Star chef Reinhard Gerer died just a few days before his 70th birthday. Corresponding media reports were confirmed by the APA on Thursday in the gastronomy guide Gault&Millau. The restaurateur celebrated his greatest successes in the 1990s and 2000s with the Vienna Korso at the State Opera. Turbulent and economically difficult times followed for Gerer until the end. Next week (April 12) the native of Styria would have been 70 years old.
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Latvia will have to think about raising the retirement age / Diena
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
The Prime Minister expressed this while discussing the country’s economic situation and the possibilities for its improvement following hearing the informative report on Latvia’s Stability Program for 2023-2026.
Kariņš admitted that due to demographics, if nothing is changed in the country, the labor force will begin to decrease. Kariņš emphasized that this will stop economic growth. The Prime Minister pointed out that a similar situation exists throughout Europe, so there will be a struggle for the workforce.
Kariņš pointed out that this issue will have to be discussed seriously in the government and solutions must be proposed, because the population does not grow as a result of measures to support demography, and it cannot increase mathematically, taking into account that following regaining independence, the number of newborns halved.
Speaking regarding the heavy burden of retirement pensions, Kariņš said that this issue will have to be resolved, because no country can afford to pay a person for 40-50 years for not working.
Also, Kariņš emphasized that it will inevitably be necessary to think regarding raising the currently established retirement age threshold – 65 years – and it will be necessary to “go up step by step”.
“If we don’t do this, our children will not be able to support us when those who are working now retire,” said Kariņš, while not mentioning any possible new retirement age threshold.
On the other hand, Minister of Welfare Evika Siliņa (JV) commented on the Prime Minister’s statement on the Latvian Radio program “Krustpunktā” and stated that the already initiated raising of the retirement age, which will reach 65 years of age in 2025, continues in Latvia.
Silina said that at the moment she has not considered raising the retirement age, it was not in the minister’s plans.
Avoiding the worst scenarios would only reduce social welfare by 2%, according to the BBVA Research Report
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
He GDP per capita It is the most widely used indicator in comparisons of economic performance between countries and is appropriate and useful to compare the evolution of performance of an economy over time, since it synthesizes the value of the flows exchanged in the market on the income, expenditure and activity side.
According to BBVA Researchit is “an incomplete indicator of the economic well-being of a society, since it should include, in addition to consumption, equity in its distribution, the availability of leisure time and the life expectancy of the population.. Furthermore, as it is an average concept, GDP per capita does not capture the effect that income distribution has on aggregate well-being. Besidesthe GDP either incorporates the damage generated by CO2 emissionsnecessary to reach high levels of consumption.
BBVA Research has estimated in its latest report ‘Well-being and social cost of carbon’, a measure of the economic well-being of society, also including the cost of carbon emitted to meet the consumption made. The cost to society of the issues, and therefore the price that would have to be established to internalize it, is subject to uncertainty since it depends on the present value of future damage from climate change, which in turn depends on alternative climate scenarios.
Internalize the social cost of carbon issued in the last decade would reduce well-being in the OECD countries on average by approximately 2% according to a reference climate scenario. The differences between countries are significant depending mainly on whether the use of emissions per consumption unit is more or less intensive. In addition, the average correction would increase by 0.6 percentage points if emissions consumed rather than produced are considered, since most developed countries are net importers of carbon from emerging economies.
“Between 2010 and 2019 the social welfare of the Spanish economy was on average 81% of what the United States registered in 2019”, points out BBVA Research. Spain is below the largest economies in the European Union, such as France and Germany (99%), Italy (88%) and also quite far from countries such as Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Iceland or Finland.
However, Spain is positioned above from Portugal, Greece, Ireland or the Czech Republic and exhibits considerably higher well-being than that of South American countries such as Colombia and Chile. Likewise, the performance of Spain in life expectancy and free time. However, the same is not true of the inequalitywhere Spain is in a worse position than northern European countries such as Norway, Sweden or Iceland.
The consideration in the measure of social welfare of the social cost of carbon improves the relative position of the Spanish economy given its lower intensity of use of CO2 emissions per unit of consumption and also because it has a lower level of GDP per capita. By going beyond GDP, Spain’s gap with countries like the United States is halved when this comparison is made in terms of social welfare. In this sense, the report points out that Spain is above the average (76%) in relation to the net welfarecorrected for the damage of CO2 emissionsof the 36 countries that make up the sample, occupying the 19th place, just behind Japan and above Ireland. However, there is still a significant gap to close with respect to the more advanced OECD countries.
Consult more responsible information in the Co-responsible publications and in the BBVA Case Study in the 2023 Stewardship Yearbook.
Israeli police storming Al-Aqsa Mosque.. Will the powder keg explode? | Policy
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
With the approach of the Jewish Passover, extremist clerics are increasing their incursions into the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque, amid calls and encouragement from the activists of the “Return to the Temple” movement to offer their offerings in the third holiest mosque for Muslims following the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, in flagrant violation of the status quo, and in a scene that has become a recurring year. A year later since 2021.
The French newspaper “Liberation” said that Easter coincided with the month of Ramadan two years ago, and this led to increased Israeli police measures around the place, at a time when the Palestinians intensified their presence amid fears of Jewish fundamentalist attempts to offer their offerings in the mosque’s yards.
This coincided with the call of activists from the “Return to the Temple” movement to its members to bring their offerings and slaughter them in the square, which prompted hundreds of worshipers to gather in the Al-Qibli Mosque for fear that extremists would take advantage of the morning hours to desecrate the mosque. The police intervened with sound bombs, rubber bullet launchers and batons. Hundreds of young men were arrested before most of them were released in the morning.
The newspaper indicated -in a report By its correspondent in Jerusalem, Samuel Fawry – that the Islamic Endowments Administration believes that Israel is gradually working to break the status quo in Al-Aqsa, and that the Palestinians who are demonstrating once morest extremist Jewish groups entering the mosque are right and that the Israeli police are not authorized to expel them, but rather they must prevent this Extremist groups working to build a synagogue and destroy the mosque have access to the Haram.
According to the reporter, the Israeli police intervention did not pass peacefully, as Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired regarding 15 shells from Gaza towards its periphery, and a rocket landed in a packing factory, in a reaction reminiscent of the escalation in May 2021, following a violent intervention by the Israeli security forces that resulted in an injury. 500 people during the evacuation of the square at the end of the month of Ramadan, followed by a military campaign that lasted 11 days.
Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri said that the Israeli aggression once morest worshipers in Al-Aqsa Mosque is a heinous crime, and that “the Palestinian people and the resistance forces will respond with all their might.”