Middle Eastern buyers seize half of £10m-plus homes in Mayfair August 18, 2014 Middle Eastern buyers have been ramping up their presence in the capital and now account for half of all purchases of £10m-plus homes in Mayfair each year, new figures released yesterday show. According to findings from Mayfair and West End property specialist Wetherell, buyers from the Middle East made up 10 per cent of all [...]
Bitcoin crashes to below $500 August 18, 2014 Bitcoin has crashed to below $500 for the first time since May, dipping as low as $309 on BTC-e, the world’s third-largest Bitcoin exchange. The “flash crash” put an end to a relatively stable period for Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency has been the subject of big sell-offs since last week. Cryptocurrency site CoinDesk reckons it has shed [...]
Cook revels in revival as England thrash Indians August 17, 2014 SKIPPER Alastair Cook issued a public message of thanks to his team-mates for their backing during some dark days after England annihilated India in the fifth Test at the Oval yesterday to wrap up a commanding 3-1 series victory. India slumped to 94 all out, the tourists’ second successive loss inside three days, as England [...]
Premier League 2014-15 Preview: Part two August 12, 2014 TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR LAST SEASON The £100m post-Gareth Bale spend resulted in instability and the sacking of Andre Villas-Boas, with straight-talking Tim Sherwood guiding Spurs to sixth despite knowing he was gone irrespective of results TRANSFERS Key ins: Ben Davies, Michel Vorm, Eric Dier. Key outs: Heurelho Gomes, Jake Livermore, Gylfi Sigurdsson BIG [...]
Google to help lay $300m undersea internet cable to Japan August 11, 2014 By the end of 2016 Google and a group of Asian telecommunications firms will have built $300m worth of internet cable, joining Japan to the US. The project, called "Faster", will cater to rising bandwidth usage and will begin immediately. Internet traffic spanning the trans-Pacific route is becoming "intense" as smartphones, high broadband usage and [...]
New York Report: US stocks slide on geopolitical concerns August 8, 2014 US STOCKS ended lower yesterday, with concerns over a sanctions faceoff between Russia and the west erasing morning gains on upbeat jobs data. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 75.46 points, or 0.46 per cent, to 16,367.88, the S&P 500 lost 10.69 points, or 0.56 per cent, to 1,909.55, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 20.09 [...]
Delaying Crossrail 2 would strangle London – and the private sector can help pay for it August 7, 2014 One of the most encouraging things about ministers considering an extension of Crossrail to Hertfordshire, giving commuter towns like Tring and Hemel Hempstead direct access to the City and Canary Wharf, is that it shows a commitment to long-term planning that has too often been absent in the UK. Admittedly, it’s rather late to be [...]
Dagger in the Kremlin’s heart: Europe’s sanctions have revived a comatose West July 30, 2014 “We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender.” John O’Donohue, Irish poet MY GOD, they’ve finally done something. In the end, it wasn’t the horrific shooting down of MH17 – highly likely by Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine – that goaded a seemingly inert Europe into decisive action. Even after this [...]
The sanction spiral: Russia and Europe may fall into recession July 21, 2014 A trade “tit-for-tat” would hit both sides extremely hard EVEN before the tragic Malaysia Airlines plane crash in Ukraine last Thursday (allegedly the work of Moscow-backed separatists), Russia was already reeling from the US’s tightening of the screws. The country’s Micex stock index tumbled 2.3 per cent to 1,440.63 last week after news that financial [...]
Crossrail to be run by Hong Kong Metro operator MTR beating British rail firms to £1.4bn contract July 18, 2014 Hong Kong transport company MTR has been awarded the lucrative contract to run London’s new Crossrail train service by Transport for London. MTR already runs London Overground in a partnership with British firm Arriva, which it triumphed over in the bidding. Keolis with partner Go Ahead and National Express were also in the running. The [...]