Via Mad Musings Of Me, here’s an interesting article from The Times (subscription may be required for some) discussing on the differing ratings films get across Europe and how what can be seen as controversial in one country can be completely ignored just over the border.
The report stems from Robin Duval, the outgoing director of [...]

Ken Macleod has an interesting post about his attendance at an SF convention in Croatia

I just mentioned Living With Caucasians in the post on Adjara in the sidebar, but I thought this quote was of wider relevance and worth quoting in full here:
Here?s the thing: this country is small. Tiny, even. Russia?s military involvement in Adjara is no joke, and the money that comes through the Adjaran port and [...]

Georgian President Saakashvili has disbanded the Adjaran parliament and installed direct rule in the province after the departure of Aslan Abashidze. Living with Caucasians has an interesting on-the-ground perspective on the events before the flight of Abashidze

According to the FT it was a case of “Pick-up in pay awards forced rate increase”, yet for the Guardian the point was rather “Housing boom forces third rise in rates”. My sympathies here are with the Guardian. Of course it is the case that the Bank of England pointed to the rising level [...]

Nick has a quicklink to a piece in Business Week which is worth the read. One passage in particular struck me:

There are precedents for a happy entry into the EU from which Poland is trying to learn. Spain boomed after joining in 1986 because successive governments spent the funds they received from the EU shrewdly, [...]

On April 5, Siemens AG’s CEO Heinrich v. Pierer talked to the UN Security Council about The Role of [multinational] Business in Conflict Prevention, Peacekeeping and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding. I suppose the perspective of cross-country hierarchies on these issues should be given more public attention.

The race to become the next President of the European Commission got interesting yesterday.
Well, maybe not that interesting, but the announcement by European Parliament President Pat Cox that he would not be seeking re-election as an Irish MEP in June is widely agreed to be a signal that he’s interested in the other Presidency.
As this [...]

Tuesday’s announcement by Vodaphone that they will launch their new 3G mobile service in Germany and Portugal is another topic which rattles some skeletons which have recently been kept well locked-away and out of reach.
As the Times is only too willing to remind us: “the auction of 3G licences conducted in the UK was the [...]

In a week which has already seen Rai president Lucia Annunziata announce her departure (Rai is Italy’s state-run television and radio network), the latest statements from the Italian government about the future of Alitalia only serve to reopen one of the old questions floating round my head: just how solvent is Italy?
The [...]