Klarna buys BillPay, the PayPal of Germany, for $75M from Wonga
By Ingrid Lunden From TechCrunch Some chopping and changing is afoot in the world of payments in Europe. Today, Klarna, the startup out of Sweden that works with online merchants to enable flexible payment options, confirmed that it has acquired…
IAEA training addresses devastating coffee disease
Vienna, Austria Coffee, one of the world’s most-traded commodities, is increasingly threatened by a disease known as coffee leaf rust. Experts from Central America, the region most affected, are gathering at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this week to…
Austria’s migrant disaster: Why did 71 die?
By Bethany Bell & Nick Thorpe From BBC News No-one will ever know exactly where the 71 refugees and migrants from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan died. The grisly discovery of their bodies in the back of a lorry on an…
Funds buy German bonds with negative yields as choices narrow
From Newsmax Funds were the biggest buyers of the first negative-yielding euro bonds sold by a non-financial company, highlighting how central bank stimulus is distorting markets. Deutsche Bahn AG allocated 57 percent of the 350-million euro ($388 million) bond sale…
Gordon Brown urges EU states to unite against tax havens
By Larry Elliott Economics editor From The Guardian UK Former prime minister says EU must encourage US to fight against evasion that costs £4.8tn a year to global economy Gordon Brown has called on Europe to impose collective sanctions on…
Would the real tax havens please stand
By Sir Ronald Sanders From Curacao Chronicle “It is tantamount to an economic blockade”. That’s how Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister, Gaston Browne, described the current withdrawal from Caribbean indigenous and offshore banks of correspondent relationships by US banks. His…
New specifications on energy supplier’s obligation to take energy efficiency measures
By Bernd Rajal and Mark Tuttinger Contributed by Schoenherr Rechtsanwälte From International Law Office ILO Introduction Under Section 10 of the Federal Energy Efficiency Act,(1) certain energy utilities which commercially supply end consumers with energy in Austria must, as of…
Destinations of the week
The most expensive countries for tourists to visit By Sophie-Claire Hoeller From Business Insider Zurich, SwitzerlandShutterstock / Andreas ZerndlSwitzerland is the most expensive country to visit in the world. You know which cities to avoid in order to dodge exorbitantly…
1912-1938 Traveling with the Paneths
By Alex Q. Arbuckle From Mashable An intimate, colorful record of a family on the move 1913 Paneth’s wife Else on their honeymoon in Cairo. IMAGE: FRIEDRICH PANETH/ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY/SSPL/GETTY IMAGES 1924 “Eva, Heinz and Else sitting on a wall.”…
7 tiny mobile homes
By Cat DiStasio From engadget Living off the grid was once a lifestyle reserved for rustic folks who prefer roughing it over city life. These days, though, the face of unplugged living can look downright space-age. We’ve rounded up some…
