Category: Headlines
The Maldives after its “coup”: Between Delhi and the deep blue sea
A Nasheed supporter fights her own battle
ONE of the presidents must be wrong. The ruler of the Maldives, Waheed Hassan, says nothing would please him more than calling early elections. “The Maldives is now more democratic than eve…
Mediaset: End of an era
BABEL TV, a niche channel on Sky Italia, a pay-TV platform owned by Rupert Murdoch, airs worthy programming for immigrants. Recent shows include “Invitation to Dinner”, a reality show where an immigrant cooks for a native Italian. Such serious fare…
Selling clothes online in Russia: Fabric of society
ONLINE as well as offline, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Vente-Privée, a firm founded on the strange notion that French women might like fashionable clothes at deep discounts, has been paid this compliment more than …
Airlines in ex-Yugoslavia: Balkan unity?
EASTERN EUROPEAN airlines are sick. Fuel is dear, their markets are small and budget airlines are poaching their passengers. Most eastern European airlines lose money. Malev, Hungary’s flag carrier, went bankrupt in February. To avoid a similar fate,…
Love, Korean-style: Two’s company
Let’s swap emoticons
SOUTH KOREANS take romance seriously. Lovers are expected to swap sweet nothings many times a day and woe betide the clod who forgets a “100-day anniversary”. Some pairs dress in “couple style”, in the …
Commercial aircraft: Duelling the duopolies
The troubled Superjet
IT MAY well turn out that pilot error, or something other than a fault in the aircraft, made a Russian-built Sukhoi Superjet crash into a mountain in Indonesia on May 9th, killing all on board. But the disaster,…
The internet business in Russia: Europe’s great exception
ON THE roof, where staff can smoke as well as work, is a big chess set. The names of meeting rooms are in the Cyrillic alphabet. Two sides of the courtyard are a building site of five hollow storeys. You could say that the headquart…
Schumpeter: Good business; nice beaches
ON JUNE 17th a hubbub of activists will gather in Rio de Janeiro for a conference on “good business for a sustainable future”, sponsored by something called the Ethical Fashion Initiative. They will listen to a farmer talking ab…
Foreign firms in India: Travellers checked
BEFORE foreign investors came to India, its finance minister remarked recently, “we did not eat lizards.” For all the grumbles one hears about India’s economy, there is hardly a sense of desperation. Those foreign investors keep coming: on May 1s…
Accounting in China: Internal controls
THE big global accounting firms are not having an easy time of it in China. They have been caught up in the accounting scandals that have engulfed many Chinese firms that listed on America’s stock exchanges: on May 9th, for exampl…
