The murder in Moscow of an opposition politician in open view of the Kremlin shows only too well that anti-Western sentiment is now running wild

Whoever killed Boris Nemtsov in Moscow on Friday night had a macabre sense of staging. Russia witnessed many assassinations after the collapse of Soviet Communism. Tourist hotspots rarely featured. The post-Soviet hitman prefers to intercept his victim in the stairwell of an apartment block.

But Nemtsov’s killers chose a famously recognisable backdrop for their brutal elimination of Russia’s most prominent pro-Western politician.

Every newspaper photograph of the crime scene has the Kremlin’s towers lowering in the background. This view was an accusation in itself: the finger of blame pointed directly at the Russian president. Whoever was organised enough to track the movements of Nemtsov and his Ukrainian girlfriend across Red Square, drive up to them on the Moskvoretsky bridge, shoot him in the back and then get away must have known whose face would flash around the world as the “most wanted”.

Vladimir Putin is already the West’s public enemy number one. The British Government, in particular, has a long charge sheet against him, stretching from the Litvinenko polonium case to Russia’s role in the crisis in Ukraine today . Many observers jumped to the conclusion that the murder beneath his Kremlin windows was Putin’s perverse confessional “selfie”. But while the president might be ruthless, is he really foolish or brazen enough to stage the killing of a fallen rival from the Nineties with his office in the background?

It seems more likely to me that the killers of Nemtsov wanted to incriminate Putin. The Kremlin’s spokesmen are desperately anxious to shift the blame and point to sinister “provocateurs”, steered from the West at work. Well, maybe, but what about the violently nationalistic forces unleashed over the past year inside Russia? Did one want to nail Putin’s colours to their mast by leaving this bloodstain on the Kremlin?

Deep down in eastern Ukraine last spring, a motley crew of militant Russian nationalists with mafia-style nicknames such as “The Gherkin” and so on spearheaded the uprising against Kiev’s authority after the revolution there. In 2014, these paramilitaries might have been doing Putin’s bidding, and couldn’t have operated from Russia without his consent. But their alliance with the Kremlin was very recent and predicated on its split with the West.

Putin’s government, however, has constantly talked as though the sanctions crisis is only a temporary phenomenon. Soon, normal economic ties, money-laundering through the City, and so on, will be renewed has been the sub-text of the Kremlin’s line.

But the rag-bag of self-proclaimed Cossacks and defenders of a New Russia want to be ostracised by the West. For them, eliminating pro-Western voices such as Nemtsov’s made perfect sense. He embodied what they hated and his murder makes any rapprochement between Putin and the West unthinkable.

Nemtsov was tragically aware that he might be killed as a Western scapegoat. He recognised that his call for Russia to abandon nostalgia not just for the recent Soviet past but for imperial Russia, too, put him on a collision course with a growing majority in the country.

Nationalist websites identified the opposition politician as a treacherous “Western agent”, while Nato expansion to Russia’s shrunken post-Communist borders fed the alienation of many Russians who had originally welcomed the collapse of Communism.

I remember Nemtsov pleading with Margaret Thatcher to use her influence to stop Nato expanding into Russia’s backyard because it would revive anti-Western nationalism. He didn’t see the West as a threat, but knew Russians saw its defence wing as one.

Because Russians are well aware of the hostility of the Baltic States, for instance, to their old masters in Moscow, the Nato expansion to include Soviet territory was seen as the vanguard of a potential war of revenge by the ex-subject peoples. The Ukraine crisis is the clearest symptom of that.

This external pressure has generally rallied Russians behind Putin. But if he loses his reputation as the man who can guarantee law and order at home, then his hold on public opinion could slip. Yeltsin’s popularity plummeted under the double impact of deep recession and a crime wave. Putin’s strongman image could haunt him if nationalist paramilitaries shift their fire from Ukraine closer to home. The Kremlin has sponsored the nationalist tiger, but may not control it.

In the meantime, those hoping for Putin’s fall should remember what the Chinese have long warned us: be careful of what you wish for. From Whitehall to Washington, there is a naïve assumption that anyone but Putin must be better for Russia and the West. But has “anyone-must-be-better-than-Gaddaffi” been true for Libyans, or us, since 2011?

The devil you know is always more predictable than chaos.

The collapse of the Communist system was largely bloodless. Let’s not assume that the collapse of post-Communist Russia would not send shockwaves westwards. In 1991, the nuclear arsenal passed peacefully to the Kremlin’s new masters. Who will control them after Putin? Will they be easier to deal with?

Whoever murdered Boris Nemtsov wanted to kill hopes for a cosier future between East and West.

Mark Almond is a historian who specialises in post-Communist countries. He has previously served as an election observer in Ukraine. 

This article was written by Mark Almond from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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As Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, prepares to criticise President Obama’s nuclear talks with Iran in a controversial address to Congress on Tuesday, those negotiations have been making unprecedented progress.

It is realistic that an agreement will be reached by the end of March deadline: Iran has been willing to accept restrictions on its nuclear programme which ensure that it is verifiably transparent and which cut off all potential pathways to developing a nuclear weapon.

If, however, political pressure, whether from Israel or Congress, leads to a failure to reach any kind of nuclear agreement by the end of March, then negotiators will be faced with five options.

The first would be for another renewal of the interim deal signed in Geneva in 2013, which has already been renewed twice. This is unlikely to be accepted, especially by Iran, as renewal would keep the substantive sanctions in place while freezing the development of Iran’s nuclear programme and hurting president Hassan Rouhani’s ability to deliver on his promises of economic improvement.

Another possibility would be a second interim deal. This would not be the comprehensive agreement that many are hoping for, but would none the less elicit commitments from Iran on its nuclear programme and result in some broader sanctions relief. This could take the form of Iran agreeing to cap its enrichment of uranium at the 5 per cent level needed for nuclear power stations, in return for at least the European Union agreeing to lift its sanctions on Iranian oil exports and the central bank – and the readmission of Iran to the SWIFT money transfer system.

But the other possibilities are far more serious. During the period when sanctions on Iran were steadily increased, the only tangible result was that Iran’s possession of centrifuges grew from 164 machines to 20,000. If Congress, pushed by Mr Netanyahu, succeeds in blocking a comprehensive nuclear deal, then it is a distinct possibility that there will be a return to the process of mutual escalation.

In this case, America may not be able to rally other partners to impose more sanctions on Iran. The European Union and China are eager to lift them. Amid the standoff with the West over Ukraine, Russia would be unlikely to support any more at the UN Security Council.

In all likelihood America’s only option would be new unilateral sanctions. Meanwhile, Iran would expand its nuclear programme as these increased. Eventually Iran would pass a “breakout” point – a level where it could enrich enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear bomb in a relatively short period. This would trigger negotiations to restart. But this time, the US would have to negotiate with Iran after breakout – and therefore give more concessions.

The other option would be for America to go to war. But in the instance of a military strike against its nuclear facilities, Iran would aggressively develop nuclear weapons - and do so spurred by the knowledge that the West only accepted its right to have a civilian nuclear programme and access to the international fuel market when it went beyond the red lines drawn for it and mastered the uranium enrichment cycle.

Such a war would have important consequences: Iran, the United States, and Israel would be significantly harmed; the Middle East would move towards unimaginable instability; and ultimately, the United States would have to seek a negotiated settlement to dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapons.

But Iran would demand significant concessions: the threat of “all options on the table” would have to be dropped; regime-change policies would have to end; Iran would have to be treated just like any other member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); sanctions would need to go immediately; and Israel, a nuclear power, would have to join the NPT and accept a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East.

A war that leads Iran to develop nuclear bombs would, in effect, gain Iran the leverage it needs to secure these goals.

The fifth and final possibility if these talks fail would be Iran’s withdrawal from the NPT and all other conventions restricting weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In 2005, Mohamed ElBaradei, formerly the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), explained in his book The Age of Deception that the agency had found Egypt, South Korea and Iran in breach of the NPT.

However, only Iran’s file was referred to the Security Council and only Iran was punished with sanctions. Therefore, the NPT had effectively become a political instrument used by America to impose penalties on Iran, while Israel can have nuclear bombs with no sanctions, simply because it never signed the NPT.

The nuclear talks prove that Iran is ready to comply with the NPT in full – and even go beyond it. But if the United States avoids a deal with Iran, the clear message would be that the NPT and other WMD conventions have merely been used to advance political agendas against Iran – that it is held to a different standard. Therefore, Iran may reconsider its membership of these conventions, which have been used to impose further sanctions.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian, now a research scholar at Princeton University, was official spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiators from 2003-05.

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Scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew have begun a desperate bid to find a new bean of coffee which can thrive as the climate warms, before the world's supplies run out.

Currently, just one variety of coffee bean – Coffea arabica – is primarily grown throughout the world by manufacturers.

But it cannot survive at high temperatures, and botanists fear that up to 100 per cent of current crops will be lost by 2080 if climate change predictions for global warming hold true.

Now scientists at Kew Gardens in south-west London have begun studying the 124 other species of coffee bean in the hope that not only will they stand up to warmer temperatures, but also taste as good as the arabica variety.

Launching Kew's new science strategy for the next five years, Professor Kathy Willis, its director of science, said: "Coffee after oil is the second most important global commodity. There are 125 species in the world, but we just drink one. Coffea arabica is from Ethiopia, but it doesn't like it when it gets too hot and it dies.

"We have another 124 species out there, 39 in Madagascar alone, which are the closest wild relatives.

"There are some that grow in very dry environments. But we need to know if they will grow, and importantly, what do they taste like? That's what are team has been doing."

Global consumption of coffee has increased significantly over the past few decades. It is now believed to be the world's favourite beverage, with an estimated 500 billion cups consumed each year

In the UK, consumers drink approximately 70 million cups of coffee per day.

In recent years, harvests have been poor in countries such as Ethiopia and, unless a new bean is found soon that can resist warming temperatures, global coffee supplies will drop and prices rise significantly.

Scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens have been working with Sainsbury's and Starbucks.

But recent government cuts have meant that 47 science positions have been lost at Kew and the organisation will no longer be sending any experts out into the field, relying instead on partner agencies to do the ground work.

Projects such as saving coffee could be under threat if the gardens do not receive sufficient funding in the government's forthcoming comprehensive spending review.

Richard Deverell, the director of Kew said: "We deeply regret the funding cuts that have been affecting Kew and we've had to make hard choices. We faced a £5 million funding hole in our accounts.

"The big uncertainty is the comprehensive spending review. We have no idea what the funding will be. Clearly we have to make the best possible case for the Government.

"We have to make that argument. We have to grow our self-generated income."

This article was written by Sarah Knapton Science Editor from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

SEE ALSO: Why you shouldn't worry about the massive amount of cholesterol in eggs

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A batch of 50,000 Bitcoins seized from the Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht will be auctioned by the US government on Thursday, just weeks after he was convicted for drugs and money laundering offences.

The online marketplace - which gained notoriety for helping anonymous buyers obtain illegal drugs - was shut down by an FBI sting in 2013 that saw around 144,000 Bitcoins seized by the US government.

On Thursday it will sell-off 50,000 Bitcoins worth £8.9m at the current exchange rate in an online auction.

Two previous auctions of confiscated coins have taken place. The first sale in July included 30,000 Bitcoins which were snapped up by Tim Draper, who is often credited with coining the term ‘viral marketing’.

At the time of writing the price of a single Bitcoin was $645, putting an open market valuation of 30,000 coins at around $19,350,000 (£11.2m). A second sale of 50,000 coins took place in December.

The auctions are intended to be anonymous, but a leaked list of bidders in a previous sale revealed that interested parties included professors, staff from various investment funds and banks and the co-founder of a Bitcoin-related startup.

Silk Road was launched in February 2011 and is sometimes called the “Amazon.com of illegal drugs”.

It used the anonymising tool Tor to protect the identity of buyers, sellers and the site’s administrators. Payments were made in Bitcoin.

But even these measures did not ensure total anonymity. Bitcoin transactions are publicly logged, even if not easily linked to an actual identity, and customers still faced the problem of having the drugs posted to them and providing a link to their real name and address.

It ran successfully for more than two years but was shut down in an FBI sting operation in October 2013. Since then law enforcement has been in a cat-and-mouse game with mysterious figures who launch new sites each time one is taken down.

Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road, was convicted of narcotics and money laundering offences by a jury in Manhattan last month and now faces a potential life prison term.

"Ulbricht's arrest and conviction – and our seizure of millions of dollars of Silk Road Bitcoins – should send a clear message to anyone else attempting to operate an online criminal enterprise," said Preet Bharara, a US attorney, at the time.

"The supposed anonymity of the dark web is not a protective shield from arrest and prosecution."

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This week, the US state of Georgia was getting ready to execute its first woman for 70 years.

It was the second time Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, had prepared for the end – her first execution date had been delayed due to a snowstorm forecast.

On Monday, it was halted once again, this time due to the lethal injection drug “appearing cloudy”.

Officials said they had acted out of “caution”, unsurprisingly given the number of recent high profile cases of botched executions, such as the case of Joseph Woods who had to be injected 15 times and took two hours to die last summer.

Kelly Gissendaner was sentenced to death in 1998 for planning - with her boyfriend, Gregory Owen - to murder her husband, Douglas Gissendaner.

Owen had taken the victim to a remote area and repeatedly stabbed him; Kelly had then arrived and helped burn the car.

It was a horrendous crime with absolutely no justification.

But neither is there any justification for taking the life of Kelly in return. The fact that America - self-styled as one of the greatest civilisations on earth - still kills its own citizens is barbaric, sadistic and utterly incomprehensible. There is something rotten and brutalised at the heart of a state that stakes its entire identity in the word ‘freedom’ and yet wields its power to take away the ultimate freedom of life itself from its own people, in cold blood.

The Gissendaner case is made even more ludicrous when one knows the full story and learns that she is a reformed character - a positive role model and mentor for other women in the prison. She's now a force for good, doing much more to reduce reoffending rates than the so-called ‘deterrent’ of capital punishment.

A recent plea for clemency compiled many accounts of the way she counselled and supported others, including former inmate Nicky Rogers who claims she ‘owes everything’ to Kelly (she once kept her from committing suicide by talking to her through a heating vent).

Of her crime Kelly now says: "There are no excuses for what I did. I am fully responsible for my role in my husband's murder. I had become so self-centered and bitter about my life and who I had become, that I lost all judgment."

This new self, she claims, is partly the result of discovering a Christian faith while in prison.

Although it’s easy (and often sensible) to be cynical about people who claim to suddenly ‘see the light’ on death row, this particular conversion seems much more than a last ditch attempt to impress the parole board. Nor does it appear to be a desperate cry for forgiveness from a God of hell-fire presented by Bible-belt preachers.

On the contrary, over the past five years Kelly has engaged in some serious theological study, reading writers such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day and Rowan Williams. This is certainly not the stuff pedalled by white-suited American evangelists looking for the next soul to save.

Such is Kelly’s thirst for theological knowledge, she has even struck up a correspondence with the renowned German theologian Professor Jürgen Moltmann, having studied his work on liberation theology on one of her courses.

She wrote to him and the pair have exchanged around 30 letters, finding common ground in the theme of personal repentance. Professor Moltmann has written widely of his own remorse about having been part of the German army during the war.

“I have found her very sensitive, and not a monster as the newspapers depicted her. And very intelligent,” says Professor Moltmann. “She has been rehabilitated. She has changed her mind and her life.”

Another person who knows about religious experiences on death row is Maggie Allder.

Through a charity called Human Writes, an organisation which sets up pen-friend relationships between European volunteers and American death row inmates, Maggie has read many accounts of repentance. She is now the ‘state coordinator’ for Arizona, where there are 130 people on death row. She writes about five letters a week.

The organisation is non-religious. But correspondents are allowed to talk about their personal faith, as a natural part of sharing their lives. One of Maggie Allder’s pen pals took a particular interest in her Quaker spirituality, such that he began to read widely on the subject and develop a faith of his own.

“I didn’t particularly encourage it,” says Maggie, “He was asking questions and clearly searching for something. In the end I connected him with a Quaker Meeting House in Houston and the Quakers there began visiting him regularly. On the night of his execution we planted a tree in the grounds of the Quaker Meeting House here in Winchester.

“This man’s growing spirituality led to a difference in the way he viewed his crime – he expressed a huge amount of regret. He was absolutely appalled at what he’d done.

"As he was preparing to die he talked in detail about the offence itself, as if he was processing it for the final time.”

However, Maggie claims that this ‘detail’ rarely shocks her. Nor does the highly sexualised language in some of the letters she receives.

“One particular chap was quite outrageous,” she recounts. “Eventually I had to write and say it wasn’t appropriate for him to be so explicit. But in his reply he didn’t apologise at all; he just wrote “Come on Maggie, we’re both adults.” I had to laugh.”

She goes on: “I’m not offended because most people on death row are very damaged. The only thing I’ve been shocked by are the accounts of abuse the prisoners have experienced – especially childhood abuse. I also find the accounts of prison life hard to swallow, as the conditions on death row are particularly harsh and dehumanising.

"I remember speaking to a Danish correspondent, who’d been thanked by an inmate for spraying perfume on a letter. But she hadn’t - all she’d done was have a bath just before writing and a trace of scent must have transferred to the paper. But such is the sensory deprivation that this trace had smelt like a meadow to this guy.”

Of course, some readers will have smoke coming out of their ears, despairing at any sympathy being shown to the perpetrators of serious crimes (who, in the case of death row inmates, are always convicted murderers) rather than to the victims or their families.

Yet people like Maggie Allder are less motivated by 'bleeding heart sentimentality', and more by a sense of moral outrage that it can ever be regarded as appropriate to respond to violence with yet more violence.

Allder has even written a novel about her ever-growing concern; Courting Rendition imagines a dystopian future where the UK has pulled out of Europe and chosen to strengthen its alliance with the US, such that our laws on capital punishment and guns start to follow the American example.

It’s not such a far-fetched vision: as our politicians continue to croon about our ‘special relationship’ with the States, British public opinion continues to slip disastrously further away from friendship with European nations with who we share so many of the values which are foundational to our society.

The deep irony is that as we cosy up to the Americans, imagining they have something to teach us, there are inmates on death row who are learning the real lessons about what’s important to being human - and they’re learning them from German theologians and British Quakers. 

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A Syrian businessman described as the "middleman" for oil deals between ISIS and Bashar al-Assad's regime will be targeted for European Union sanctions on Saturday.

The listing of George Haswani, the owner of HESCO engineering company, sheds more light on financial links between Syria's regime and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or Isil or Islamic State or Daiesh).

In public, the two belligerents claim to be sworn enemies. Isil has vowed to topple Mr Assad and transform Syria into an Islamic "Caliphate". But the rise of the jihadist movement has served Mr Assad's interests by allowing him to pose as an essential bulwark against Islamist terrorism.

Isil fighters captured the oilfields of eastern Syria in 2013. Since then, the regime is believed to have funded the jihadists by purchasing oil from Isil. But those links are understood to extend further than was previously thought. Instead of merely being a customer for Isil's oil, the regime is understood to be running some oil and gas installations jointly with the terrorist movement.

Mr Haswani's company, HESCO, operates a gas plant in Tabqa, a town in central Syria which was captured by Isil last August. Officials believe this installation is being run jointly by Isil and personnel from the regime. The gas facility continues to supply areas of Syria controlled by Mr Assad.

Other oil and gas fields in Isil's hands are thought to be operated by personnel who remain on the payroll of the regime's oil ministry. The oil is then sold to Mr Assad, who distributes it in areas he controls at relatively low prices, helping him to win the loyalty of local people.

Sometimes, the regime has paid for the oil by supplying Isil-held towns with electricity.

Mr Haswani, a Christian from the town of Yabroud, will be forbidden from visiting any of the EU's 28 member states from Saturday onwards. Any assets he holds in EU banks will also be frozen.

Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, described Mr Haswani as a "middleman buying oil from Isil on behalf of the regime".

Mr Hammond added: "This listing gives yet another indication that Assad's 'war' on Isil is a sham and that he supports them financially."

Oil probably amounted to Isil's single biggest source of revenue, allowing the movement to achieve financial self sufficiency and avoid dependence upon outside donors. But this could be changing.

Western intelligence services have placed Isil's oil business under the microscope with the aim of identifying its weaknesses. The goal is to discover the "various points, from upstream to downstream, which might present vulnerabilities," said a senior US Treasury official.

The studies have concluded that Isil's refineries are the weakest link. Facilities of this kind have duly become a priority target for US and allied air strikes in Syria. About 200 such installations have been destroyed with "enormously disruptive" consequences for Isil's finances, said the official.

"We believe there to be a major decrease in their oil revenues from those strikes," he said. "It's the reason why we think 2015 will show a substantially reduced set of oil revenues from 2014."

However, Isil is believed to have adapted its strategy. It now uses smaller and more rudimentary refineries which are harder to target and easier to repair if they are damaged. The movement is also looking for alternative sources of revenue. One possible motive for its decision to loot the ancient city of Nimrud could be to sell priceless antiquities to smugglers.

The addition of Mr Haswani to the sanctions list brings to 55 the number of Syrian companies and individuals singled out for EU counter-measures. Another company added to the list on Saturday is accused of supplying Russian-produced banknotes to the Central Bank of Syria. DK Group is described as transferring the banknotes in cargo aircraft flying from Russia to Damascus via a variety of third countries.

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SEE ALSO: More details about the Syrian Christian businessman serving as Assad's liaison to ISIS

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A mini-Greece could go off in Europe's heartlands 

Ah Austria, land of schnitzel, lederhosen, Mozart, alpine meadows and beer drinking. Less widely appreciated is its special place in the history of catastrophic banking crises.

It was the failure of Creditanstalt, a Viennese bank founded in 1855 by Anselm von Rothschild, that arguably sparked the Great Depression, setting off an unstoppable chain reaction of bankruptcies throughout Europe and America.

No-one would think that what happened last week at Austria’s failed Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank International falls into quite the same category; we are meant to be in the recovery phase of the latest global banking crisis, so this is more about re-setting the system than again bringing it to its knees, right?

Well, make up your own mind. I suspect neither financial markets nor policymakers have yet caught onto the full significance of the latest turn of events.

In a nutshell, the Austrian government has had enough of funding the bank’s losses, and announced plans to “bail-in” external creditors to the tune of €7.6bn ($8.2 billion) instead.

As such, this marks a test case of new European rules to make creditors pay for failing banks. About time too, you might say. What took them so long?

Only in this case, the bonds are notionally guaranteed by the Austrian state of Carinthia, which now theoretically becomes liable for the bail-in. It’s an echo of the mess Ireland got itself into at the height of the banking crisis, when it foolishly attempted to stem the panic by underwriting all Irish banking liabilities; the move very nearly ended up bankrupting the entire country. Hypo will bankrupt Carinthia.

Essentially, what the Austrian government is doing is cutting loose an entire region, rather in the way the federal authorities in the US allowed Detroit to go bust a number of years ago.

It’s a mini-Greece going off in the heartlands of Europe.

In Hypo’s case, the bail-in also threatens knock-on consequences for public bodies elsewhere, including Bayern Landesbank, a big holder of Hypo bonds which is owned by the German state of Bavaria, and the Munich based FMSW, which is again publicly underwritten.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg; Europe is awash with interlinked banking and public liabilities, many of which will never be repaid and basically need to be written off.

Massive creditor losses are in prospect. The European authorities had us all half convinced that Europe’s debt crisis was over. In truth, it may have barely begun.

This article was written by Jeremy Warner from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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It's not easy to keep a lid on something when the whole world is clamouring to see it.

When Apple chief executive Tim Cook finally unveiled the Apple Watch to the world in September 2014, it ushered in an entire new era for the company as it made its first strides into the fledgling smartwatch/wearables market.

The weight of the expectation heaped upon Cook's shoulders in the years since he appointed chief executive in the wake of Steve Jobs' death was huge. The public was restless for a brand new product.

But, as ever with the world's most valuable company, this was no overnight project. The genesis for what would emerge from the internet rumour quagmire as the iWatch, then the iTime, before Cook put paid to the seemingly endless speculation, began around a decade ago in British designer Sir Jony Ive's lab in Apple's Californian campus.

2002 - 2004

Apple design chief Ive and other design team members request boxes of high-end sportswatches from Nike. Nike Presto Digital Bracelets and the aluminum Oregon Series Alti-Compass watches were sent to the company, Scott Wilson, who was then Nike's creative director told Bloomberg some 10 years later.

"[I] was flattered that they were requesting them. Thought they were only personal requests but their materials guy followed up with many questions on the materials and processes," Wilson told Business Insider .

"They definitely drew upon watch industry techniques and manufacturing in their products since the first iPhone. Interesting that it may come full circle to an actual iWatch at some point."

August 2011

Apple files a patent for a wristband which harnesses kinetic energy from everyday wrist movements in order to recharge its battery. It's suggested the device could include a curved touchscreen made from a flexible glass composite, alongside numerous sensors for monitoring exercise patterns and heart rate. Other features include a ‘simple virtual keyboard’. Details emerge in February 2013, when the patent is granted.

Around this time, Apple filed details of a second patent for an 'iTime' smartwatch similar in appearance to an iPod nano. The application is for an electronic wristband featuring a dock section for a media player, such as the 6th generation iPod nano.

The wristband could have the capacity to contain an accelerometer, GPS receiver or haptic device (which produces vibrations), the patent explains. It could also operate within its own 'personal wireless environment', through which it could interact with a partnered iPhone, iPad or Mac. The patent was granted in July 2014.

November 2011

The Apple Watch project was conceived in head designer Jony Ive's lab shortly after Steve Jobs' death in 2011, Ive tells Business Week in 2014. The company invited a series of watch historians to visit the Apple campus in Cupertino to speak, including French author and antique timepiece expert Dominique Fléchon.

December 2012

Chinese news site quotes suppliers as saying that Apple is working on a device using Intel chips and new low-power Bluetooth technology. A 1.5-inch touchscreen would be used to control the phone, and would also allow users to control the watch using voice commands. It claims the device could launch within the next six months.

Around this time, Ive and his team start playing with what would become the Watch's digital crown, allowing the user to return to the home screen, scroll or zoom in and out after experiments with the iPhone's pinch-to-zoom touchscreen technology proved too obfuscating for the small screen.

February 2013

Unnamed insiders claim a team of 100 Apple staff - headed by senior executives, including Apple's senior director of engineering James Foster - had been assembled to work on the product, implying that the iWatch was “beyond the experimentation phase” and potentially heading into production .

Features under consideration include letting users make calls, see the identity of incoming callers and check map coordinates, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. It would also house a pedometer for counting steps and sensors for monitoring health-related data, such as heart rates, a source said.

It is claimed that Apple has held discussions with manufacturing partner Hon Hai Precision Industry regarding the manufacture of an non-smartphone or tablet product.

March 2013

Apple supplier Corning, maker of flexible material Willow Glass, say their product is not ready for use in a complicated wristband/watch-style design. "People are not accustomed to glass you roll up," Corning boss James Clappin told Bloomberg. "The ability of people to take is and use it to make a product is limited."

Apple has filed at least 79 patents applications including the word 'wrist' by this date.

May 2013

Tim Cook hints at the possibility of Apple developing a wearable during a speech at the AllThingsD conference. "It's an area that's ripe for exploration, it's ripe for us to get excited about," he said. "Lots of companies will play in this space."

Cook was, however, less generous about Google Glass. "I'm interested in a great product. I wear glasses because I have to," he added. "I don't know a lot of people who wear them because they don't have to."

June 2013

Apple applies to register the term 'iWatch' in Japan, under the product category for a computer or watch device. Russian newspaper Izvestia also reports that Apple has filed for a trademark on the term in Russia.

Around this time, Cook appoints Jeff Williams, the company's senior vice president for operations, as head of the Watch programme. Williams is tasked with overseeing logistics and planning with suppliers, including Foxconn.

October 2013

It's announced that Angela Ahrendts, chief executive of British luxury retailer Burberry, is to join Apple as head of retail of online. Ms Ahrendts is responsible for the operation and expansion of the company's retail and online stores, and is believed to want to focus on the company's growth within China.

January 2014

Two medical technology experts are reportedly the latest recruits to join the company. Nancy Dougherty from startup Sano Intelligence and Ravi Narasimhan from general medical devices firm Vital Connect are rumoured to have begun work on incorporating health features into the rumoured smartwatch.

February 2014

Apple hires a sleep expert from Philips Research, sparking speculating the iWatch will carry sleep-monitoring capabilities, as rival products FitBit Force, Nike FuelBand and Jawbone Up do.

June 2014

The company's worldwide developers' conference (WWDC) comes and goes without mention of the Apple Watch.

July 2014

Apple hires luxury watch manufacturer TAG Heuer vice president for sales Patrick Pruniaux, joining former head of French fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent Paul Deneve, who was hired to work on special projects for the company in 2013.

Production on the watches is rumoured to begin after numerous sources state the Californian company's much-rumoured first smartwatch, dubbed the iWatch by fans, will sport a 2.5-inch arched rectangular display supplied by LG.

The device is said to contain more than 10 sensors for purposes including monitoring the user's pulse, and will need to be paired with an iPhone in order to send messages and voice chat with others.

The iOS-compatible-only smartwatch is currently in trial production at Taiwanese manufacturer Quanta Computer Inc ahead of the start of mass production and a potential October launch date, it is alleged. While Quanta is expected be the main manufacturer, Singaporean sensor maker Heptagon is also said to appear on a list of suppliers. 

September 2014

The wait is over - Apple finally reveals the Apple Watch (not the iWatch) as Cook's "One More Thing..." towards the end of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus launch event at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts in Cupertino, California.

The Watch will come in three versions - the Apple Watch Sport in grey or silver anodized aluminium, the standard Apple Watch in polished or black stainless steel, and the luxury Watch Edition, available in rose or yellow 18 carat gold developed to be up to twice as hard as standard gold. Each model will be available in two sizes - 38 mm and 42 mm.

Users will navigate the interface using a traditional looking side-winder, called a Digital Crown, instead of Apple’s favoured pinch-to-display technology made famous by the iPhone. Rotating the Crown allows the wearer to zoom in and out, as well as scroll and navigate. It will also serve as a form of home button, and point of activation for digital assistant Siri.

The device aims to change the way we communicate by sending and receiving messages, answering calls made to your iPhone, and sharing personalised health information.

No specified launch date is given, only a vague 'early 2015'.

Post launch, Cook gives a revealing interview to Bloomberg Business Week, in which Ive admits the Apple Watch is "one of the most difficult projects I have ever worked on."

"We want to make the best product in the world," he told Business Week. "One of our competitors is on their fourth or fifth attempt, but nobody is wearing them."

"We could have done the watch much earlier, honestly, but not at the fit and finish and quality and integration of these products," he added. "And so, we are willing to wait."

Cook himself is pictured wearing a white Sport Watch.

November 2014

Angela Ahrendts tells Apple retail staff to prepare for "a new watch launch in the spring", indicating the product will be ready within the first three months of 2015 .

Apple releases WatchKit, its software for developing third-party apps for the Watch. The new toolbox allows third party developers to use many of the Apple Watch’s features such as Force Touch, Digital Crown and Taptic Engine - just like Apple’s own software. Apps are already in production, with American Airlines, Instagram and ESPN already developing their own respective ports.

February 2015

The luxury version of the Apple Watch, made from 18-carat rose or yellow gold, will be kept in safes within stores, sources allege. The safes will come equipped with Apple's patented MagSafe magnetic chargers to recharge demo models, as well as boxed stock. Given the expensive nature of the materials, the Edition could retail for thousands of pounds.

Apple sends out media invitations to an event in San Francisco on March 9 where it is expected to reveal further details of the Watch, including release date, pricing and more specific information on battery life.

Cook tells the Telegraph that the Apple Watch could replace car keys in the future.

March 2015

All eyes turn to San Francisco.

This article was written by Rhiannon Williams from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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Two American tourists have been arrested for engraving their initials on the walls of the Roman amphitheatre and posing for a selfie

The women, aged 21 and 25, from California, were spotted using a coin to carve the letters J and N on the walls of the World Heritage site before taking a selfie with their three-inch initials after leaving their tour group, the Italian newspaper La Stampa reported.

The pair, who were seen and reported to security by other tourists, were charged with “aggravated damage on a building of historical and artistic interest”.

“We apologize for what we did,” the women, whose names were not released, said.

“We regret it, but we did not imagine it was something so serious,” they added.

The two Californian women aren’t the only visitors to carve their initials on the Italian landmark. Last year, a Russian touist was fined €20,000 (£15,800) for carving a 10-inch “K” on to the Colosseum . The 42-year-old man was spotted by a security guard scratching the letter on a wall using a pointed stone. The tourist was arrested by police at the scene, and given a suspended four-year jail sentence on Saturday, the news agency ANSA reported.

Earlier this year, World Heritage site officials were furious following a string of "pornographic” stunts taking place at the Angkor Wat complex in Cambodia. Cambodian police arrested two American sisters for allegedly taking nude pictures of their bottoms in Cambodia’s Preah Khan temple, which is part of one of the most important archaeological sites in south-east Asia.

Three French tourists were also arrested and deported in January after being caught taking naked photographs at the Banteay Kdei temple.

Days before the incident, a woman caused outrage after posing topless at the Angkor Wat complex.

Last week, Russian tourists were reported to have shot a “pornographic film” near the Pyramids and the Sphinx in Egypt, and released the video on the internet around nine months ago, according to Al Arabiya News .

The issue of illegal filming has been passed to a public prosecutor for investigation, Mamdouh al-Demati, Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities, said in a statement.

The official said new surveillance cameras were being installed in the area. The 10-minute film was believed to have been “shot in broad daylight and with the knowledge of the officials in charge of the area” and featured a shot of a tour guide and the name of an Egyptian tour company, according to Osama Karar, the coordinator of the Popular Front to Defend Antiquities in Egypt .

This article was written by Soo Kim from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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NOW WATCH: A Major Breakthrough At Stonehenge May Unlock One Of The World's Deepest Mysteries

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NOW WATCH: 11 Facts That Show How Different Russia Is From The Rest Of The World

A tiny village in Italy is claiming to be one of the snowiest places in the world after it was smothered under more than eight feet (2.56 metres) of snow in less than 24 hours.

Heavy snowfall also hit the neighbouring mountainous region of Abruzzo.

The snowstorm hit on March 5 and left some villages cut off from the outside world.

Schools were closed and roads closed after heavy trucks became stranded in the snow.

SEE ALSO: Brutal winter weather can sometimes be a good thing for business

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For an Ivorian who studied in Paris, worked in America and spearheaded a British company’s expansion into Asia, perhaps running a Swiss bank is not such a strange move. But Tidjane Thiam’s appointment as the chief executive of Credit Suisse was still a surprise to many.

Mr Thiam, who will leave Prudential after six years as chief executive of the British insurer in June, has little banking experience, and will be a cultural outsider in Zurich’s cosy banking world.

But the 8pc rise in the bank’s share price on Tuesday suggests that he is not too bizarre a choice.

Thiam, the youngest of seven children, was born in the newly-independent Ivory Coast in 1962, albeit with political connections established at birth. His great uncle, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, was the first president of the new country, sitting around the same cabinet table that Thiam would three decades later.

His upbringing was by no means straightforward, though. His father, a journalist, spent much of Thiam’s childhood in prison, accused of plotting to overthrow the government.

Fiercely competitive about his school grades, the teenage Thiam became the first Ivorian to study at France’s elite Ecole Polytechnique in 1982.

He went on to work for McKinsey, the consultancy, in Paris and New York before, in 1994, being asked to join the Ivory Coast’s cabinet as an adviser on infrastructure and economics.

Given his background, a life of African politics may well have followed, were it not for the military coup that overthrew the country’s government five years later. Its new leader, General Robert Guei, asked Thiam to return, but he refused.

The six months without a job was a low point for the then 37-year-old, but in some ways came to define his energetic attitude in the insurance world. “If you’re born in a situation where you have nothing, you have nothing to be afraid of,” he later said.

After another stint at McKinsey, Thiam headed to London, and the world of insurance, with Aviva, rapidly rising to become head of the group’s European operations. He was tipped as a future head of the business before moving to Prudential in 2008 as finance director.

The following year, Mark Tucker resigned, and Thiam was thrown into the chief executive’s chair, as the FTSE 100’s first black CEO.

For a man in his first chief executive role, especially one as steeped in history as the 161-year-old Pru, it would have been easy for Thiam to ease himself in, running a steady ship without any major strategic changes. In fact, Thiam did the opposite. In March 2010, less than a year into the job, Prudential announced that it planned to pay $35.5bn (£23.5bn) for AIA, the Asian division of the troubled American insurer AIG.

The controversial bid could have been Thiam’s downfall. Investors revolted, demanding a lower price and forcing him to give up his newly-acquired seat on the board of Societe Generale.

When the deal fell through, many called for the chief executive’s head, and years later the company was still feeling the effects: in 2013, it was fined £30m and Thiam was censured by the Financial Services Authority for not disclosing the deal to the regulator.

Last August, more than four years after the deal collapsed, Thiam admitted the aborted takeover still rankles with him . “It was a once in a lifetime opportunity,” he said, pointing out how AIA’s market value had ballooned since the deal fell through. “I’m still animated about it, I apologise for not succeeding.”

Jeremy Whitley, the head of pan-European equities at Aberdeen Asset Management, blames the collapse of the deal on a “few small but very vocal voices” among Prudential’s shareholders. “We’d met with Mr Thiam and were confident that he could pull it off.” When the deal fell apart, Whitley says Thiam was “very upset, he took it very personally”.

It is a mark of Thiam’s charisma that he survived. He put together a three-year plan of doubling profits in Asia and increasing returns in the UK and US. In the year since last March, when Thiam declared mission accomplished, his departure has been the main thing on many investors’ minds.

Now, many may wonder how long Thiam is likely to stay in the world of Swiss banking – he is often tipped for a role at a big global body, the World Bank perhaps.

But based on his previous form, when he does go he is unlikely to leave Credit Suisse the same way he found it.

This article was written by James Titcomb and and Ben Wright from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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Sitting on the desks of central bank governors and regulators across the world is a scholarly report that spells out the vertiginous scale of global debt in US dollars, and gently hints at the horrors in store as the US Federal Reserve turns off the liquidity spigot.

This dry paper is the talk of the hedge fund village in Mayfair, and the stuff of nightmares for those in Singapore or Hong Kong already caught on the wrong side of the biggest currency margin call in financial history. "Everybody is reading it," said one ex-veteran from the New York Fed.

The report - "Global dollar credit: links to US monetary policy and leverage" - was first published by the Bank for International Settlements in January, but its biting relevance is growing by the day.

It shows how the Fed's zero rates and quantitative easing flooded the emerging world with dollar liquidity in the boom years, overwhelming all defences.

This abundance enticed Asian and Latin American companies to borrow like never before in dollars - at real rates near 1pc - storing up a reckoning for the day when the US monetary cycle should turn, as it is now doing with a vengeance.

Contrary to popular belief, the world is today more dollarized than ever before. Foreigners have borrowed $9 trillion in US currency outside American jurisdiction, and therefore without the protection of a lender-of-last-resort able to issue unlimited dollars in extremis. This is up from $2 trillion in 2000.

The emerging market share - mostly Asian - has doubled to $4.5 trillion since the Lehman crisis, including camouflaged lending through banks registered in London, Zurich or the Cayman Islands.

The result is that the world credit system is acutely sensitive to any shift by the Fed. "Changes in the short-term policy rate are promptly reflected in the cost of $5 trillion in US dollar bank loans," said the BIS.

Markets are already pricing in such a change. The Fed's so-called "dot plot" - the gauge of future thinking by Fed members - hints at three rate rises this year, kicking off in June.

The BIS paper's ominous implications are already visible as the dollar rises at a parabolic rate, smashing the Brazilian real, the Turkish lira, the South African rand and the Malaysian Ringitt, and driving the euro to a 12-year low of $1.06.

The dollar index (DXY) has soared 24pc since July, and 40pc since mid-2011.

This is a bigger and steeper rise than the dollar rally in the mid-1990s - also caused by a US recovery at a time of European weakness, and by Fed tightening - which set off the East Asian crisis and Russia's default in 1998.

Emerging market governments learned the bitter lesson of that shock. They no longer borrow in dollars. Companies have more than made up for them.

"The world is on a dollar standard, not a euro or a yen standard, and that is why it matters so much what the Fed does," said Stephen Jen, a former IMF official now at SLJ Macro Partners.

He says the latest spasms of stress in emerging markets are more serious than the "taper tantrum" in May 2013, when the Fed first talked of phasing out quantitative easing.

"Capital flows into these countries have continued to accelerate over recent quarters. This is mostly fickle money. The result is that there is now even more dry wood in the pile to serve as fuel," he said.

Mr Jen said Asian and Latin American companies are frantically trying to hedge their dollar debts on the derivatives markets, which drives the dollar even higher and feeds a vicious circle. "This is how avalanches start," he said.

Companies are hanging on by their fingertips across the world. Brazilian airline Gol was sitting pretty four years ago when the real was the strongest currency in the world. Three quarters of its debt is in dollars.

This has now turned into a ghastly currency mismatch as the real goes into free-fall, losing half its value. Interest payments on Gol's debts have doubled, relative to its income stream in Brazil. The loans must be repaid or rolled over in a far less benign world, if possible at all.

You would not think it possible that an Asian sovereign wealth fund could run into trouble too, but Malaysia's 1MDM state fund came close to default earlier this year after borrowing too heavily to buy energy projects and speculate on land. Its bonds are currently trading at junk level.

It became a piggy bank for the political elites and now faces a corruption probe, a recurring pattern in the BRICS and mini-BRICS as the liquidity tide recedes and exposes the underlying rot.

BIS data show that the dollar debts of Chinese companies have jumped fivefold to $1.1 trillion since 2008, and are almost certainly higher if disguised sources are included. Among the flow is a $900bn "carry trade" - mostly through Hong Kong - that amounts to a huge collective bet on a falling dollar. Woe betide them if China starts to drive down the yuan to keep growth alive.

Manoj Pradhan, from Morgan Stanley, said emerging markets were able to weather the dollar spike in 2014 because the world's deflation scare was still holding down the cost of global funding. These costs are now rising. Even Singapore's three-month Sibor used for benchmark lending is ratcheting up fast.

The added twist is that central banks in the developing world have stopped buying foreign bonds, after boosting their reserves from $1 trillion to $11 trillion since 2000.

The Institute of International Finance (IIF) calculates that the oil slump has slashed petrodollar flows by $375bn a year. Crude exporters will switch from being net buyers of $123bn of foreign bonds and assets in 2013, to net sellers of $90bn this year. Russia sold $13bn in February alone.

China has also changed sides, becoming a seller late last year as capital flight quickened. Liquidation of reserves automatically entails monetary tightening within these countries, unless offsetting action is taken. China still has the latitude to do this. Russia is not so lucky, and nor is Brazil. If they cut rates, they risk a further currency slide.

Powerful undercurrents in the world's financial system are swirling beneath the surface. Some hope that the European Central Bank's €60bn blast of QE each month will keep the asset boom going as the Fed pulls back, but this is a double-edged effect for the world as a whole. It pushes the dollar yet higher. That may matter more in the end.

It is possible that the Fed will retreat once again, judging that the world economy is still too fragile to withstand any tightening. The Atlanta Fed's forecasting model for real GDP growth in the US itself has slowed sharply since mid-February.

Yet the message from a string of Fed governors over recent days is that rate rises cannot be put off much longer, the Atlanta Fed's own Dennis Lockhart among them. "All meetings from June onwards should be on the table," he said.

The most recent Fed minutes cited worries that the flood of capital coming into the US on the back of the stronger dollar is holding down long-term borrowing rates in the US and effectively loosening monetary policy. This makes Fed tightening even more urgent, in their view, implying a "higher path" for coming rate rises.

Nobody should count on a Fed reprieve this time. The world must take its punishment.

SEE ALSO: GUNDLACH: The tower of complex central bank policy will fall

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Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future will turn on the outcome of Israel’s general election on Tuesday.

The leader of the Right-wing Likud party – and Israel’s longest-serving prime minister since David Ben Gurion - faces one of the toughest battles of his career.

If the opinion polls are correct, Likud risks defeat at the hands of Zionist Union, a centre-left alliance.

Israel’s 120-seat parliament, known as the Knesset, is elected using a pure form of proportional representation. In a fragmented political system, no party can win an overall majority so the next government will almost certainly be a coalition.

Once the results are known, the Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, will invite the party leader in the strongest position to attempt to form a coalition. By convention, the president usually calls upon the leader of the party with the most seats.

If the poll conducted for Channel 2 News is correct, then Isaac Herzog, the co-leader of the Zionist Union, would be asked to assemble a government. This survey suggests that he will take 25 seats compared with 21 for Likud. Mr Herzog would then have to put together a coalition commanding the support of at least 61 of the 120 members of the Knesset. If he crosses that vital threshold, then he would replace Mr Netanyahu as prime minister.

The law allows 28 days for a party leader to form a government. If that proves impossible, then the president has the power to grant an extension for another two weeks. In practise, the shape of the new coalition will probably become clear within a few days.

Zionist Union consists of an alliance between the Labour party, led by Mr Herzog, and the centre-left Hatnuah party of Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister. If Zionist Union leads the next government, Mr Herzog would become prime minister for the first two years of the Knesset’s four-year term; Ms Livni would assume the premiership for the second two.

Even if Zionist Union comes first in the tally of seats, however, the bloc of right-wing parties could still be large enough to ensure that Mr Netanyahu stays on as prime minister. In the 2009 election, Ms Livni – then leader of the centrist Kadima party – took one more seat than Likud, but failed to seize the premiership because the right-wing bloc held a majority in the Knesset.

If Zionist Union finds itself in first place on Tuesday, the big question will be the margin of victory over Likud.

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Only six out of more than 600 British jihadists have had their bank accounts frozen under special terror laws, according to an official report.

The review also shows just £50,000 worth of assets was frozen in bank accounts opened by terror suspects operating in the UK.

The amount was branded “remarkably low” by David Anderson QC, the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation and author of the new study.

Mr Anderson’s report into 'the operation of terrorist asset-freezing’ lays bare the Coalition’s failure to seize jihadists’ money under the Terrorist Asset-Freezing Act (TAFA) 2010.

His findings will be seized upon by critics who have complained the Coalition has failed to crack down on terror financiers.

The report says more than 600 British-based jihadists have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and other terror groups such as al-Qaeda but only six currently have their assets frozen.

They are: Nasser Muthana, 20, and Reyaad Khan, 21, both from Cardiff, and Ruhul Amin, from Aberdeen, who all appeared in an Isil recruitment video last summer, which sparked widespread outrage.

Muthana’s 17-year-old brother Aseel Muthana has also been added to the list, having also fled to Syria.

The fifth man on the list is Nur Idiris Hassan, 21, from Manchester, who fled the UK for Syria last year with the help of chemistry teacher Jamshed Javeed who has since pleaded guilty to terrorist offences.

A further unnamed terror suspect believed to be linked to Isil is the sixth man on the list.

In total just 25 individuals are on the UK Treasury list.

Mohammed Emwazi, a former London schoolboy who was unmasked as 'Jihadi John’ , the Isil executioner, is one of hundreds who has escaped a freezing order. Emwazi does not feature on any of the asset freezing orders issued by the Government.

More than 300 British jihadists who fought in Syria and Iraq and have since returned to the UK are also now free to continue using their bank accounts, despite the fact they will have been identified by security services as terrorists.

Those accounts can be used to fund terrorist activity in the UK as well as pay for extremists to travel to the Middle East.

The report will put pressure on the authorities to do more to clamp down on the cash supply line to fanatics. A Telegraph campaign has previously highlighted the serious shortcomings of The Treasury’s terror sanctions list.

In his report Mr Anderson said: “The figures for assets frozen are remarkably low.”

Mr Anderson said “greater use” of asset-freezing was needed “as a way of disrupting persons who cannot be prosecuted but in respect of whom financial restrictions are necessary in order to protect the public from terrorism”.

He concluded: “There is a case for more extensive use of TAFA 2010,” adding: “The small number of designations indicates that asset-freezing law has played only a marginal role in combating the most serious terrorist threat of the present time.” The report said more than “600 extremists have travelled out to Syria and Iraq” to join Isil and other terror groups.

Mr Anderson went on: “In addition to the potential of such persons to commit terrorist acts abroad, there is some evidence that a minority of returning fighters may have been involved or wish to be involved in terrorist activity at home.

“Travel to and from such conflict zones, together with the preparation of terrorist acts, often requires funding and facilitation.

“The small number of designations indicates that asset-freezing law has played only a marginal role in combating the most serious threat of the present time.”

The review discloses that only 25 individuals have been put on the Treasury list using the terrorist assets-freezing law. Of those, 11 are British citizens. Four are convicted terrorists, including Nabeel Hussain, who was involved in a plot to smuggle liquid bombs on to passenger aircraft in 2006; Parviz Khan, who pleaded guilty to involvement in a plot in 2007 to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier in 2007; and Bilal Talal Abdullah, who drove a jeep packed with explosives into Glasgow airport in 2007.

Of the 25 terror suspects on the list, just 13 have been added since 2011 when the uprising in Syria against the Assad regime began.

In total, just £50,000 in assets has been frozen in a total of 49 accounts under the Treasury sanctions.

Professor Anthony Glees, director of the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, told The Sunday Telegraph that the public would “find it incomprehensible” that so few jihadists have had their assets seized in the UK.

“These are people who are involved in terrorism and I can’t see why the Government doesn’t freeze banks accounts of jihadists who are committing atrocities in Syria and Iraq,” said Prof Glees.

He added: “Where there is a strong suspicion that someone in the UK is connected to terrorist activity, freezing their bank accounts might actually stop them leaving the UK to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State.

“This is just another example of the Government failing to deliver on a promise it has made about protecting national security.”

Stephen Barclay, Conservative MP for North east Cambridgeshire and who has campaigned for more stringent terror sanctions, said: “This seems to be further evidence that there is a lack of serious activity on sanctions and asset freezing against terror suspects and terror financiers.”

The Telegraph’s Stop the Funding of Terror campaign has reported how the Treasury minister in charge of deciding which terror suspects and organisations are added to the official sanctions list is also tasked with attracting investment from countries such as Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which have all been accused of supporting terror fund-raisers, living within their midst.

A Treasury spokesman said: “The Government has a broad range of tools for deterring, detecting and disrupting terrorist financing designed to make the UK a hostile environment for terrorist financing.

“HM Treasury works with, and is advised directly by, law enforcement and security agencies which are best placed to decide and advise on the most appropriate mechanisms to disrupt terrorist activity by a person or entity. Those agencies inform HMT of the individuals and entities against whom a TAFA designation might be an appropriate tool.”

This article was written by Robert Mendick and Robert Verkaik from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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Thought you had seen the last of the huge price movements in the energy markets?

Well, think again.

The supply glut which has led to a 50% slide in oil prices over the past year will begin to grip the other major hydrocarbon product vital to global economies, liquefied natural gas (LNG).

This year will see a “wave” of new LNG production flooding on to international markets as several major projects in Australia finally come on stream after years of development and hundreds of billions of pounds invested.

LNG – natural gas chilled for transportation by giant tankers – has grown in popularity over the past decade through a mixture of higher demand from booming Asian economies and the need to cut carbon emissions.

The US Department of Energy estimates that natural gas burned in power plants produces about half as much carbon dioxide as coal and fewer nitrogen oxides, too.

According to BG Group, supply has remained stalled at levels recorded in 2011. The UK energy company estimates that last year shipments grew by only 1.5pc to around 243m tonnes. However, by 2025, the company is forecasting that the LNG supply will reach 400m tonnes, requiring more infrastructure and giant tankers.

This would represent a 5pc annual increase in demand over the next decade and almost twice the rate of growth expected to occur in consumption over the same period. Experts are now concerned that the market will be unable to keep pace with supply, leaving some LNG projects redundant.

Andrew Walker, BG Group vice-president of global LNG, said: “After four years of flat supply, we are entering a period of supply growth. 2014 marked the start of a new wave of supply from Australia. This will be joined by the first volumes from the US Gulf of Mexico around the end of 2015.

“This new supply will be absorbed by continued growth in Asian demand, together with the creation of up to six new markets in 2015, further diversifying the LNG trade and opening up new sales opportunities.”

A big issue is the pace of China’s economic slowdown and the knock-on effect this could have across Asia, including big LNG-consuming nations such as South Korea and Japan. Asia’s second-largest economy was forced to shut down 50 nuclear reactors following the Fukushima disaster and many of these facilities will eventually be restarted, suppressing demand for LNG.

Having started last year strongly, the Asian spot market for LNG tanked after it was dragged back by the sharp fall in crude oil, which started to take hold in August. By the third quarter, spot LNG prices in Asia had reached a three-year low and have barely recovered. However, a bigger concern to the overall health of the LNG market will come from the glut of new supply, which will begin to increase this year and reach a peak by 2017 as major projects in Australia come to fruition. Some experts fear the market for LNG could soon become saturated, despite the steady increases in demand being forecast.

Projects reaching their final phase of construction in Australia will add 58m tonnes of LNG supply to the market by 2019. By then, the country is expected to become the world’s biggest exporter of LNG – overtaking Qatar – with 84m tonnes of total capacity.

Worldwide, the figures grow to 122m tonnes of new LNG supply by the end of the decade.

“We expect the LNG market to become more volatile over the next few years as it responds to ‘lumpy’ supply and market-side additions plus exogenous supply and demand factors,” said Mr Walker.

“We see fewer final investment decisions being taken in 2015 than previously expected, which will mean less LNG is available to the market at the end of the decade. This uncertainty brings into sharper focus the attractiveness of flexible supply portfolios which can respond to changing market dynamics,” he added.

Rubber loses bounce

If you have not noticed the cost of new tyres for your car falling then it is time to ask your garage why. Rubber prices traded in Singapore are languishing at six-year lows with no recovery on the horizon as oversupply and weakened demand continue to hit prospects.

The glut in natural rubber is so severe that supplier countries are considering forming a group to regulate the market collectively.

Over the past year, rubber traded in Singapore has lost almost a quarter of its value and is now at around $1.45 per kilo, a huge drop from the 2011 peak of $5.50 at the top of the commodities super cycle.

This spurred a rush by farmers to open up new plantations, which has created the current glut. But output has stagnated at around 12m tonnes because tapping to collect latex sap has been cut back, says the Rubber Study Group.

That has helped reduce the global surplus to just 76,000 tonnes after demand grew by 5pc last year to 11.9m tonnes. This is down from average surpluses of 700,000 tonnes over the previous couple of years.

According to commodities broker Commerzbank: “For some upside potential of prices to be realised medium-term, at least the cautiously optimistic hopes for the global economy, according to which global demand in 2015 and 2016 shall be slightly higher than in previous years, would have to prove true.”

Gold's dollar disconnect

Look no further than gold for signs that the strong US dollar is disengaging from the rest of the world, especially the eurozone.

Gold in dollars recorded its lowest Friday afternoon “Fix” close since April 2010 at $1,152 per ounce. Gold priced in euros edged to its highest Friday finish since January’s 20-month highs amid ongoing concern over the eurozone and the region’s plummeting currency.

“The disconnect between the US dollar and the rest of the world couldn’t be plainer,” said Adrian Ash, head of research at the online broker, BullionVault.

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The United States urged countries on Tuesday to think twice about signing up to a new China-led Asian development bank that Washington sees as a rival to the World Bank after Germany, France and Italy followed Britain in saying they would join.

The concerted move by U.S. allies to participate in Beijing's flagship economic outreach project is a diplomatic blow to the United States and its efforts to counter the fast-growing economic and diplomatic influence of China.

Europe's participation reflects the eagerness to partner with China's fast-growing economy, the world's second largest, and comes amid prickly trade negotiations between Brussels and Washington.

European Union and Asian governments are frustrated that the U.S. Congress has held up a reform of voting rights in the International Monetary Fund that would give China and other emerging powers more say in global economic governance.

Washington has questioned whether the new bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), will have high standards of governance and environmental and social safeguards.

"I hope before the final commitments are made anyone who lends their name to this organization will make sure that the governance is appropriate," U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told U.S. lawmakers.

Lew warned the Republican-dominated Congress that China and other rising powers were challenging American leadership in global financial institutions, and he urged lawmakers to swiftly ratify stalled reform of the IMF.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble announced at a joint news conference with visiting Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai that Germany, Europe's biggest economy and a major trade partner of Beijing, would be a founding member of the AIIB.

In a joint statement, the foreign and finance ministers of Germany, France and Italy said they would work to ensure the new institution "follows the best standards and practices in terms of governance, safeguards, debt and procurement policies."

Luxembourg’s Finance Ministry confirmed the country, a big financial center, has also applied to be a founding member of the $50 billion AIIB.

The AIIB was launched in Beijing last year to spur investment in Asia in transportation, energy, telecommunications and other infrastructure. It was seen as a rival to the Western-dominated World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. China has said it will use the best practices of those institutions.

A spokeswoman for the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, endorsed member states' participation in the AIIB as a way of tackling global investment needs and as an opportunity for EU companies.

The bank is seen as a means to spread Chinese "soft power" in the region, possibly at the expense of the United States, which is pursuing its own Asian strategy to strengthen its military and economic presence there.

The World Bank is traditionally run by a U.S. nominee and Washington also has the most influence at the IMF.

The adjustment of shares and voting rights in the IMF was brokered by Britain at a Group of 20 summit in 2010, and European countries ratified it long ago.

Lew told lawmakers that the U.S. delay was undermining its credibility and influence as countries question the United States' commitment to international institutions.

“It's not an accident that emerging economies are looking at other places because they are frustrated that, frankly, the United States has stalled a very mild and reasonable set of reforms in the IMF,” Lew said.

"HIGH WATERMARK"

China said earlier this year a total of 26 countries had been included as AIIB founder members, mostly from Asia and the Middle East. It plans to finalize the articles of agreement by the end of the year.

China's state-owned Xinhua news agency said South Korea and Switzerland were also considering joining.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei would not comment on which countries had applied, and repeated that the bank would be "open, inclusive, transparent and responsible."

Scott Morris, a former U.S. Treasury official who led U.S. engagement with the multilateral development banks during the first Obama administration, said Washington was paying the price for delay on IMF reform and for focusing on criticizing the AIIB instead of working harder to improve existing institutions.

"It's a clear sentiment among a pretty diverse group of countries: We would like to mobilize more capital for infrastructure through MDBs (multilateral development banks)," said Morris, now with the Washington-based Center for Global Development.

"And the U.S. stands in the way of that and now finds itself increasingly isolated as a result.”

A government official in India, which also has joined, said the members of the AIIB would meet in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on March 29-31 to discuss the articles of agreement.

China has said March 31 is the deadline for accepting founder-members into the organization.

Japan, Australia and South Korea remain notable regional absentees from the AIIB. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said at the weekend he would make a final decision on membership soon.

South Korea has said it is still in discussions with China and other countries about possible participation.

Japan, China's main regional rival, has the biggest shareholding in the Asian Development Bank along with the United States. By convention, the Manila-based bank is headed by a Japanese.

Japan is unlikely to join the AIIB, but ADB head Takehiko Nakao told the Nikkei Asian Review that the two institutions were in discussions and could work together.

"We've begun sharing our experience and know-how," Nakao was quoted as saying. "Once the AIIB has actually been established, it's conceivable that we would cooperate."

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Intensifying competition in the ride-sharing economy is driving taxi booking apps to spend every penny they have - and some that they don’t - just to keep up with the industry’s $40bn darling, Uber .

In a financial forecast intended for potential investors, Lyft, one of Uber’s most direct competitors, detailed the extent to which it is willing to splash the cash to take on its older and larger rival.

The San Francisco-based start-up - which last week announced it had raised $530m in its latest round of funding, giving the three-year-old company a $2.5bn valuation - said it expects to generate $1.2bn in sales this year, leaving it with revenues of $300m once its drivers have taken their share and around $170m after operating expenses such as taxes have been paid.

But the document, which was first seen by TechCrunch, also revealed that Lyft would spend $200m this year - taking it to a $30m annual loss - followed by a further $250m next year trying to lure drivers and users away from the competition.

Three-quarters of this year's $200m will go towards drawing in new customers, using initiatives ranging from ride discounts to referral incentives, while $50m will be directed towards growing its network of cars, such as the recent promotion that handed out $1,000 bonuses to new drivers, which the company said “brought the biggest wave of applicants in Lyft history” with thousands of qualifying applicants.

Lyft is not the only company to ply riders and drivers with cash to lure them to its business. Addison Lee, the 40-year-old British minicab firm, offers all new drivers a £1,000 bonus.

While Addison Lee declined to comment on the costs associated with increasing competition from other taxi apps, the cab company has invested in redesigning its app, an updated version of which was recently launched as other services such as Hailo, GetTaxi and Kabbee enter the market.

Uber and its peers were also named as a possible reason for the recent decision by Carlyle, Addison Lee’s private equity owner, to cancel its attempted £800m sale of the business, choosing instead to expand into New York.

While Addison Lee’s chief executive, Liam Griffin, has denied the cancelled sale was related to Uber’s growth in the UK, noting that only 8pc of its business overlaps with Uber’s operations, the London firm’s website seems to address competition from Uber head on, stating that “we disrupted the industry (before disrupting industries had even become a thing)” and stressing that prices are fixed with no surge charge at peak times - an Uber practice that has landed the business in trouble before.

It’s no surprise that competition is hotting up, Addison Lee’s head of marketing and product innovation, Nick Constantinou, told The Telegraph that “London is the world’s biggest taxi market – worth an estimated £2.7bn”.

And while some companies might be willing to spend all their income on clutching on to a corner of the cab community, Mr Constantinou said that ultimately “the emergence of Uber has been good for business, as it has made more people aware of on-demand private transport services”.

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Gallic nation threatens to blow Europe's Franco-German axis apart, warns former Italian prime minister

France has become Europe’s “big problem”, according to the former prime minister of Italy, who warned that anti-Brussels sentiment and the rise of populist parties in the Gallic nation threatened to blow the bloc’s Franco-German axis apart.

Mario Monti – who was dubbed “Super Mario” for saving the country from collapse at the height of the eurozone debt crisis – said France’s “unease” with the single currency had already created tensions between Europe’s two largest economies.

“In the last few years we have seen France receding in terms of actual economic performance, in terms of complying with all the European rules, and above all in terms of its domestic public opinion – which is turning more and more against Europe,” he told The Telegraph.

France's strained relationship with Brussels has been borne out through its persistent defiance of EU budget targets and the rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right Front National party,

“France is the big problem of the European Union because the whole construct has been leveraged on the foundation of a solid Franco-German entente. If it isn’t there then there is a poor destiny for Europe,” said Mr Monti. “We’ve seen that the strong axis is no longer so strong.”

Jens Weidmann, the president of Germany’s Bundesbank, recently attacked the EU’s decision to give France extra time to sort out its budget .

Mr Weidmann said countries such as France, which has failed to meet a 3pc deficit target for several years, should not be allowed to “perpetually put off” belt-tightening.

Mr Monti said Germany’s willingness “to exercise certain responsibilities” as the bloc’s hegemon had eased the eurozone’s problems.

The respected economist, whose technocratic government was swept into power in 2011, also said the anti-Brussels sentiment in France was greater than many believed. “I’m always struck when I participate in debates in France – even the elite is so uneasy about the governance of the eurozone.

"I would not be surprised to hear this tone in Athens or in Lisbon, but I’m very surprised to hear this in Paris.”

France will vote in local elections on Sunday. A recent poll conducted by Le Figaro newspaper put Ms Le Pen's party out in the lead, with 30pc of the vote.

In a warning to France, Mr Monti said: “Maybe you forgot, but we all remember that France was the country that wanted the euro, not Germany.

"Germany reluctantly accepted the euro to get approval of the other countries for its reunification process. It would have much rather kept to the Deutsche Mark. It was France who insisted to have the single currency and now it’s so uneasy with it.”

Mr Monti, a Brussels veteran who is currently president of Bocconi University, also said the “humiliating” diktats of the so-called “troika” of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund had caused more damage to the Greek economy and should not continue.

While Mr Monti said he was confident Greecewould remain in the eurozone, he stressed that more work would need to be done on both sides.

“In a nutshell, Greece has to recognise that most causes of their crisis are not European but are Greek - namely mismanagement for decades,” he said.

“Nevertheless, it is true that one aspect of the cure - the troika - did contribute to make further damage. I fought for the troika to stay out of Italy because they are humiliating for domestic public opinion”.

Mr Monti also said governments were letting political ambition get in the way of closer European integration.

"Political leaders in European member states ... are obsessed with the next election at home rather than helping the domestic population to see the advantages of the European constructon," he said.

"In most cases they try to blame the EU for the lack of achievements in their domestic goals, which are only rarely the result of European weaknesses."

Mr Monti said populist parties were gaining traction across Europe.

"Italy I believe is in the process of making much-needed and much-delayed structural reforms. However, in Italy, there is the turning of several parties in terms of public opinion against the EU," he said.

"Spain shocks me right now. I was there for a debate a couple of weeks ago. Spain has always been the most ebullient and enthusiastic among the large member states. But [they must use it to] embrace Europe, and not [radical leftist party] Podemos."

This article was written by Szu Ping Chan from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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