Rescue services continued searching for victims under the rubble of buildings destroyed by an explosion in the Paardenmarkt area in Antwerp that claimed two lives and injured at least 14 persons, one of them critically, on Monday night. The explosion damaged seven buildings. Three apartment blocks collapsed, seven persons were rescued from the rubble overnight while 22 persons had to spend the night in a shelter, a hotel or with relatives and friends. Emergency repairs were also being carried out on Tuesday on buildings damaged, but not destroyed, by the…
Read MoreDay: January 17, 2018
ECB bank-crisis management needs improvement, EU auditors find
European Central Bank should upgrade procedures handling bank crises by improving response to most urgent cases and streamline coordination with eurozone bank-failure authority, says European Court of Auditors. “The ECB’s operational framework for crisis management has some flaws, and there are signs of inefficient implementation,” the ECA said in a report published on Tuesday. The EU auditors made a series of recommendations with target dates for implementation stretching into next year. The ECB has accepted most of the recommendations, the auditors said. The ECA report suggests that the ECB “refused…
Read MoreEuropean Council head says Europe still open to a British change of heart
The president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, intimated on Tuesday that Europeans would still be ready to accept a change of heart by Britain with regard to its decision to withdraw from the European Union (EU). “If the U.K. Government sticks to its decision to leave, Brexit will become a reality – with all its negative consequences – March next year, unless there is a change of hearts among our British friends” Tusk said in a plenary debate of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. “Wasn’t it (U.K. Brexit negotiator)…
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