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Russia’s army has dismissed Sergei Surovikin, a prominent general, as head of its aerospace forces amid a crackdown on potential Wagner sympathisers following the paramilitary group’s failed mutiny in June. State newswire RIA Novosti cited an “informed source” on Wednesday saying Surovikin had been “relieved of his post” and replaced by Viktor Afzalov, the aerospace
Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. Zero day options are now almost 50 percent of the options market. But what are they? And why would anyone take these bets? Today on the show, host Ethan Wu and Alphaville’s Robin Wigglesworth discuss the
When I published a bullish book about Asia in 2016, I felt I had good answers to all the sceptical questions except one. What about China’s demography? The cliché was that China will “grow old before it grows rich”. Like many clichés, it turns out to have some truth to it.  For all the talk in
China will push the Brics bloc of emerging markets to become a full-scale rival to the G7 this week, as leaders from across the developing world gather to debate the forum’s biggest expansion in more than a decade. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has invited more than 60 heads of state and government to a
In this time of psychobabble, of therapeutic jargon and remote diagnosis, one mental condition is worth our focus for a moment. Treasury Brain. This is a cognitive defect that is said to afflict the finance ministry of the UK. Civil servants there, it is alleged, have an irrational aversion to ideas that incur upfront cost
“France cannot be France without greatness,” wrote Charles de Gaulle in the opening of his memoirs. His nation, he insisted, must always be in “the first rank”. Vladimir Putin feels the same way about Russia. Back when I was still able to visit that country, Fyodor Lukyanov — a foreign policy thinker close to Putin
Inflated shipping costs are enabling Russian companies to earn far more from crude oil sales to India than previously recognised, according to a Financial Times analysis which suggests that the charges may have raised more than $1bn in a single quarter. Russia has, until recently, appeared to comply on this route with western measures designed
Sly, Soviet-style jokes are enjoying a subtle revival on Chinese social media platforms. Their art resides in being too obscure for censors to understand yet clear enough for cynics to chuckle at their mockery. Some are so esoteric that their satire is confirmed only by the censors’ decision to delete them — echoing the cat-and-mouse
US inflation in July is expected to have risen at roughly the same pace as in June, suggesting that price pressures in the world’s biggest economy are continuing to ease and strengthening the case for the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates steady at its next meeting in September.  The consumer price index (CPI) is
China’s ambassador to Washington has warned Beijing will retaliate against US national security measures targeted at the country, including a mechanism to screen inbound investment being prepared by the White House. Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, Xie Feng said China “cannot remain silent” while the US imposes sanctions and export controls that will make