When Greece’s stock market shut for five weeks in 2015 as capital controls gripped the country and its banks buckled under the debt crisis, a return to developed-market status looked remote. Shares of Greek banks plunged 94% that year and liquidity evaporated, leaving the market smaller than Egypt’s or Morocco’s. A decade on, Greece is edging back toward the developed world. With MSCI Inc. closer ...
When Greece’s stock market shut for five weeks in 2015 as capital controls gripped the country and its banks buckled under the debt crisis, a return to developed-market status looked remote. Shares of Greek banks plunged 94% that year and liquidity evaporated, leaving the market smaller than Egypt’s or Morocco’s. A decade on, Greece is edging back toward the developed world. With MSCI Inc. closer than ever to upgrading the country from emerging-market status, companies say Greek stocks are well positioned to compete for global capital as the economy emerges as the euro area’s biggest turnaround story. “Greece is growing faster than Europe, the banking sector is more concentrated and Greek lenders have strong profitability,” said Iason Kepaptsoglou , the head of investor relations at Alpha Bank SA, one of the country’s four systemic banks. “You are a very small fish, which is not very good, but in a huge ocean.” MSCI is considering reclassifying Greece as a developed equity market and will announce its decision by March 31. It demoted Greece to emerging-market status in 2013 at the height of the sovereign debt crisis — the first time a developed nation had been downgraded. At one point, the country even risked being pushed into MSCI’s “standalone” category, reserved for small or hard-to-access markets such as Jamaica or Botswana. About $18.3 trillion tracks MSCI’s equity benchmarks. Its country classifications have outsized influence over global portfolio allocations and, as seen in Indonesia earlier this year, can pressure financial regulators . Rival index providers FTSE Russell and S&P Global Ratings already classify Greece as developed. Market participants had until March 16 to provide feedback to MSCI on Greece’s upgrade, according to an MSCI spokesperson, who declined to comment on the substance of those responses. For Greek companies already courting international investors, the move could broaden the audience. Lamda Development SA, which is transforming the c...
India’s state-run refiners, eager for prompt crude supplies, are holding off purchases of US-approved Iranian oil and products as payment, shipping and insurance hurdles complicate potential transactions, according to people familiar with the matter. The US issued its third waiver for restricted oil on Friday, allowing purchases of Iranian oil already on the water in the Trump administration’s lat...
India’s state-run refiners, eager for prompt crude supplies, are holding off purchases of US-approved Iranian oil and products as payment, shipping and insurance hurdles complicate potential transactions, according to people familiar with the matter. The US issued its third waiver for restricted oil on Friday, allowing purchases of Iranian oil already on the water in the Trump administration’s latest effort to cool rising prices with additional supply. Washington had earlier issued two such measures, covering seaborne Russian oil. The one-month grace period for Iran’s crude has encouraged representatives of National Iranian Oil Co. and intermediaries to sound out large Asian buyers, but they have been met with hesitation. India’s refiners echo concerns in China, where state-owned China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., more commonly known as Sinopec, said on Monday that it would try to avoid Iranian shipments, in part because the Trump administration’s one-month waiver leaves too narrow a window for delivery. Read More: China State Refiners Explore Iran Oil Deals After US Waiver Refiners in India, the world’s third-largest oil importer, have been pitched Iranian cargoes of crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas, a fuel widely used for cooking and in short supply across the country, the people said, asking not to be identified as the negotiations are not public. Iran was once a key supplier to India — at the peak, it accounted for 11.5% of total imports, according to data intelligence firm Kpler — but purchases stopped in 2019 due to US-imposed sanctions, and refiners have been risk-averse since. That long gap has slowed due diligence and delayed progress on potential purchases, the people said. Issues like shipping and insurance are unclear, and refiners are uncertain about payment mechanisms, currency, insurance and even whether Iran-linked vessels would ultimately be accepted at Indian ports, they added. As a result, there has been little progress even in advancing conve...
Nostalgia, shame and gossip from Alan Bennett in the fourth instalment of his diaries In the introduction to this new instalment of Alan Bennett’s diaries, which run from 2016 to 2024, the author worries about what to write: “I have said everything before. At 90 it’s impossible to avoid repetition.” And, indeed, I was halfway through the entries for 2020 before they started to seem familiar. It tu...
Nostalgia, shame and gossip from Alan Bennett in the fourth instalment of his diaries In the introduction to this new instalment of Alan Bennett’s diaries, which run from 2016 to 2024, the author worries about what to write: “I have said everything before. At 90 it’s impossible to avoid repetition.” And, indeed, I was halfway through the entries for 2020 before they started to seem familiar. It turns out that I had already reviewed Bennett’s pandemic diaries when they were released as a slim standalone volume in 2022. Here they are again, then, this time embedded in a much longer stretch of journal-keeping, characterised by Bennett’s customary looping between past and present. The repetition turns out not to matter because the prose is sufficiently layered to take on new meanings as the context shifts. Bennett’s pandemic years read differently now that Covid is in the rearview mirror. The first time round, I got the impression that, devoted to the NHS though he is, the banging of pans on a Thursday evening struck him as a bit daft. Reading the section again, I’m convinced he detested the whole performative palaver. Continue reading...
Marsan is an odd choice for the role of an uptight bank manager compelled to cooperate with robbers in this underpowered take on a real-life bank raid in 2004 Given that this Belfast-set true-crime thriller is based on real-life events from 2004 , it sounds like something that might have made a gripping, splashy top-tier feature. But instead this feels underpowered and apologetic, clumsily assembl...
Marsan is an odd choice for the role of an uptight bank manager compelled to cooperate with robbers in this underpowered take on a real-life bank raid in 2004 Given that this Belfast-set true-crime thriller is based on real-life events from 2004 , it sounds like something that might have made a gripping, splashy top-tier feature. But instead this feels underpowered and apologetic, clumsily assembled and blandly directed by Colin McIvor, whose filmography of TV and low-budget comedies doesn’t indicate a particular aptitude for the area. The two main male headliners, Eddie Marsan and Éanna Hardwicke, are fine, although you have to wonder why Marsan, character actor of renown as he may be, was cast instead of a local actor. Was everyone else busy shooting Game of Thrones spinoffs? Marsan does a pretty good job nailing the Belfast accent, but still he’s a recessive kind of presence and an odd choice for the role of Richard Murray, an uptight bank manager compelled to cooperate with the robbers when his wife Celine (Eva Birthistle) is kidnapped. Murray has to cooperate with one of the bank’s security guards, Barry (Hardwicke, giving the more dynamic performance), who also has a loved one being held captive, to pack up millions of used bank notes and disguise them as rubbish that’s being collected just before Christmas. The bank robbers themselves are a fairly undifferentiated lot, apart from a deliciously skeevy character (JB Moore) who is guarding Barry’s mother (Andrea Irvine). He’s the kind of scumbag that really puts some welly into cleaning the sink after he uses it in his hostage’s home, and not in the sort of way that suggests he’s only worried about fingerprints. Continue reading...
Tate Britain, London Anderson creates figurative paintings with a dreamlike intangibility, exploring his black British and Jamaican heritage with a startlingly fragile and unresolved intensity Us and them, then and now, concrete and jungle, acceptance and rejection … Birmingham and Jamaica. Hurvin Anderson’s world is defined by clashing contrasts, by conflicts that can’t ever be resolved. The Brit...
Tate Britain, London Anderson creates figurative paintings with a dreamlike intangibility, exploring his black British and Jamaican heritage with a startlingly fragile and unresolved intensity Us and them, then and now, concrete and jungle, acceptance and rejection … Birmingham and Jamaica. Hurvin Anderson’s world is defined by clashing contrasts, by conflicts that can’t ever be resolved. The British artist’s washed out, hazy, heat-drenched take on figurative painting is him trying to figure it all out, to make sense of a senseless world. That he doesn’t manage to – that you leave this big, affecting and often very beautiful retrospective at Tate Britain with more questions than answers – doesn’t mean he’s failed. The opposite, actually. Continue reading...
The film-makers would say they’re making drama, not history. But this is not the moment for yet another second world war film with a heroic myth The new Peaky Blinders film, The Immortal Man , offers us a character, John Beckett, who is a British Nazi. One of the two founders of Britain’s first Nazi party in 1937, alongside William Joyce and John Angus Macnab, was indeed a man named John Beckett. ...
The film-makers would say they’re making drama, not history. But this is not the moment for yet another second world war film with a heroic myth The new Peaky Blinders film, The Immortal Man , offers us a character, John Beckett, who is a British Nazi. One of the two founders of Britain’s first Nazi party in 1937, alongside William Joyce and John Angus Macnab, was indeed a man named John Beckett. He had been director of publications for Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, but that year he fell out with Mosley. I’m Beckett’s biographer . I’m also his son . So I can tell you authoritatively that he did not bear the smallest resemblance to the Peaky Blinders character. The film Beckett is a villain out of central casting who enjoys killing people, and who says in November 1940 (the year the film is set): “I need to know that you are willing to take part in an act of treason that will decide this war for Germany.” Continue reading...
The official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army has slammed Japan’s deployment of stand-off weapons, including upgraded Type-12 missiles, as forming a “kill network” capable of targeting coastal and inland areas of neighbouring countries. Japan’s enhanced Type-12 surface-to-ship missiles are set to be deployed at Camp Kengun in Japan’s southwestern Kumamoto prefecture by the end of this mon...
The official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army has slammed Japan’s deployment of stand-off weapons, including upgraded Type-12 missiles, as forming a “kill network” capable of targeting coastal and inland areas of neighbouring countries. Japan’s enhanced Type-12 surface-to-ship missiles are set to be deployed at Camp Kengun in Japan’s southwestern Kumamoto prefecture by the end of this month. The missiles are capable of reaching China’s coastal cities. On Tuesday, PLA Daily reported that...
The fishery is regulated but experts say it is wrecking the food chain. Gordon Peake joined a Sea Shepherd mission to observe the giant ships compete for catch It is bitterly cold on the deck of the Allankay and the bosun, Luca Massari, is checking that none of us are wearing contact lenses before we descend into Antarctic waters. There is a risk, he warns, that lenses will freeze solid over the e...
The fishery is regulated but experts say it is wrecking the food chain. Gordon Peake joined a Sea Shepherd mission to observe the giant ships compete for catch It is bitterly cold on the deck of the Allankay and the bosun, Luca Massari, is checking that none of us are wearing contact lenses before we descend into Antarctic waters. There is a risk, he warns, that lenses will freeze solid over the eyes. Massari himself is prepared for his surroundings. He is wearing thick goggles that make him look like an Olympic ski jumper. Massari is a burly, heavily tattooed veteran of the environmental organisation Sea Shepherd, which campaigns against exploitating the oceans. His deck team are preparing to launch the ship’s small boat, which Massari will helm. Eight of us are bundled in bright red dry suits, helmets and lifejackets; the average time to survive hypothermia in this wind-whipped water is just five minutes. The Allankay sailed to Coronation Island from New Zealand to document the krill fishing. Photograph: Alice Bacou/Sea Shepherd Continue reading...
(Young) After 2018’s meditative Honey, the Swedish star returns to her trademark skin-tingling electro bangers – but this time she’s unpicking her trademark fixation on romantic love The self-proclaimed Fembot has always pushed people’s buttons. Robyn might be best known for bringing raw emotion to the dancefloor, but her pop bangers about desire and despair are often spiked with commentary on soc...
(Young) After 2018’s meditative Honey, the Swedish star returns to her trademark skin-tingling electro bangers – but this time she’s unpicking her trademark fixation on romantic love The self-proclaimed Fembot has always pushed people’s buttons. Robyn might be best known for bringing raw emotion to the dancefloor, but her pop bangers about desire and despair are often spiked with commentary on social programming: “Plug me in and flip some switches,” she once quipped, posing as a sexed-up cyborg with a bloody, beating heart. So it’s not a shock to find the Swedish star in a lab coat on Dopamine, her first single in seven years. The song rushes with glittering, arpeggiated synths, but Robyn, now 46, holds it at arm’s length. “I know it’s just dopamine, but it feels so real to me / I’m tripping on our chemistry,” she muses, taking notes as her synapses tingle. “Is love more than chemicals?” she seems to be asking. Does it matter if it’s not? But this time the song is no social critique – it’s a whole new philosophy. Sexistential, Robyn’s ninth album, unravels the fixation on romantic love that fuelled her biggest songs. Gone are the soft edges and pulsing, sensual house of her previous album Honey, and back are the sharp electronic sounds of 2010’s Body Talk through a new lens. With long-term collaborator Klas Åhlund and a few familiar faces (including Metronomy’s Joe Mount and Swedish pop royalty Max Martin), Sexistential reimagines Robyn’s discography without romance as a vehicle. The title track is a sub-three-minute case study in her new mentality. Over minimal, jerking 80s house Robyn raps about hooking up while undergoing IVF as a solo parent: “Fuck a single mom, I’m not judgmental,” she winks, cleaving sex from reproduction and nuclear family. Its counterpart is Blow My Mind, a revamp of her billowy 2002 single made psychedelic, faster, sharper – no longer a textbook love song, but a song about loving her young son. Continue reading...
Arizona State’s head coach has turned around a losing program. Unsurprisingly, much of the discourse on the internet was not based on her leadership skills In March 2025, the Arizona State women’s basketball team were looking for a coach who could end a drought that had seen them go without a NCAA Tournament appearance – or even a winning season – since 2019-20. The choice was Molly Miller, a prov...
Arizona State’s head coach has turned around a losing program. Unsurprisingly, much of the discourse on the internet was not based on her leadership skills In March 2025, the Arizona State women’s basketball team were looking for a coach who could end a drought that had seen them go without a NCAA Tournament appearance – or even a winning season – since 2019-20. The choice was Molly Miller, a proven and successful head coach at Grand Canyon. Miller had led the Lopes to their first NCAA Tournament appearance and a 32–3 record in her final season with the team – a benchmark for the program and an important accomplishment within the broader scope of college basketball. She soon turned around Arizona State, leading them to a 24-11 record and a first appearance at the NCAA Tournament in six years. (Their season ended in the First Four.) Continue reading...
States have many policies to stop risky older drivers from renewing their licenses. But in practice, it's often adult children who must decide when to take the car keys away from an aging parent. (Image credit: Joel Rose)
States have many policies to stop risky older drivers from renewing their licenses. But in practice, it's often adult children who must decide when to take the car keys away from an aging parent. (Image credit: Joel Rose)
Denmark's prime minister called early parliamentary elections after gaining a popularity boost from standing up to President Trump over his threat to seize Greenland. (Image credit: Rob Schmitz)
Denmark's prime minister called early parliamentary elections after gaining a popularity boost from standing up to President Trump over his threat to seize Greenland. (Image credit: Rob Schmitz)
The F-14 was made famous in Top Gun . The U.S. sold the planes to Iran in the 1970s, only for the two countries to become enemies. Iran kept its F-14s flying for decades in the face of U.S. sanctions. (Image credit: U.S. Navy)
The F-14 was made famous in Top Gun . The U.S. sold the planes to Iran in the 1970s, only for the two countries to become enemies. Iran kept its F-14s flying for decades in the face of U.S. sanctions. (Image credit: U.S. Navy)
Local leaders report already-strapped police departments racked up overtime bills in the millions while others report a multi-million dollar hit to business during the worst ICE surges.
Local leaders report already-strapped police departments racked up overtime bills in the millions while others report a multi-million dollar hit to business during the worst ICE surges.
Private-sector activity in the euro area rose at the slowest pace since last May as the Iran war stokes inflation while endangering a nascent economic recovery. The Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index compiled by S&P Global dropped to 50.5 in March from 51.9 the previous month, though held above the 50 threshold separating growth from contraction. Analysts had predicted a dip to 51. Germany , the...
Private-sector activity in the euro area rose at the slowest pace since last May as the Iran war stokes inflation while endangering a nascent economic recovery. The Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index compiled by S&P Global dropped to 50.5 in March from 51.9 the previous month, though held above the 50 threshold separating growth from contraction. Analysts had predicted a dip to 51. Germany , the region’s biggest economy, saw its composite reading slip more than anticipated while also staying above 50. France fared worse, recording a third straight month below that level. Services were the weak point in each case, with manufacturers outperforming. “The flash Eurozone PMI is ringing stagflation alarm bells as the war in the Middle East drives prices sharply higher while stifling growth,” Chris Williamson , chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said Tuesday in a statement. “Firms’ costs are rising at the fastest rate for over three years amid the surge in energy prices and choking of supply chains resulting from the war.” The fighting in the Middle East is jeopardizing what was already only modest economic growth, with markets betting that higher interest rates will be needed to quell a renewed spike in inflation. Hope remains that the conflict will end soon, but investor sentiment is plunging on signs of lasting damage to oil and natural gas infrastructure. The European Central Bank is in wait-and-see mode, mindful that Donald Trump could change tack at short notice. But officials aren’t ruling out a hike in borrowing costs as soon as their next policy meeting in April, according to people familiar with the matter. Germany’s 10-year yield was little-changed after the data at about 3% and the euro held losses, down 0.2% at $1.1593. Money markets are adding to wagers on monetary tightening , with about 70 basis points priced by year-end. ECB Must Be Vigilant in Face of Stagflation Risks, Vujcic Says EU Leaders Face Multi-Year Energy Squeeze After...
SpaceX appears to be targeting an initial public offering (IPO) this year. Some analysts believe the IPO could be announced any day now. And while figures vary, experts agree that the company will likely be targeting a valuation between $1 trillion and $1.75 trillion, with as much as $50 billion in fresh capital raised from the sale. This could be the most exciting IPO in years thanks to two facto...
SpaceX appears to be targeting an initial public offering (IPO) this year. Some analysts believe the IPO could be announced any day now. And while figures vary, experts agree that the company will likely be targeting a valuation between $1 trillion and $1.75 trillion, with as much as $50 billion in fresh capital raised from the sale. This could be the most exciting IPO in years thanks to two factors in particular. Image source: Getty Images. Continue reading