What you need to know before the open February 24, 2014 European markets are expected marginally lower this morning, following Asian counterparts, which were left unsatisfied by the G20’s commitment of an extra $2 trillion in output over the next five years. The UK market posted its third successive gain last week, but things in the rest of Europe and the US weren’t as positive, following [...]
Europe and Russia spar over Ukraine February 24, 2014 UKRAINE was at the heart of a diplomatic and financial battle between Europe and Russia last night, as the struggle for influence in the wake of the country’s revolution intensified. After absent President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted from his position and a key ally of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko took his place, the EU [...]
Russia must back down over Ukraine to avoid a catastrophe February 24, 2014 VLADIMIR Ilyich Lenin was a monster. He was a central theorist of communism, a key player in the Bolshevik revolution, a commissar, a leading instigator of the Red Terror and other massacres, and the first leader of the Soviet Union. For decades, busts of Lenin adorned the communist empire; they were finally torn down in [...]
The West has killed its entrepreneurs and replaced them with bureaucrats February 23, 2014 IF WESTERN economies have lost considerable ground to emerging powers over the last two decades, it is not simply because we lack the cheap labour of China and India or the natural resources of Russia and Brazil. It is because we have killed our own entrepreneurs at a time when our competitors made business creators [...]
GB miss chance to bag farewell medal in Sochi February 23, 2014 TEAM GB pilot John Jackson hopes his four-man bobsleigh team did the nation proud yesterday, despite narrowly missing out on a medal as the curtain came down on the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Jackson’s crew finished fifth following yesterday’s fourth and final run, an agonising 0.11 seconds off a bronze medal, as Britain paid the [...]
EU sanctions as Ukraine burns February 20, 2014 HOPES of a resolution to the growing crisis in Ukraine have faded with violent clashes claiming the lives of 75 people since Tuesday. European leaders last night voted to impose sanctions on the country after talks between three EU foreign ministers and the Ukrainian government broke down without a resolution. The sanctions include asset freezes, [...]
Ukraine’s crisis sits on a knife edge as protest morphs into revolution February 20, 2014 THERE is almost nothing more difficult for a political risk analyst than assessing the dynamics of a revolution, a situation in which long-held conventional wisdom can be upended in a matter of minutes. For only one question matters in Kiev today: what is the likely end game for Ukraine, and how do we get there? [...]
Vampire films never get old… or do they? February 20, 2014 FILMONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVECert 15 | By Steve DinneenThree Stars ONLY Lovers Left Alive is a movie with vampires in it, but it’s not really a vampire movie. It hemorrhages introspection and indie sensibility rather than horror panache. There’s hardly any blood in it. If I were the kind of writer who used bad puns, [...]
Indecisive Europe is acting too late to save Ukraine from Kremlin discipline February 19, 2014 LIKE a slow-motion car wreck, the tragic violence that has erupted in Ukraine over the last few days – which some fear could result in bloody civil war – has been inexorably coming for some time. In November 2013, the country’s President Viktor Yanukovych abruptly broke off talks with the EU over a political and [...]
Brits No1 for music app spend February 19, 2014 Booming demand for mobile apps helped global spend on digital entertainment jump by 30 per cent last year, according to new figures out today. Consumers spent $57bn (£34bn) on digital games, apps and online movies in 2013, up from $44bn the previous year, research analysts IHS Global Insight and App Annie said. [...]