International rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) confirmed Australia's highest credit rating "AAA", pointing to a low level of public debt and economic stability. At the same time, the agency still has doubts about ability of the country's government to return to the budget surplus Last week, the Australian government promised to ensure a small surplus in 2020/21 after more than 10 years...

The European Commission has slightly raised its forecast for the growth of the euro area economy in 2017 - up to 1.7% from the expected 1.6%. The forecast for 2018 is confirmed at 1.8%. All members of the Eurozone, except Italy (0.9%), will show growth above 1% in 2017. European economy has been recovering during five consecutive years, the report says, and the trend will continue in 2018. The...

President and Chief Legal Officer of Microsoft Brad Smith actually laid the responsibility for Friday's cyberattack of the world countries’ governments. In his blog, he urged state structures to stop "accumulating vulnerabilities", and called the attack itself a warning for everyone. Last night, Microsoft’s official blog has published Brad Smith’s statement dedicated to an attack of the WannaCry...

Voting in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia culminated in the victory of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) led by Angela Merkel. The CDU won 33% of the vote, ahead of its main rival, the Social Democratic Party of Germany with 31.2%. The gap looks minimal at first glance, yet experts and media consider this a success for Angela Merkel, as voting in the most populated states of the...

The European Union and Mexico have expressed their intention to complete negotiations on a new agreement on free trade by the end of 2017. The previous document has been signed 17 years ago, and since then, the volume of bilateral trade has tripled, reaching nearly $ 62 billion in the last year. The European Union is the third most important commercial partner of Mexico after the US and China. In...

In the coming decades, aging of the population will become an urgent problem not only in Europe but also in Asia, according to a recent regional economic review of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Relatively low per capita income, typical for many countries in the region, as well as the speed of demographic processes increase the risk that Asians may "grow old before they get rich"....

The US is losing the battle for the advanced industrial equipment market, be it CNC machines, intelligent packaging lines or robotic manipulators. According to the Ministry of Trade, last year the deficit of the US foreign trade balance with Japan, the EU and Switzerland in the field of industrial equipment was $ 4.1 billion, which is twice as much as in 2003. The indicator of 2016 is lower than...

France decided on a winner of the second round of the presidential election. In the next five years, the country will be led by leader of the "En Marche!" movement. 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron is now the eighth president of the Fifth Republic, and the youngest national leader in the history of France. Most of the French who came to the election preferred the candidate who represents the most...

About 60 Japanese commit suicide every day, mainly because of problems at work and in their families. Japan annually loses more than $ 4 billion due to suicides. The World Health Organization says that Japan is one of the three leading countries by number of citizens who commit suicide. More cases of suicides are recorded only in Finland and South Korea.  However, the number of suicides in...