In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) 32 years of dictatorship and almost ten years of war have bled the country dry and left its administration incapable of providing the population with basic services and the government incapable of applying or even formulating public policy.

Last week Centrica announced having signed a three-year gas supply contract with Gazprom Marketing and Trading UK entirely priced against UK spot gas market (NBP). This move follows other announcements in the sector, such as EON long-term gas supply contracts renegotiation, which allowed it to almost double its net-profit forecasts for 2012, or BP intention to sell Shaz Deniz II gas with spot-indexed contracts. All major European suppliers have been able to renegotiate long-term oil-indexed contracts with Gazprom lately and, more generally, contracts are increasingly being based on some spot-indexed price formula. How could that happen and what does it mean?

The European coal industry is at a crossroads. The European Commission (EC) Energy Policy by 2020, the 20/20/20 targets, is not favourable to coal:

a 20% decrease in CO₂ emissions does not favour coal compared with natural gas, its main competitor in electricity generation;

a 20% increase in energy efficiency will lead to a decrease in energy/coal consumption;

a 20% increase in renewables will displace other energy sources, including coal.

Japanese firms are increasingly involved in various global business operations - not only in traditional international trade in goods, but also in offshore production and the new mode of globalization: offshore outsourcing.

Much of the analyses of German reactions to the Arab Spring uprisings have focused on Germany’s contentious decision relating to Libya. By siding with the critics of military intervention in abstaining from UNSC 1973, Germany vexed its allies and arguably displayed an astonishing lack of geostrategic foresight and moral rectitude.