What to Watch Out for This Week
Tra i Leoni’s Spring Recruitment Session is open and will last until February 28. Eager to nurture your passion for journalism, meet new people, live your university experience to its fullest? Then, you should definitely try Tra i Leoni! We have been the official student newspaper of Bocconi University for more than twenty years, and can’t wait to welcome you.
Associations on Display will take place online from February 22 to 26. Associations will be assigned short time slots to present their activities. Watch out for Spring recruitment sessions by many of them!
The first lecture of the CIVICA Public Lecture Series “Tours d’Europe” will be held today. Among the speakers, Professor Catherine De Vries.
University News
SDA Bocconi’s MBA is 12th worldwide, 5th in Europe according to the Financial Times’s ranking, climbing 17 positions. It is the only Italian programme in the global top-100. This assessment confirms gains signalled by an earlier one from The Economist, which put SDA Bocconi’s MBA at the 6th place worldwide, 3rd in Europe.
European News
The EU is ready to follow Australia on making Big Tech pay for news. Echoing a similar move in Australia, EU lawmakers who are overseeing new digital regulation in Europe want to force Big Tech companies to pay for news, thus strengthening the hand of publishers against Google and Facebook. The initiative from members of the European parliament would be a serious blow to Google, which protested the enforcement of the new law that would force it to pay for news. Since the EU overhauled its copyright laws in 2019, Google and Facebook have stepped up their efforts to reach licensing deals for news in Europe.
Von der Leyen acknowledges errors in EU’s Covid vaccines strategy. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged that “mistakes were made”: the EU was too late in approving some Covid-19 shots, too optimistic with regards to production capacity and too confident in timely delivery.
Amsterdam ousts London. A fourfold surge in the amount of stocks traded in Amsterdam followed the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU, as traders moved from London to the Dutch capital, whose stock exchange is now first in Europe in terms of traded volume.
Borrell’s trip to Moscow turns out to be a disaster. EU foreign policy chief’s Josep Borrell’s trip to Moscow handed the Kremlin a diplomatic victory and highlighted the weakness of EU foreign policy.
The last independent Hungarian radio was just shut down. Starting from Sunday, the independent opposition radio Klubradio will cease to broadcast, due to a lost lawsuit against the decision of the Hungarian media regulator. EU condemned the closure, but the European Union seems unable to effectively stop Hungary (and Poland, where an anti-abortion law has been approved lately) from embracing an authoritarian drift.
World News
Trump was acquitted of inciting insurrection. The second impeachment trial against former US President Donald Trump ended with an acquittal on Saturday. A bipartisan majority of 57 senators, 7 of which Republicans, voted to convict the former president, but it fell short of the 67-senators majority required.
The World Health Organization terms the leak of the virus from a lab ‘extremely unlikely’. A World Health Organization scientific team has ruled out a laboratory accident as the cause of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it was ‘extremely unlikely’ that the pathogen leaked from a Chinese facility. Visiting the Wuhan Institute of Virology which has been the subject of unfounded allegations that the Sars-Cov-2 virus that caused Covid-19, the head of the visiting WHO Team Peter Ban Embarek argues that virus leaks from high-level biosafety labs were ‘extremely rare’.
Qatar conditions aid to Lebanon on the formation of a Government. After a massive explosion in August, which killed more than 200 people and devastated large areas of the capital, Lebanon’s government resigned. Qatar’s foreign minister recently announced that Qatar won’t give Lebanon any aid unless it swiftly forms a new government to manage its worst economic crisis in decades. Efforts to form a new cabinet have been deadlocked ever since the explosion, as portfolio factions bicker over portfolios, poreventing efforts to enact economic reform and receive billions of dollars in support from the IMF and others.
Myanmar Coup: Police fire rubber bullets as protesters defy ban. Police in Myanmar have fired rubber bullets during a demonstration in the capital Nay Pyi Taw, as thousands defied a ban on protests. The demonstrators are demanding the release of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, along with senior leaders of her National League for Democracy Party. Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested when the military seized power and declared a year-long state of emergency on February 1st. Tuesday was the fourth consecutive day of protests and police used water cannons and tear gas against the protestors, with one woman reportedly being hospitalized with a critical head injury.
International Criminal Court sets stage for trial over 2014 Gaza war crime claims. The International Criminal Court ruled that it had jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territories, setting the stage for a trial concerning whether Israel and the Islamist group Hamas committed war crimes during a war in 2014. The ICC ruling angered Israel, which never signed nor implemented the 1998 Rome Statute that set up the ICC, and thrilled Palestinians, who have long sought to hold the Israelis responsible for violations of international law. The ruling of the court raised the question of whether Palestine could delegate its jurisdiction over allegations of criminal Israeli misconduct to the ICC.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels launch attack on civilian plane in Saudi Arabia. Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Wednesday targeted Abha International Airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia, causing a civilian plane on the tarmac to catch fire. This attack threatened to escalate Yemen’s ongoing civil war. Since 2015, the Houthis battling Saudi-led military coalition have used ballistic missiles and drones to target international airports, military installations and critical oil infrastructure within Saudi Arabia. The ongoing conflict has spawned the world’s largest humanitarian disaster.
Notizie italiane
Via libera del Parlamento Ue al Recovery Fund con il sì della Lega. I parlamentari UE hanno votato in plenaria a favore del Recovery and Resilience Facility, il fondo da 627,5 miliardi di euro che costituisce il nucleo del Recovery Fund. Si attende ora il via libera formale da parte del Consiglio.
Il governo Draghi è ufficialmente entrato in carica. Mario Draghi ha accettato l’incarico di formare un governo, e il nuovo esecutivo ha giurato sabato. Nella compagine ministeriale 8 donne e 15 uomini. Tra questi, sono 5 le personalità “Bocconiane”: Vittorio Colao, ministro dell’innovazione tecnologica; Marta Cartabia, Ministro della Giustizia; Roberto Cingolani, ministro per la transizione ecologica; Massimo Garavaglia, ministro del turismo; e Giancarlo Giorgetti, ministro per lo sviluppo economico.
Conte lascia Palazzo Chigi. Il 13 febbraio 2021, l’ormai ex Presidente del Consiglio Giuseppe Conte lascia Palazzo Chigi con il saluto del picchetto militare dei Granatieri di Sardegna. Dalle finestre del palazzo, moltissimi dipendenti gli dedicano un lungo applauso, come da tradizione. L’ex premier va via tra le lacrime del portavoce, Rocco Casalino, e le urla dei sostenitori.
Magrini (Aifa): “vaccineremo dieci milioni di italiani al mese”. Nicola Magrini, direttore dell’Agenzia italiana del farmaco, detta i tempi e rassicura sull’efficacia del vaccino di Oxford/AstraZeneca: da aprile in poi potremmo essere in grado, dice, di vaccinare dieci milioni di persone al mese.
