Right on time: The European Journalism Center’s report on the Cyprus Media landscape.
Korean Companies Outsourcing in Russia
“Russia is our No.1 destination for technology outsourcing,” says Cha Dae Sung, who is in charge of “global technological cooperation” for Samsung.
And Samsung is not alone. LG Electronics, Daewoo Electronics, and hundreds of smaller companies rely heavily on Russian engineers, who labor either from Korean suboffices in Moscow or in the office towers of Seoul. “There’s an enormous pool of scientific and engineering talent we can tap into in Russia,” says Song Yong Won, Russia specialist at the state-run Korea Institute of Science & Technology.
Read the whole thing.
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How European are you? – A fun quiz from The Observer (found via Peter Black)
Anniversary
Missed an anniversary. Yesterday, it was six months since the blog was launched.
Europe’s ‘Sad Day’?
“A sad day for trade relations between the US and Europe”. This is how John Disharoon, vice president of the trade committee at the American chamber of commerce to the EU described the decision by the European Union to begin imposing trade sanctions on US goods as of today. Of course, the arguments about why this measure is totally justified (or conversly totally un-justified) will be legion. However, at the end of the day, I can’t help agreeing with the above-mentioned comment. With all the problems we face out there in front of us, with all the dangers of a renascent protectionism which we can clearly see inside the US itself, this, it seems to me, is the last thing we need right now. It wreaks of the worst kind of logic of bureaucratic decision making.
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European Inflation
Eurostat issued a flash indicator last Friday to the effect that eurozone inflation has fallen unexpectedly from 1.9% to 1.6%. I say unexpectedly, but of course this is, in many ways, one of the foreseeable consequences of the euro rise.
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Weber & Nader
An unusual combination, but a persuasive argument. Over at Daily Kos.
Given that I was asked about Nader on German radio yesterday, it’s worth a look at this left-of-the-aisle site to see why he won’t have an impact on this year’s presidential election in the US. If Europe has to put up with a second Bush term, it won’t be Nader’s doing.
Macedonian Crash
Throughout the recent Balkan wars, Macedonia was the shoe that stubbornly refused to fall. Wars in Bosnia, in Kosovo did not spread to Macedonia. The blockade imposed by Greece in the early years of independence did not rise to open conflict. Latent Bulgarian claims were amicable resolved. Chaos in Albania did not become contagion. Many reasons account for Macedonia’s relative good fortune, and capable leadership is certainly one of them. Now the country’s president has crashed into a hillside in Bosnia.
At present, Macedonia is doing something that no state in Western Europe has managed: running a state while accommodating a minority population that is (estimates vary) between one quarter and one third of the total. Good luck to them, and I hope that Trajkovski’s successor can stay the course.
Interestingly, the fallen president was a convert to Methodism and a former theology student. It’s an interesting twist on questions of church, state and laicism.
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The EU is now officially a player in this year’s US elections: After talks in Washington failed, Pascal Lamy, the EU trade commissioner, has confirmed that progressive trade sanctions to counteract illegal US export tax breaks will be imposed from March 1st on.
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After a stopover in Chicago, where he once again urged to keep more than an eye on the current Dollar weakness and Euro area interest rates (transcript in English | .doc), Gerhard Schroeder is having lunch with GW Bush today in order to further mend relations after the two leaders’ bitter disagreement over Iraq.