Via Businessweek Speaking to more than 100,000 protesters who thronged a Moscow street last December, charismatic anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny said Russia’s opposition had mustered “enough people to take the Kremlin.” A year on, the movement that shocked Vladimir Putin’s regime and galvanized huge numbers of ordinary Russians is at an impasse. After a weekend [...]
Via Businessweek Asian stock markets stuttered Friday after a survey showed a sharp drop in Japanese business confidence and a lack of progress in U.S. budget negotiations intensified fears that the world’s largest economy faces a new recession. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.4 percent to 9,706.50 after a Bank of Japan survey showed large [...]
Via Businessweek As Greece and its international lenders continue tense talks on reducing the Greek budget deficit, new data from the European Union on Monday underscored the potentially Sisyphean nature of such efforts. Some of the countries that have made the most progress in closing their budget gaps — Greece in particular — have also [...]
Story via MSNBC Authorities have seized Apple iPads from retailers in a city in northern China due to a dispute with a domestic company that says it owns the iPad name, an official said Monday. The Chinese company said it is asking for similar action in more than 20 other cities. The dispute with Shenzhen [...]
Story via Reuters Brent oil rose slightly on Tuesday and U.S. crude jumped more than 1.5 percent, bolstered by an unplanned outage at a Canadian oil sands plant and optimism about an agreement on Greece’s debt problems. An Alberta plant that processes Canadian oil sands was expected to be shut for two or three weeks, [...]
Story via BusinessWeek. By Bobbie Johnson It’s been a tough few months for Reed Hastings. Since announcing an unpopular price hike in October, the Netflix (NFLX) chief executive officer has presided over a grim cascade of events that has seen the company’s prospects plummet. His drastic answer to the price problem—a surprise plan to separate [...]
A senior Libyan official Thursday accused NATO of intensifying its bombing campaign and backing foreign mercenaries to lay the groundwork for an advance by rebels trying to topple Moammar Gadhafi’s regime. Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim told The Associated Press in an early morning interview that the alliance’s increased bombings represent the “final phase” of [...]
Julian Schnabel must have known that screening a film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the United Nations General Assembly would be scene-stealing. To set the town talking, the event would unite all the trappings — provocative subject matter, prestigious venue, Hollywood glamour. In fact, the March 14 screening of Miral in New York drew a crowd [...]