EU-Turkey relations: EU denies reports of further Turkey aid cuts

Media reports about massive cuts in funding "are completely wrong and misleading," an EU spokesman has said. The bloc cut pre-accession funds to Turkey in 2017 and is not planning further cuts.

Read more at:
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-denies-reports-of-further-turkey-aid-cuts/a-52060306

Climate Change: The media is bad at covering climate change and worse at covering solutions

While President Trump has turned bashing the mainstream media into a form of performance art, sometimes the press does deserve some constructive criticism. For example, look no further than the media’s inadequate coverage of climate change and potential solutions—inadequate, at least, according to a new report by the watchdog group Public Citizen. The group looked at news stories from a number of major U.S. news outlets to see how–or if–they covered what many consider to be the greatest threat to national security. More specifically, the group looked at whether the media was able to connect dramatic weather events–which the world had plenty of in 2017–to climate change. It found a “decidedly low” number of pieces that mentioned climate change in relevant contexts–such as drought, floods, and disease. Instead, the term “climate change” most often occurred in stories about record heat, but not issues like wildfires, record rain fall, or hurricanes, tropical storms, and flooding.

In fact, Public Citizen found that just 4% of the many stories discussing hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, or Nate made the connection to climate change.

Not only is the media barely mentioning climate change in context, but coverage of potential solutions to climate change is even more scanty–only 9% of all pieces mentioned solutions. Reporting on ways to possibly slow or even reverse climate change are critical now, particularly in light of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, roll back U.S. climate policy, and promote coal.ML

Read more: Report: The media is bad at covering climate change and worse at cover

Global Economy: European economic figures far more accurate than those from the US - by RM

Transparency key to success Atlantic Alliance

When listening to or reading US financial reports there are some remarkably disturbing facts popping up.

One of these is the fact that it was actually the US which caused the 2007/2008 financial crash but this has been completely swept under the mat by the US.

Keep in mind though that all the media outlets in the US, except very few, which are "not for profit organizations" (who mainly get their income from public/private donations and grants) are mostly profit based multi-national corporations. This should immediately raise a red flag as to the impartiality and balance of the news/financial reports they release.

Possibly, this is also the reason that at the same time there is this constant barrage of attacks coming from those same US media circles bashing and critizicing the EU/ECB for not adopting the US QE financial policies (printing more money and pumping this" monopoly money" into the marketplace) in order to get the EU economy going again.

As to the US QE policies,  many economists believe this could eventually be a recipe for future US economic disaster.

Also, looking at some of the official figures put out by the US Government and reading between the lines, the attentive reader will quickly find a lot of nebulous statistics on a variety of issues and items, including employment, trade, debt, infrastructure, military and security expenditures.

In this volatile scenario Wall Street is a special "Chapter" by itself.  Some critics call Wall Street a financial "fairyland" where words and phrases as versatility, headwinds, optimize, boldness, performance, choices, transparency, bubbles, wealth, growth, state of the art, profitable, opportunity are used in different ways as shares go up and down and traders turn out the big winners in dividing up the spoils.

Obviously without any doubt there are also "forces" in Europe ( Britain) who are following and would love to have the EU adapt this "flawed" US financial model.

Fortunately, and maybe unfortunately for some,  the EU is a Union of 28 countries with 28 central banks.  Of these 28 countries 18 belong to the so called European Economic Zone (Eurozone) that have adopted the euro (€) as their common currency.and sole legal tender.

The ECB is the central bank for the euro and administers monetary policy for the whole Eurozone.

Any report or statistic on or about the state of the EU economy issued by the ECB  is scrutinized very carefully by all 18 members of the ECB before they become public.Canada which is a Federated country also applies similar rules.

Official EU financial reports and statement are therefore without any doubt far  more accurate and reliable than those coming from US government agencies.

Isn't it time for the EU to get to the point with our friends across the other side of the pond on this issue? And what better venue to do it than during the ongoing EU-US trade negotiations?

EU-Digest