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Geopolitics

Voters In France, Greece, Serbia Send Bitter Message For Europe

François Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency, with a final tally of 51.6%, against 48.38%. Change was also in the air in elections in Greece and Serbia.

Europe is changing: both French and Greeks voters made that clear Sunday night, with the same wind of change possibly blowing towards Serbia, which also held the first round of its presidential election.

In France, Socialist candidate François Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidency, with 51.6% of the votes, against 48.38%. But according to Le Monde, the clock is already ticking for Hollande, who is taking on the burden of not just France's economic crisis, but a "sick Europe." Calls have been made for Hollande to meet Angela Merkel as soon as he takes office, to tackle with the current financial crisis, notably the continued crisis with Greek debt.

Greece also voted on Sunday in Parliamentary elections, punishing the country's leading parties. Neither left-leaning PASOK nor center-right New Democracy succeeded in winning a majority of the Parliamentary seats. Most troubling, a Neo-Nazi group also entered Parliament, which some see as a backlash against austerity measures, CNN reports from Athens. A new coalition government should be formed with a third party, which could upend the entire political system.

In Serbia, President Boris Tadic arrived first in the opening round of the presidential election, with 26.8% of the votes on Sunday. But he was far from winning the absolute majority as his main opponent, Tomislav Nikolic, won 25.6% of the votes. The second round will be held on May 20.

Both results made it clear that a prompt reflection on Europe's future had to be held.

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Society

Mongolia Is Late To The Internet, And Falling Prey To Digital Fraud

The internet is a new experience for many in the country. That makes people easy prey.

Mongolia Is Late To The Internet, And Falling Prey To Digital Fraud

Sainaa Tserenjigmed, defrauded by internet-based scams on two separate occasions, takes a break from her job at a brickmaking factory in Dalanzadgad soum, Umnugovi province.

Uranchimeg Tsogkhuu/Global Press Journal
Uranchimeg Tsogkhuu

DALANZADGAD — After a lifetime spent tending to cattle in the Mongolian countryside, Sainaa Tserenjigmed settled in the provincial capital of Dalanzadgad and began dreaming of a house of her own.

To build it, she would need a loan of 30 million Mongolian togrogs ($8,800), an amount that seemed out of reach until Sainaa stumbled across a comment on Facebook offering low-interest loans without guarantors. Her interest was piqued.

It was early 2018 and the internet was still a brave new world for Sainaa. The previous year, she’d bought herself a small, white smartphone and her son installed internet at home. “Facebook seemed new and strange, so I started digging tirelessly,” she says. Soon, she was using the platform to watch videos, keep up with the news and communicate with her family and friends.

The person offering loans on Facebook had a foreign-sounding name but his online persona seemed trustworthy to Sainaa and he had many friends, lots of whom were Mongolians. She reached out, expressing a desire to take out a loan.

The response was quick, she says, and the subsequent correspondence unusually friendly. Sainaa was instructed to transfer $120 as a processing fee to receive the first tranche of money. To speed up the process, she decided to schedule four separate transactions in different amounts via Western Union, two to three days apart, amounting to $1,000 in total — more than twice the average monthly salary in Mongolia at the time.

But the person kept asking for more money.

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