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IBM to cut 10,000 jobs in Europe, most in UK, Germany: Bloomberg

  • Tech giant IBM plans to cut around 1 in 5 jobs across Europe, sources close to the matter told Bloomberg on Wednesday.
  • About 10,000 jobs face the axe, they said.
  • The UK and Germany will see the most job cuts, the sources said, and roles in its legacy managed-infrastructure IT services business are most at risk.
  • An IBM spokesperson told the publication that its staffing decisions “are made to provide the best support to our customers in adopting an open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities.”
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Tech giant IBM is planning to cut about 10,000 jobs in Europe, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

The cuts will affect around 1 in 5 staff in the region, sources close to the matter told the publication.

The UK and Germany will see the most job cuts, but staff in Poland, Slovakia, Italy, and Belgium will also lose their

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Germany angers Turkey with attempt to police Libya arms embargo

BERLIN/ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey protested to Germany and the EU on Monday after German forces belonging to an EU military mission boarded and tried to search a Turkish cargo ship that they suspected of taking weapons to Libya illegally.

Soldiers from the frigate Hamburg, part of an EU mission enforcing a U.N. arms embargo, boarded the Roseline A overnight but withdrew after Turkey raised objections with the EU mission, which had ordered the search, the German Defence Ministry said.

Turkey released footage showing armed men in military uniform marshalling sailors with their hands on their heads on the bridge of what it said was the Roseline A, at sea southwest of the Greek Peloponnese peninsula.

The incident comes at a time of friction between Turkey and the European Union. The EU’s foreign policy chief has said ties are reaching a “watershed moment” over Turkish oil prospecting in waters claimed by

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Germany coronavirus: Anti-lockdown protests become increasingly radical

The incidents come against the backdrop of a growing violent undercurrent at large-scale street demonstrations against coronavirus restrictions, including one attended by 20,000 people Saturday in Leipzig. The developments point to an increasingly radicalized movement of virus skeptics in Germany, embraced by the country’s far-right extremist groups and energized by global conspiracy theories, notably those put forth by the U.S.-born QAnon movement.

Far-right groups marched alongside the demonstrators this weekend, stoking concerns among security officials that they will gain recruits and draw more demonstrators to violence, with bomb- and weapon-making material already circulating in coronavirus-skeptic circles online.

“The escalation line is going up all the way,” said Stephan Kramer, president of the state-level intelligence agency in the central state of Thuringia, home to high-profile far-right leaders who traveled to the Leipzig demonstration. “We see with the latest events that there is an escalation toward more violence and to more right-wing

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Germany sees spike in COVID-19 deaths

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany on Wednesday reported the biggest spike in deaths linked to COVID-19 since April, and its health minister warned that the number of daily infections had not fallen enough yet to flatten the curve.



a person standing in a room: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak continues in Berlin

© Reuters/FABRIZIO BENSCH
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak continues in Berlin

Europe’s biggest economy, in a partial lockdown since Nov. 2 designed to tame a second wave of the coronavirus, recorded 18,487 new infections and 261 deaths in a day, the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the emergency month-long lockdown that includes the closure of restaurants, gyms and theatres was necessary to reverse a spike in coronavirus cases that risks overwhelming hospitals.

“The numbers are rising but not as strongly,” health minister Jens Spahn told German broadcaster RTL. “This is encouraging but it is not enough.”

Even though the number of confirmed daily new infections has remained

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Germany eyes antigen tests to keep elderly safe from virus

BERLIN (AP) — As Europe tries to break a surge in coronavirus infections, Germany is counting on a new type of test to avoid closing nursing homes to visitors, a move that caused considerable anguish among residents and relatives in the spring.

So-called antigen tests, which look for a specific protein on the virus, were first launched months ago. They are cheap and fast, but experts said at the time they are also less accurate than the standard PCR test, which detects even the tiniest genetic trace of the virus.

Still, Germany — which has managed to contain the spread of the outbreak better than many of its neighbors — announced recently that it is bulk-buying millions of antigen tests each month.

“We have a new strategy,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters Monday. “We can now basically perform rapid tests on visitors to nursing and care homes.”

Nursing homes will

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Germany says EU pragmatism needed on London finance links

LONDON (Reuters) – A senior German government official said on Friday he was “deeply concerned” about the lack of progress in trade talks between the European Union and Britain, given the heavy reliance of German companies on funding from London’s financial hub.

FILE PHOTO: The City of London financial district is seen during early morning mist from Greenwich Park in London, Britain, January 22, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo

London is Europe’s biggest financial centre, but faces being largely cut off from the bloc when Britain’s post-Brexit transition arrangements expire on Dec. 31.

Britain and the EU have entered an intensive phase in talks on a free trade deal, though EU access for financial firms in Britain is being dealt with separately by Brussels.

“German corporates, for all that I can tell, rely massively on wholesale financing offered from the City of London, so in that sense we will have to

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Germany and France announce new national lockdowns, saying they have lost control of the coronavirus

“We in Europe are all surprised by the propagation of the virus,” Macron said in a televised address to the nation.

“The virus is circulating in France at a speed that even the most pessimistic forecasts had not anticipated,” he said, adding that the number of infections had doubled in less than two weeks.

Germany has similarly witnessed a rapid deterioration of its virus response, after being praised in the first wave of the pandemic. The country’s contact-tracing program, paired with mandatory quarantines, had been held up as a model of how to contain outbreaks. Now German health authorities are unable to identify where 75 percent of new infections come from.

“We no longer have control of the spread of the virus,” Merkel said at a Berlin news conference, noting that the number of patients in the country’s intensive care units had doubled in the past 10 days.

“If the

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