In the Picture: Egypt’s presidential elections

May 22, 2012 5:38 pm by Esther Bintliff

Supporters of Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi at an election rally. John Moore/Getty Images

On Wednesday and Thursday, Egyptians will go to the polls to vote in the first democratic presidential election in their country’s history.

Coming some 15 months after the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, the vote is a pivotal step for Egypt; a moment that the demonstrators in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir square could only have dreamed of when they first called for the overthrow of Mubarak in early 2011.

The result remains impossible to predict. There are twelve candidates, of whom five are considered the main contenders, but polls vary wildly as to their chances, and many voters are undecided. Unless one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote – which seems unlikely – a second round between the top two candidates will be held on June 16 and 17. Meanwhile the actual role and powers of the President have yet to be spelled out. Here’s your background reading:

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Tags: Egypt, In the Picture
Posted in Egypt, In The Picture, Middle East | Permalink

In the Picture: Greek exit?

May 17, 2012 6:01 pm by Esther Bintliff

REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

Today we’re looking at Greece. Yup, again. But over the last week, the possibility that the Mediterranean country of 11 million people might actually leave the eurozone – a scenario long considered taboo – has become increasingly plausible. European policymakers and central bankers have gone from repeated assurances that a ‘Grexit’ would never, EVER happen, to a gradual admission that, yes, it’s possible. And if that’s the case, then the threat of contagion to the larger eurozone economies of Spain and Italy – and thus the broader single currency project – is magnified. Much will rest on the outcome of fresh elections in Greece on June 17. In the meantime:

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Tags: banks, Eurozone, Greece, Grexit, In the Picture, Spain
Posted in Europe, Greece, In The Picture | Permalink

In the Picture: Greece and the eurozone crisis

May 11, 2012 7:28 pm by Esther Bintliff

The eurozone crisis is back with a vengeance. In a Bloomberg poll published on Thursday, 57% of 1,253 Bloomberg subscribers said they believed at least one country would abandon the euro by year-end. No prizes for guessing which country they might be thinking of.

Greece’s political landscape shifted drastically after support for its two biggest parties collapsed in the general election, propelling the far left Syriza party into the spotlight. Spain, meanwhile, is set to miss its budget deficit target for this year and the next. The government also had to part-nationalise the troubled Bankia.

We rounded up the best reads on Spain for you last week. Now we take a look at one of the other countries currently at the centre of the crisis – Greece – and give you the top analysis and comment from the FT and elsewhere.

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Tags: Eurozone, Greece, In the Picture, Tsipras
Posted in Europe, Greece, In The Picture | Permalink

In the Picture: Roots of the Spanish crisis

May 1, 2012 1:35 pm by Esther Bintliff

Luisa Pinales, who could no longer make mortgage payments after her business closed in 2007, sweeps her apartment in Madrid on March 5, 2012. She was evicted on April 27. The graffiti reads "Stop eviction". REUTERS/Juan Medina

Last week it emerged that almost one in four Spaniards is unemployed. For young people, the situation is worse – the jobless rate among under 25-year-olds has reached an eye-watering 52 per cent. As incomes have fallen, many householders find it more difficult to keep up with their mortgage payments; eviction notices – like the one received in January by Luisa Pinales, pictured above – have been served. Meanwhile, the centre-right government of Mariano Rajoy is hewing desperately to a programme of austerity, in the hopes of meeting an EU-imposed target of reducing Spain’s budget deficit to 3 per cent of gross domestic product in 2013. To get a sense of how difficult that will be, consider that in 2011, Spain’s budget deficit was 8.5 per cent of GDP. Investors in the sovereign debt markets can sense the scale of the challenge, and have demanded a higher premium for lending to the beleaguered government.

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Tags: Eurozone crisis, housing, In the Picture, Ireland, Italy, recession, Spain
Posted in Europe, In The Picture | Permalink

From Westminster blog April 26, 2012

Rupert Murdoch at Leveson: Day 2

A combination of still images from broadcast footage shows News Corporation Chief Executive and Chairman, Rupert Murdoch, speaking at the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the media, at the High Court in London April 25, 2012. REUTERS/POOL via Reuters TV

REUTERS/POOL via Reuters TV

Welcome to our live coverage of the Leveson Inquiry into the standards and ethics of the UK press, on the second day when Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp, is giving evidence.

By Esther Bintliff, Salamander Davoudi and Tim Bradshaw in London, with contributions from FT correspondents. All times London time.

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Posted in Britain | Permalink

In the Picture: François Hollande, president-in-waiting?

April 19, 2012 9:00 pm by Esther Bintliff

CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/Getty Images

If the latest polls are to be believed, Nicolas Sarkozy will be a one-term wonder. A president who has broken with convention throughout his career will likely do so once again: only one other president of the fifth republic - Valéry Giscard d’Estaing – has tried and failed to be re-elected for a second term.

The man likely to topple Sarkozy is an affable creature of the French elite. He’s had a long career traversing the backrooms of politics, yet never held ministerial office. So who is François Hollande?

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Tags: 2012, France, François Hollande, French elections, In the Picture, Nicolas Sarkozy
Posted in French politics, In The Picture | Permalink

In the Picture: Toulouse, Montauban & the Republic

March 21, 2012 8:28 pm by Esther Bintliff

Members of the Jewish community of Paris light candles on Place de la Bastille as they attend a silent march to pay tribute to the victims of the Toulouse school shooting. Photo: Franck Prevel/Getty Images

On Wednesday, as French police surrounded a building in Toulouse where the suspect in the shooting of seven people was holed up, details of his background began to emerge. A 23-year-old French citizen of Algerian descent, the man was known by investigators to have visited Afghanistan and Pakistan. He claimed to belong to al-Qaeda, and told police he had wanted revenge for Palestinian children, for French military involvement in Afghanistan and the decision of France to ban the wearing of burkas by women.

Many questions remain unanswered. But it is clear that, like the 7/7 attack in London, the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and last year’s attacks in Norway by the far-right killer Anders Behring Breivik, France’s motorcycle shootings will prompt great soul-searching across the country’s politics and society.

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Posted in Europe, World affairs | Permalink

In the Picture: Rare earths

March 13, 2012 4:53 pm by Esther Bintliff

A worker at the Jinyuan Company's smelting workshop prepares to pour the rare earth metal Lanthanum into a mould near the town of Damao in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. REUTERS/David Gray

The US, EU and Japan teamed up today – arguably for the first time since the Cold War – to bring an unusual joint case at the World Trade Organisation against China over its export controls on rare earths.

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Tags: China, Japan, Obama, rare earths, smartphones, trade war, US, WTO
Posted in Global economy | Permalink

In the Picture: A tearful Vladimir Putin

March 6, 2012 5:34 pm by Esther Bintliff

AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev

We’ve all been there. You’re ~~on stage~~ outside, you’ve ~~just secured an impossible victory~~ forgotten to wear a hat, and an icy wind is blowing in your face.

Suddenly you’re blinking away tears.

We’ll never really know what was going on when Russia’s freshly-reinstated president Vladimir Putin appeared to weep during his victory speech on Sunday night. Was it simply a physical reaction to the bitterly cold wind, as his spokesman later claimed? Some well-timed eye-drops? Or a natural emotional response at the end of a long week?

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Tags: elections, Moscow, Putin, Russia
Posted in Russia | Permalink

In the Picture: Happy birthday, Kim Jong-il

February 16, 2012 8:08 pm by Esther Bintliff

KCNA/AFP/Getty Images

Let’s face it, equestrian statues have since ancient times been an effective way for countries/governments/propaganda machines to honour their leaders and heroes (the earliest preserved equestrian statue is the Rampin Rider, found in the Acropolis).

So perhaps it is not surprising that North Korea decided to cast a larger-than-life bronze version of their late leader, Kim Jong-il, and his father Kim Il-sung, both gripping the reins of two rather spectacular ponies (the contrasting postures of the riders and their steeds are rather interesting – share your thoughts on any coded messages in the comments below).

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Tags: Footsteps, Kim Jong-eun, Kim Jong-il, North Korea
Posted in Asia, In The Picture | Permalink

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