of nanotechnology with neuroscience could help building neuro-inspired computer chips; brain-machine interfaces and robots with artificial intelligence systems.

How to ensure future brain technologies will help and not harm society

By: EBR | Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Thomas Edison, one of the great minds of the second industrial revolution, once said that “the chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.”

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EU Actually

Ukraine may buy for 6 billion euros Chinese drones with EU money

N. Peter KramerBy: N. Peter Kramer

In his weekly column, N. Peter Kramer writes about the Ukraine buying for 6 billion euros drones in China with EU money. Is it a threat for Taiwan?

Europe

Diplomacy intensifies over Cyprus

Diplomacy intensifies over Cyprus

United Nations secretary-general envoy Maria Angela Holguin will be in Brussels on Wednesday for meetings seen as important to European Union preparations for a possible revival of Cyprus reunification talks ahead of an expected visit by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Cyprus next week.

Business

How Much Pressure Can European CEOs Take?

How Much Pressure Can European CEOs Take?

There was a time when the job of the CEO was difficult but relatively clear: grow the business, beat the competition, manage costs, satisfy shareholders, inspire employees and avoid major reputational mistakes. That world has disappeared.

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