With locations in: Brussels, London, Paris,
Zurich, Hong Kong,
and Shanghai
France’s Uber-taxi war is on. Oh, to be “ubered” – it’s Humans-as-a-Service
26 June 2015 – French taxi drivers have been warning for months to anyone willing to listen that their frustration over wildcat competition from Uber and similar ride-sharing services had reached a tipping point, and they weren’t going to stand for it any longer. It turns out they weren’t kidding.
Yesterday taxi drivers’ brewing hatred for Uber — and particularly the UberPop service that allows amateur drivers to pick up fares — spilled over into violence on the margins of a national strike against the American-based app, which was launched four years ago in France. Taxi drivers across France blocked roads and lit tire fires. In the southern city of Nice, local media reported that police had seized a Molotov cocktail from protesters.
NOTE: We are based in Paris and Brussels but do not use Uber. We use traditional taxis plus several on-line, fully licensed “black car” taxi services.
And on the French Uber website: “Strong demand on the Uber network — there is a taxi strike today, so demand will be strong and the service may be disrupted.”… Read more
FIFA, corruption, death in the afternoon, the long-arm of U.S. law … and the way of the world
30 May 2015 – The factual backdrop to this affair is well-known. FIFA, world football’s governing body has, for a number of years, been the subject of allegations of corruption. Then, after a series of dawn raids on 27 May 2015, seven FIFA officials, of various nationalities, the most famous being Jack Warner, the Trinidadian former vice president of FIFA, were arrested in a luxury hotel in Zurich where they were staying prior to the FIFA Congress. This was pursuant to an indictment that accused them, alongside five corporate officials, of using their positions within FIFA to engage in schemes involving the solicitation, offer, acceptance, payment, and receipt of undisclosed and illegal payments, bribes, and kickbacks. The defendants and their co-conspirators were also accused of corrupting the enterprise by engaging in various criminal activities, including fraud, bribery, and money laundering, in pursuit of personal and commercial gain.
Corruption, and its fellow traveller money laundering, tends to cross borders, and with an entity such as FIFA and an event such as the World Cup, it would be difficult to imagine … Read more
Will the PRISM surveillance lead to EU lawsuits?
By: Gregory P. Bufithis, Esq. (founder, Senior Writer) and Eric De Grasse (Chief Technology Officer)
13 June 2013 – So in the land that makes litigation fun, the American Civil Liberties Union, together with the New York Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in New York which claims that the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance of millions of Verizon customers is unconstitutional. The suit lists key members of the Obama administration’s national security team as the defendants.
Meanwhile in Europe there has been much chatter that internet companies that pass data to the NSA under the PRISM program could face legal action in the European Union (EU). Viviane Reding, the EU’s Justice Commissioner, has added her voice to the chorus of questions directed towards the US Attorney General over revelations surrounding PRISM. She will be raising the issue at a meeting with the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in Dublin this week.
And this all comes on the news that the Obama administration successfully lobbied the European Commission to strip its data-privacy legislation of … Read more