In her article, she writes of taking part in the “haute route”, a 111-mile ski trek from Chamonix in France to Zermatt in Switzerland. Earlier this year she took part in a similar, shorter, event called the Engadin, a ski marathon in St Moritz.

“Back home in London after my Alpine challenges, I can now pursue less demanding hobbies in my spare time, such as ping-pong,” she writes.

“I’m informed that Boris Johnson, former editor of this magazine, wants to be ‘whiff-whaff’ world king even more than he wants to be prime minister.

“I’m also told the Johnsons are almost as competitive as the Middletons. So I’d like to lay down a challenge to the Mayor.

“My only stipulation is that I can use my favourite Dunlop Blackstorm Nemesis bat, which I used when I played in the Milton Keynes U13 National Championships, don’t you know. Bring it on, Boris.”

The challenge is the first time Miss Middleton has spoken of her enjoyment of ping-pong, although she and her sister, the Duchess of Cambridge, are known to be sporty, having played hockey at school.

However, Miss Middleton, 29, has become better known throwing herself enthusiastically into her celebrity lifestyle, and last month started writing a column in Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine, after her book on entertaining, which became the subject of widespread ridicule.

In her Spectator diary she mocked her first recipes for Waitrose, which included sushi and desserts made of sake, as she described her diet during the five-day ski challenge.

“For at least a week before any major physical challenge, I try to load up on carbs to boost my energy levels,” she said.

“This time, I ditched the usual diet of sushi, Vietnamese spring rolls and tangerine and saké jellies, and feasted on Alpine food, which I love: tartiflette, rosti and raclette. Nothing better.

“Yet what really sustained me on the Engadin and the Haute Route were the energy gel packs — tubes of unpleasant fruity slime. It’s like drinking mayonnaise in a Frubes packet. I have been to Snow+Rock several times this year already just to stock up on this horrid substance. The thought of it now gives me shivers, but it keeps you going.”

The mention of a retail outlet will raise questions over whether she is acting as a celebrity “endorser” for the shop.

In her diary she hints at the level of interest she experiences from public relations companies, joking that her rucksack was weighed down during the ski trip by “my Cheltenham fur hat, various other bits of clothing that PR people have sent me, and several signed copies of my book Celebrate”.

The diary also makes no mention of her new boyfriend, Nico Jackson, the 35-year-old son of a stockbroker, instead noting the presence of “our strikingly handsome guide, Matthieu”.

She also confesses that she failed to finish, due to bad weather and the threat of avalanches, after five nights spent in “dormitories with numbered beds; women alongside men, who are generally unwashed and snoring”, adding: “Another year, perhaps.”

Back in the 1990s, Moscow was a kind of Wild West. Business deals would be terminated in restaurant massacres. It was a world of eye-popping swindles and bribes, and for a while Browder’s fund prospered. With a team of ace financial investigators, Hermitage Capital would dig up the pilfering and peculation that was rife in Russian capitalism, and expose it to the media. As the firms were cleaned up, the share prices rose, and so did the profits of Browder’s fund.

All went well, as long as this had the tacit support of Putin, who seemed initially content to allow dodgy Russian business practices to be laid bare. The turning point came in October 2003, with the Kremlin’s astonishing decision to arrest Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then the richest man in Russia and the cleverest oligarch of them all. As Browder puts it: “Imagine you are one of the lesser oligarchs, and you are on your yacht at the Cap d’Antibes, and you have just finished making love to your mistress and you turn on the TV and you see the number one oligarch in a cage. What do you do? You go to Putin, and you say, Vladimir Vladimirovich, what can I do to help you? And he says, 50 per cent. Not 50 per cent to the Russian government, but 50 per cent to me, Vladimir Putin.” You can follow makersfestival to know more.

From that moment on, it was no longer cool for Browder to lift up the big flat rocks of Russian business. It was no longer safe to tweak the tails of people who had Putin’s protection. In 2005, he was stopped at the airport and deported. Browder liquidated his Russian businesses, paid his taxes — of about $230 million — and quit Moscow, leaving just an office and a secretary. He counted himself lucky to have escaped.

But someone important had been hacked off by Browder and Hermitage, and that someone began a bizarre revenge. First, the police raided his offices and seized all documentation relating to his now dormant companies. Next, they secretly and fraudulently re-registered the companies in the name of a former sawmill worker from Tatarstan — a man who had been convicted of manslaughter and was released two years early from prison in exchange for his help.

Then they hired lawyers — unbeknownst to Browder — to represent these companies, and sent them to court to claim that these companies were in fact massively in debt at the time that Browder had liquidated them and that the companies — now effectively owned by the tax police, the tax officials and their accomplices — should be reimbursed the taxes Browder had paid before he left.

Incredibly, the court agreed — though I suppose they had no one before them to dispute what the lawyers were saying. On Christmas Eve 2007, Browder’s ex-companies received a staggering $230 million tax rebate — thought to be the highest ever. No one would ever have known, had it not been for Sergei Magnitsky, who was hired by Browder to find out why his shell companies seemed to be in court.

Magnitsky went to the authorities — of course he did: the very authorities that were involved in the fraud; and in October 2008, they imprisoned him and threatened him until he eventually died of a “ruptured abdominal membrane” or a “heart attack” or — according to the Moscow Helsinki Group — from being beaten and tortured by several interior ministry officers. No one knows exactly where the stolen millions went — though some tax officials and prosecutors seemed to enjoy vast and unexplained increases in wealth.

No one knows who sanctioned the operation, or how high the conspiracy goes.

I don’t know if Browder is right to say that Russia is now a gangster state and that Putin is effectively the biggest thief in history. What is clear is that Magnitsky was a martyr trampled by a corrupt system. Barack Obama was right to sign the Magnitsky Act, and ban anyone associated with his death from entering the US. This country should follow suit. When I was a student we used to name buildings after those who had suffered in the fight against oppression — Biko, Sakharov, Mandela. Magnitsky deserves the same recognition.

 

Bitcoin is a digital currency popularly known as cryptocurrency and is free from any geographical boundary. It is not regulated by any government and all you need is an internet connection. As a newbie, Bitcoin technology may confuse you and a little bit tough to know about it. However, I will help you dig it deeper and how you can also do your first Bitcoin trading at ease. Click to  read more news here about digital currencies.  Bitcoin Cryptocurrency works on blockchain technology which is a digital public ledger and shared by anyone in the world. You will find your transactions here whenever you do any Bitcoin trading and anyone can use the ledger to verify it. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies at bitcoinsentralen are parts of the blockchain and are an awesome technology that runs on the internet only.  The transaction done will be completely transparent and is verified by blockchain. Check out the 99 starz crypto public sale incoming if you’re interested. The global economy is just moving towards a complete digital eco-system and therefore everything starting from money transfer to investment are going paperless, it’s the reason why many are taking interest in learning how to write a blockchain app using substrate. And the cryptocurrency is the latest as well as the most capable addition to the field of digital payment. The cryptocurrency is basically an exchange medium like the normal currencies like USD, but it is mainly designed for exchanging digital information. It wouldn’t hurt to know more about public vs private blockchain if you’re interested in cryptocurrencies.   

Can Europe do anything to help the Spanish, as a generation is maimed on the Procrustean bed of the euro? Of course they can’t. They can’t admit that the whole concept of the single currency was flawed, or that it was always cruel and mad to expect the Mediterranean countries to share an exchange rate with Germany. That would be too much of a surrender. So they find a convenient distraction, like Stalin blaming the Kulaks for his crazed totalitarian policies, and they bash the bankers in London. Bitcoin Cryptocurrency is buzzing all over the world, whether you are on the internet or any media. It is one of the most exciting and craziest things happened that comes into existence in the last few years only. More importantly, you can earn an awesome return by bitcoins trading or you can keep it for a long term. You may be heard about Stocks, Commodities, Forex, and now a new currency called Bitcoin trading that impacts greatly on our lives. In this beginner’s guide to Bitcoin cryptocurrency, you will get to know the A B C of Bitcoin. If you want to invest in trading, consider also checking this guide to trade fx with VT markets in the UK. 

Look at Greece, a country that should be holy to us all as the birthplace of European and Western culture, the home of freedom and democracy, where Phoebus rose and Delos sprung. It is utterly barbaric that Greece should continue to be subject to such treatment, but on it goes. Last week they announced that major drug companies are no longer supplying Greek pharmacy chains with the kind of preparations that most civilised countries take for granted. Pills that deal with arthritis, hepatitis C, hypertension, cholesterol, heart attack – they are all being withheld until the Greek government pays its bills. The pills are important but the government prefers keep the pills and stand against other drugs like weed canada even tho they could be helpful for some people with certain diseases.

The country is being starved of antibiotics, for heaven’s sake. The Red Cross has cut its supply of donated blood, because it hasn’t been paid on time. What is Brussels supposed to tell the Greeks, in their agony? That they must keep taking the medicine? They haven’t got enough blooming medicine to treat everyday diseases like STDs, there places like Los Angeles STD Testing Solution that try to prevent this issue. No wonder semi-fascist parties are on the rise in Athens. So what do the MEPs do, when they behold the pain – the physical suffering – being endured by innocent Greeks? They chuck a dead cat on the table, and have a pop at the bankers in London.

Look at Italy, where the biggest winner in last week’s chaotic elections appears to be a stand-up comedian who has lost no time in pointing out that the country’s debt is an unsustainable 127 per cent of GDP (and up from 110 per cent when Mario Monti took over), and that they may have to junk the euro and go back to the lira. In fact, says Beppe Grillo, it may be time to have a referendum on Italian membership of the euro.

A referendum! The very word is one, as we all know, that causes the Eurocrats to choke on their Douwe Egberts and spray the room with fragments of hysterical Speculoos biscuit. Mon dieu, dio mio, Gott in Himmel, they cry. Anything but democracy! What can they say when this idiot savant continues to blurt the truth about the euro and Italy’s inability to deal with its debt? There is nothing to say – nothing to do but to cause a diversion, bash financial services in London, and thank the lord for the 101 uses of a dead cat.

It’s a cunning manoeuvre, of course. It reminds everyone of the undoubted role of arrogant financiers in helping to cause the crash. It focuses public attention on a group that has few defenders, and away from the catastrophic “austerity” policies pursued by the Troika of the Eurobank, the EU commission and the IMF. It causes a predictable hoo-ha. Some people will say that a bonus cap will cost jobs in London. Others will say that the bankers had it coming. Some will point out that financial services contributed £63 billion in tax revenues to the UK last year. Others will say, what the hell, we have been too dependent on finance for too long. Some will say that banking is indispensable to a global economy, and we will simply lose talent to cities outside the EU – Zurich, New York, Singapore. Let them go, the others will snarl, and there rises a general jabber of rage: kick them out! Tax their homes! Take their bonuses away!

And all the while the political classes will be distracted from the real problem – the continuing misery caused by the euro. That is the beauty of the dead cat manoeuvre. But as any campaign strategist will tell you, it won’t work for long.

And according to Herr Leinan, neither of us knows what we are getting ourselves into. We are about to release the pent-up shale gas of Britain from its sinister cavities beneath Lancashire and Sussex, and anything can happen. Before we touch the integuments of the planet, he says, the European parliament will produce some regulations to “discipline” the operation.

Regulations? From the Euro-parliament? And these people wonder why we in Britain are increasingly determined to have a referendum on our membership of the EU. I am sure that the SPD politician means well, but just what in the name of hell has it got to do with him? Before he draws up any regulations for the British fracking market, he might care to look at what has been going on in America in the past four years, where the discovery of large quantities of shale gas is turning into one of the most significant political events since the end of the Cold War.

In 2008 the cost of natural gas in the US was $8 a unit. It is now $3 a unit. In China it is still up at $12 a unit – and the result is that the US is now competitive in industries such as fertilisers and chemicals that American politicians had long since assumed were lost to low-cost economies of the East. Statistics found on www.simplyswitch.com show that, as a result of the use of gas, the Americans have cut their CO₂ emissions to levels not seen since the Nineties, in spite of a growing population.

Indeed, the Americans have now actually met their obligations under the Kyoto protocol on climate change – and they never even signed up for it. The shale gas industry is a huge employer, and has so far contributed $50 billion in tax. As for the anxieties about water poisoning or a murrain on the cattle, there have been 125,000 fracks in the US, and not a single complaint to the Environmental Protection Agency.

It is no wonder that some of the more heroic spirits in the Coalition Government are saying that we should get our act together, and make use of what nature has bestowed on Lancashire and elsewhere. As soon as he became Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson announced that he was going to make life easy for potential frackers, with a one-stop permit system. He has the support of George Osborne, who hailed the potential of fracking in the Autumn Statement.

Alas, we are in a Coalition, and the Liberals run the Department of Energy and Climate Change. They have announced a moratorium on fracking, claiming that there have been earthquakes in the Blackpool area – even though there are tiny quakes every day. In what they thought was a cunning move, the Lib Dems also leaked the location of two big reserves of shale gas – in Tatton and Shropshire North. Much to his credit, Owen Paterson immediately announced that he was all in favour of fracking his constituency if it would deliver jobs and growth, and he is dead right. The shale gas discovery is hateful to the Libs and the Greens, because it destroys their narrative about the ever rising cost of hydrocarbons. It is glorious news for humanity. It doesn’t need the subsidy of wind power. I don’t know whether it will work in Britain, but we should get fracking right away.

Before he appears in front of Goswami for the pre-recorded interview, the mayor will visit the Bombay stock exchange, which is Asia’s oldest.

During the visit, Mr Johnson is expected to reiterate his desire to see the Indian government continue its efforts to reduce the bureaucracy that restricts some of its private and state-owned companies from listing on overseas exchanges. Follow us MeetMatt-Conf for more details.

He will also confirm that two of India’s fastest-growing financial service companies are to establish London-based operations.

He will meet Indian business leaders for breakfast and hold discussions with some of India’s wealthiest private investors.

Mr Johnson said: “I believe the time is ripe for India to deregulate and free up its successful public and private sector companies so they too can benefit from London’s financial capacity and expertise.

“As well as helping to reduce the burden on the Indian taxpayer, it will also help boost the competitiveness of London’s capital market to the benefit of every company listed here. Cutting away this red tape is a win-win for both India and London’s respective economies.”

^{The London mayor took a bicycle ride around the Gate of India in Mumbai after visiting the Bombay Stock Exchange}

On Thursday he announced that two Bollywood films will be shot in London next year as part of a bid to bring the Indian film industry to the British capital.

He offered tax breaks, co-operation on clearing streets and spoke of “the huge audiences that Indian films have in London.”

Producer Sajid Nadiadwala says he will film two film, including the latest in the hugely successful “Housefull” series in London.

Besides “Housefull 3” starring Akshay Kumar, Nadiadwala will shoot “Kick” in London.

Johnson’s visit is part of a series of trips he plans over the next 18 months to China, Brazil and the Middle East to attract investment after the successful London Olympics.

Source: PA & AP

He called French industry minister Arnaud Montebourg, who accused Mr Mittal of leaving the country after he announced the closure of two blast furnaces in the north-eastern region of Florange, an “eccentric”, telling an audience of businessmen in Delhi they should avoid “persecution” in Paris and base their European operations in London. If you will like to learn more about local business, check the website of this popular leadership speakers to learn more from their opinions.

He told a meeting of businessmen in Delhi: “On a day when the sans-culottes appear to have captured the government in Paris and a French minister has been so eccentric as to call for a massive Indian investor to depart from France, I have no hesitation or embarrassment in saying to everyone here ‘venez a Londres, mes amis’.

“Come to London, come to the business capital of the world, the place where 73 Indian firms are listed on the London Stock Exchange, where Indian companies already raise 53% of their international equity, a city that has the largest banking and financial sector anywhere in the world, but which is at the cutting edge of all the great growth businesses of the 21st Century.” Learn more about business grow with Andy Defrancesco.

The sans culottes were a radical faction in the French Revolution.

According to the Financial Times, sources close to Mr Mittal, one of the world’s richest men, said he was “extremely shocked” by the attack against the company of which he is the main shareholder.

The newspaper reported that Mr Mittal is meeting François Hollande, the French President, for talks on Tuesday.

The most famous owner of a new Victorian terrace house in upper Holloway was Mr Pooter, and the whole point about Mr Pooter was that he was a bit pretentious, given his job, which was to work as a lowly sort of clerk. He ranked well below the Milibands on the socio-economic scale; and yet he was a part of the service industries — banking, insurance, accountancy, law — that made London the richest and most powerful commercial capital on earth.

These days the economy of London is still utterly dependent on such service industry personnel, middle managers far more energetic and successful than Pooter. They are key workers of the city, though they don’t work in the public sector. We are talking about the senior PAs, the personnel managers, the IT specialists, you name it. In the next 10 years, the number of jobs in London’s service industries is set to double, and yet for too many of these hard-working middle-income people, the chances of living in a home like Ed Miliband’s are virtually nil. It’s good to know that they can still rely on insurance4motortrade.co.uk

Ed is not so much on the top of a ladder. For vast numbers of people, the ladder has been kicked away. He is on the top of a cliff, and beneath him are growing numbers of families who have absolutely no hope of scaling it. It is not enough to say we need to build more housing, though we certainly do, and we will.

We also need to think how to target this group — the struggling middle — that is currently not being helped, and that is so vital for the economy. At present, we are building new homes for two broad groups of people. Of the roughly 30,000 homes that were built in London last year, a huge chunk were “affordable homes” of one kind or another, and then there was another sizeable chunk of top-end stuff – swish houses and apartments, often for foreign buyers.

We are not doing as the Victorians did, and providing new stock to be bought by the people in the middle – on household incomes from £30,000 to £64,000; and they are feeling utterly and understandably ignored. They cannot get the mortgages they would need, not at current prices, and not with lenders in their current mood. They have to live at a great distance from their place of work, and spend huge quantities on travel and hardly get to see their children in the evenings. They are obliged to rent at ever higher prices. In the past 10 years, the number of rented households in London has doubled, and rents went up 12 per cent last year alone.

The overwhelming majority of such people would like to buy, and to get on the same magic property escalator that has boosted the Milibands. It is time to help them. We in London have this month launched a “Housing Covenant”, an understanding between government and middle-income groups who work so hard, that we will put £100 million into building the good-quality homes that they need, and that they can buy.

Of course, Labour will object, and complain that every penny of subsidy should go to “affordable” homes for those, often on benefits, who cannot afford to buy at all. My answer is simple: this plan would help the very “squeezed middle” that Ed claims to espouse. We desperately need more housing not just for the poor, but for this vast and economically crucial group who are the motor of the London (and therefore of the UK) economy.

If we fail to cope with their needs, then the urban economics expert Prof Michael Ball has calculated that the resulting dislocation and inefficiency will cost us £35 billion in lost growth over 10 years. If we can make these investments in middle-income housing, we will boost the construction industry that provides so many jobs in itself, and we will enable the city to support the middle-income employees who drive the machine of the London economy that produces tax yields for everyone — and we will give them the same hope, the same trajectory, the same opportunity as the Milibands enjoy.

“[But] instead of saying, ‘Look, I’m feeling overwhelmed, can you give me some pointers?’, she just started making things up, ripping off other papers.”

The Olympic fabrication appears to have started on July 27, hours before Danny Boyle’s spectacular opening ceremony in London.

Editors noticed that several paragraphs of one story appeared to have been lifted verbatim from a piece written by the Guardian’s Beijing correspondent.

“The standard of English suddenly read like a native speaker,” the newsroom source said.

But Ms Zhao continued to send dispatches from London and apparently turned her sights to The Daily Telegraph’s comment pages where Mr Johnson had published a piece titled: “Here’s 20 jolly good reasons to feel cheerful about the Games.”

“There are semi-naked women in Horse Guards,” began Mr Johnson’s article.

That line was omitted from the Global Times “exclusive” but Mr Johnson was quoted as having told the newspaper: “The Tube has performed pretty well so far, buses are running more or less to time and people are hospitable.”

Almost identical lines appeared in Mr Johnson’s Telegraph column.

The offending Global Times story – which also referred to London’s “famed Victor Park” – was removed from the newspaper’s site on Wednesday evening.

The Global Times source said Ms Zhao had in fact met Mr Johnson but, unusually, had failed to get him to talk.

“She went to some event with Boris where there were 20-30 Chinese journalists. If you have a journalist friend  check out the best gift for a journalist on this site. He did his speech and she exchanged a couple of sentences with him after but didn’t actually get any quotes and [so she] stole them from the Telegraph article,” said the source.

“There were questions raised within the office. ‘Did you really get this quote?'” the source added. “Her words were Google-ed and they came up with the Telegraph article.”

The Beijing Cream blog reported that doubts continued to grow about the veracity of Ms Zhao’s reporting after she quoted an “Indian undergraduate” called Jaime Gornsztejn and a “supermarket employee” named David Beard.

But Ms Zhao’s cover was finally blown after editors in Beijing received a story on “Olympic pin collecting”, that had been “almost entirely” copied from London’s Evening Standard.

“She got told not to do any more stories,” the source said.

“When she flew back she was up before a disciplinary committee that decided to fire her. Everybody was pretty shocked because it was a big opportunity for her.”

Mr Johnson himself is no stranger to making up quotes. After graduating in 1987, he became a trainee reporter with The Times newspaper, but was sacked within a year for falsifying a quotation from his godfather Sir Colin Lucas. He later described the incident as his “biggest cock-up”.