Good morning dear readers,
Among the villains in Donald Trump’s villain game, he was the most radical, the most cynical, the most cunning. Now things are getting bad for Steve Bannon, once chief strategist for the US president: The way is free to bring him to justice. A few hours ago, the US House of Representatives enabled criminal proceedings – all in the course of coming to terms with the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, in which five people died.
229 parliamentarians voted in favor, 202 against transferring the case to the public prosecutor’s office. A committee of inquiry had previously unanimously adopted a report that Bannon had disregarded Congress. The right-wing populist is suspected of having known about plans for violent protests in advance. However, he disregarded a summons to the Capitol Committee.
(Photo: imago / Reiner Zensen)
Greyhound is an almost mystical brand. In the USA, buses with the greyhound logo were synonymous with mobility for decades. An icon of freedom that has repeatedly played a supporting role in feature films. The German start-up model Flixmobility (“Flixbus”) is now taking over the company.
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It was only in June that the team around CEO André Schwämmlein collected 650 million euros through loans and investors – money that is now supposed to secure the global market. And it should help make green and affordable mobility available to as many people as possible.
With the takeover, Flixmobility now owns more than 1000 buses in the USA. So far, it has been enough to operate a strong platform for arranging trips through independent bus companies. Greyhound is “the globally known brand in our portfolio”, enthuses Schwämmlein. Greyhound from Dallas is a “synonym for bus”.
It’s a crime that doesn’t get much talked about. Cyber attacks hit factories, hospitals and government agencies, and investigators mostly just watch. Because all too often the victims pay the amounts demanded by hackers in Bitcoin – because they have gotten rid of the problem and want to see the data decrypted. The perpetrators call themselves, for example, “Egregor”, as we describe in our big weekend report.
In the first half of the year alone, there were 305 million ransomware attacks worldwide, as many as in the entire previous year. The Federal Office for Information Security summarizes the current events in precise German for file economics: “The past year was marked by a significant expansion of cyber-criminal extortion methods.”
A couple of trends can be seen:
- The hackers attack the entire digital society and only amateurs are caught. The listed Brenntag AG was maltreated in June. The chemicals dealer reportedly paid $ 4.4 million in ransom.
- The threatened companies are too poorly prepared. And resistance is becoming increasingly difficult, as millions of people sit in the home office, sometimes with private PCs and in channels such as Slack or Zoom – often with weak passwords.
- Many traces of the perpetrators lead to the east. For example, a Ukrainian gang attacked Stanford University, the Shell oil company and the Jones Day law firm with the malware “CIOp”. The gang is now said to be in Russia. There, the government refuses to join forces with the rest of the world against cyber criminals.
The conclusion drawn up by our title complex is very minimalist: “Only those who protect themselves can prevent the worst.”
Our “pension pope” Bert Rürup took a look at what the probable coalitionists have fixed for future retirement provisions. He calls the plans recorded in the exploratory protocol a strong “keep going”, entirely in line with the SPD line, which leaves everything as it was. The propagated entry into funded old-age provision finds its goodwill, but “it should also be clear that building up a capital stock is never free”. Either the current generation has to be burdened in anticipation of the agreements, or the state gets into debt and pushes the financial burdens into the future.
His conclusion: The pay-as-you-go state pension is facing serious problems, it is not an “obsolete model”. His demand: “More courage!”
My culture tip for the weekend: “The Ibiza Affair” on Sky, a four-part series that shows the making-of of the video that caused the then FPÖ boss Heinz-Christian Strache to be expelled from the party and a major shock to the Republic of Austria.
The hero here is a Viennese real estate attorney with an exile Iranian family who wants to do something clever against the rise of the New Right and who is also paying for it. Together with a somewhat dodgy private detective and a fake Russian oligarch, Strache is known to get a turn. Über Kurz and the “Austria” manipulations will probably soon be showing the next Vienna reality thriller.
(Photo: Imago)
And then there is the flirt-and-rendezvous platform Parship-Meet, which should soon be listed on the stock exchange. The listed main owner Pro Sieben Sat 1 is looking for success with such a deal, which is rarely seen in the core business of television. You “parsip” yourself for a better return. The Munich-based company has already selected Morgan Stanley and BNP Paribas as the lead advisory banks, my colleagues learned – and also of the subsidiary’s value of up to five billion euros.
While Pro Sieben wants to remain a shareholder, the holding company General Atlantic plans to take off after three years. The 43 percent share should find a financially potent lover. The Pro-Sieben crew should stick to the Brazilian theologian Hélder Câmara: “If I dream alone, it’s just a dream / If we dream together, it’s the beginning of reality.”
I wish you a dreamy weekend.
I warmly greet you
you
Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
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