Russia

The Swiss franc held at the lowest level in three years against the euro Friday, with some market experts citing U.S. sanctions against Russia as a key driver in the […]

The US is waging economic war against Russia, and a real war was narrowly avoided as the US was careful not to strike Russian installations in Syria in the most […]

Russia’s currency plunged to the weakest level since December 2016 and the government canceled a bond auction as the toughest U.S. sanctions yet combined with an escalation in tensions over […]

Some of Silicon Valley’s leading investors are lining up to buy into a much-hyped initial coin offering by Telegram, the encrypted messaging service that is seeking $1.2bn to build a virtual economy within its app.

As The Financial Times reported, Venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark and Sequoia Capital have each told the company they want to invest $20m, according to three people with knowledge of the deals. Sequoia and Kleiner declined to comment, and Benchmark did not respond to requests for comment.

For the first time in half a century, Sweden is seriously prepping its country for the possibility of war. Growing national anxiety over the threat of Russia has led the government to send out 4.7m information pamphlets to all households informing them of what to do in the event of war. "All of society needs to be prepared for conflict, not just the military. We haven’t been using words such as total defence or high alert for 25-30 years or more. So the knowledge among citizens is very low", says the government.

George Soros has lamented that the European Union is on the verge of collapse while Russia is becoming “a resurgent nationalist power.”
Hungarian-American tycoon George Soros, who runs the $26 billion Soros Fund Management and chairs the global board of the Open Society Foundations (OSF), made the remarks while speaking to the Financial Times.

Last week the government published the full list of people who were granted Maltese citizenship during 2016, including those who had purchased their citizenship through the Individual Investor Programme (IIP).
Under the IIP, high-net worth individuals can obtain Maltese, and therefore EU citizenship, against a fee of €650,000, as well as €150,000 in government bonds and a €350,000 investment in property. A physical presence is not required for applicants to prove residency.

The non-profit that oversees development of ethereum has officially unveiled two subsidy programs that will support research on how to grow the number of transactions its blockchain can process.

In a blog post published Tuesday, ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin described how the network is beginning to reach 1 million transactions per day.