Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

The nationalist government in Hungary passed a law Monday granting sweeping emergency powers that Prime Minister Viktor Orban says are necessary to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Those powers include sidelining parliament and giving Orban the power to rule by decree indefinitely. The law would punish those who spread false information about the pandemic with up to five years in prison. "Changing our lives is now unavoidable," Orban told lawmakers last week. "Everyone has to leave their comfort zone. This law gives the government the power and means to defend Hungary." During Monday's vote, he said: "When this emergency ends, we will give back all powers, without exception." But critics insist that Orban is using the pandemic to grab power. "An indefinite and uncontrolled state of emergency cannot guarantee that the basic principles of democracy will be observed," Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric wrote t...

The new coronavirus may already have infected far more people in the UK than scientists had previously estimated — perhaps as much as half the population — according to modelling by researchers at the University of Oxford. If the results are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment, said Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology, who led the study. The vast majority develop very mild symptoms or none at all. However, the modelling by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group has been challenged by other scientists. They have pointed out that the study presents possible scenarios — based on assumptions about the nature of the virus, its virulence and its arrival from China — that contradict those supported by most epidemiologists. The Oxford research suggests that Covid-19 reached the UK by mid-January at the latest and perhaps as early as December. It spread ...

The coronavirus outbreak, which originated in China, has infected more than 550,000 people. Its spread has left businesses around the world counting costs. Here is a selection of maps and charts to help you understand the economic impact of the virus so far. Global shares take a hit Big shifts in stock markets, where shares in companies are bought and sold, can affect many investments in pensions or individual savings accounts (ISAs). The FTSE, Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nikkei have all seen huge falls since the outbreak began on 31 December. The Dow and the FTSE recently saw their biggest one day declines since 1987. Investors fear the spread of the coronavirus will destroy economic growth and that government action may not be enough to stop the decline. In response, central banks in many countries, including the United Kingdom, have slashed interest rates. That should, in theory, make borrowing cheaper and encourage spending to boost the economy. Glob...

For the first ten years of its existence, the European Union’s carbon-trading market was widely considered a failure. An overly generous free allowance system combined with the financial crisis’s slowdown in economic activity drove the price of carbon in the Emission Trading Scheme to levels far too low to discourage emissions. In 2015, a controversial intervention by EU lawmakers fixed the problem with legislation that made the price go up. But now as a result of the sudden halt of economic activity due to Coronavirus and the drop in gas and oil prices, the price is plummeting again, already sinking to levels not seen since November 2018. The price is certain to continue falling. The difficulty is just one example of the wider problem the EU is now facing in maintaining its climate change framework in the face of Coronavirus. The EU’s Green Deal, with its target to completely decarbonise by 2050 proposed earlier this month, has not taken the massive economic and social disru...

"The EU is finished," gloat the nay-sayers. "Even faced with the coronavirus, its members can't stick together." Certainly EU leaders meeting on Thursday - by socially-distant video conference - glaringly failed to agree to share the debt they are all racking up fighting Covid-19. From her flat in Berlin, where she is self-isolating after her doctor tested positive for the virus, German Chancellor Angela Merkel openly admitted to the disharmony over financial instruments.n What leaders did agree on was asking Eurogroup finance ministers to explore the subject further, reporting back in two weeks' time. Two weeks. The EU is famous for kicking difficult decisions down the road but in coronavirus terms, with spiralling infection and death rates, two weeks feels like an eternity. For ordinary people, frightened for their health, the safety of their loved ones, worrying about their rent and feeding their family after businesses shut down, the idea tha...

The EU is "completely unprepared" to handle the ticking time bomb of coronavirus and refugee numbers currently occupying vast areas of the paradisal islands of Greece, after the International Rescue Committee exposed how dangerous the situation in the country has now become. Brussels and EU member states “must help” to support Greece, in what has been described as a “tinderbox set to explode” with the refugee crisis now reaching breaking point. Ever since Turkey opted to disobey its pact with the bloc, thousands of refugees have made the perilous journey to Greece in the hope of seeking asylum in the EU. But the situation has hit such a harrowing point, the IRC has revealed how unprepared the bloc truly is to cope with the current numbers in Greece – despite knowing about it for “months, even years”. Imogen Sudbery, the International Rescue Committee’s Director of Policy and Advocacy, said that if more isn’t done to stem this trend of people coming to the Greek island...

Italian Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri said on Tuesday that the euro zone’s bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, should be used to help economies hit by the coronavirus crisis, with no strings attached. Some richer northern euro zone nations have expressed unease about making the fund available without policy conditions aimed at making its recipients more economically competitive. “We must use all the resources available at the EU level, including the ESM, without any conditionality,” Gualtieri told parliament. Gualtieri’s position is also different to that of some members of the ruling coalition in Rome, who do not want Italy to use the ESM at all, arguing it would saddle the country with long term debt that would be hard to repay. Euro zone finance ministers are due on Tuesday to discuss proposals by the European Commission to deploy the fund, which has 410 billion euros ($444 billion) of unused lending power, as a coronavirus cushion. Italy has borne the b...

After a political career spanning 30 years, Alex Salmond will be more familiar than most with the feeling of sitting waiting for a result to come in. But never one quite like this. This time, the constituency passing judgement on the former first minister was a jury of the High Court in Edinburgh. And rather than a seat in parliament or the outcome of a referendum, his very freedom was on the line. Nine women also sat nervously awaiting the outcome, to see if their accounts of sexual assault would be believed beyond all reasonable doubt. When the foreman of the jury stood up and announced that Mr Salmond had been cleared of all charges, the former first minister reacted the way he had throughout the trial - by not reacting. He calmly thanked the judge as she told him he was free to go, and walked from the courtroom. The jury's six total hours of deliberation were preceded by nine days of evidence, with witnesses being questioned by prosecution and defence lawyers amid i...