VIDEO: IMF warns on drastic budget cuts

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AppId is over the quota
5 October 2011 Last updated at 15:13 GMT Help

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UK banks hit by Moody's downgrade

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AppId is over the quota
7 October 2011 Last updated at 07:19 GMT Shares in Royal Bank of Scotland have opened sharply down following the downgrade Moody's has downgraded the credit rating of 12 UK financial firms including Lloyds, RBS, Nationwide, and Santander.

Moody's said it now believed the UK government was less likely to support some firms if they got into trouble.

However, the firm emphasised that the downgrades did not "reflect a deterioration in the financial strength of the banking system".

The news sent bank shares lower, with RBS 3.8% off and Lloyds 3.36% down.

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VIDEO: Sri Lanka tea hit by bad weather

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AppId is over the quota
4 October 2011 Last updated at 02:40 GMT Help

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VIDEO: Youth unemployment rise in Eurozone

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AppId is over the quota
4 October 2011 Last updated at 21:07 GMT Help

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Felixstowe opens new port berths

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AppId is over the quota
28 September 2011 Last updated at 13:18 GMT By Richard Scott Transport correspondent, BBC News A look at the new mega-berths

The Port of Felixstowe has formally opened the UK's first shipping berths capable of taking the next generation of giant container ships.

The ships, which are due to arrive in 2013, can carry 18,000 containers.

But they need deeper water to dock, and bigger cranes to be unloaded than are needed for the current biggest ships.

Felixstowe, in Suffolk, says 1,500 new jobs will be created by its expansion plans - 680 directly employed by the port, with another 820 at suppliers.

Import issues

Some 90% of the UK's trade passes through ports. Almost everything we buy that isn't perishable of small and high value comes in on ships.

Felixstowe is the UK's largest container port and deals with more than 40% of our container cargo.

But container ships are getting bigger, and that gives ports a problem.

So Felixstowe has built the only berths in the UK capable of taking the next generation of cargo ships.

The biggest ships in use at the moment can carry around 15,000 containers (TEUs or twenty foot equivalent units) but in 2013 ships capable of carrying 18,000 containers are due to arrive.

The port has dug two deep water berths - numbers 8 and 9 - to accommodate them, as well as bought seven of the world's largest container cranes. These cost ￡6m each.

"Failure to provide facilities for the new container ships would mean the world's most efficient ships could not dock in the UK, driving up the cost of imports and making UK exports less competitive," said David Gledhill, chief executive of Hutchison Ports UK, which owns the port.

'Essential'

The opening of the two new berths is the first stage of a ￡1bn investment programme.

The next generation container ships coming from Asia will only make three or four stops across Northern Europe - and Felixstowe is expecting to be on their calling cards.

"During the last decade many exporters concentrated on the European market, however, economic growth in Europe has slowed considerably, whilst growth in East Asia has accelerated," said John Cridland, director general of the CBI.

"It is therefore essential that the UK is able to export and import goods on a global basis and the expansion at Felixstowe will be a key asset in achieving this."

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Greek bailout cash decision looms

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AppId is over the quota
28 September 2011 Last updated at 08:59 GMT Greeks continue to protest against the latest round of austerity measures European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials are heading for Athens to review Greece's progress in cutting its debt levels.

They hold the key to releasing further bailout money the country badly needs.

On Tuesday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou hailed his country's "superhuman" efforts to cut its budget.

The review comes amid reports of a split among eurozone members about further support for Greece.

Citing "senior European officials", the Financial Times said a number of the bloc's 17 members want private investors to take a bigger hit in the proposed restructuring of Greece's debts.

Eurozone members are in the process of ratifying proposals put forward in July, one of which would see private lenders writing off about 20% of their loans to Greece.

The proposals also included expanding the powers of the eurozone bailout fund.

Continue reading the main story Mark Lowen BBC News, Athens

It has become the focal point of the anti-austerity demonstrations: Syntagma Square in the heart of Athens, in front of parliament.

A few hundred protesters gathered there again as the property tax was debated inside. They chanted "resist", calling politicians "thieves".

As news filtered out that the vote was passed, the mood turned. Protesters scuffled with riot police, who used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse them.

For an hour the trouble continued, police charging the crowds across the square and into the narrow streets beyond. Some projectiles were thrown, battered away by the police. As the night wore on, calm returned.

Anger is growing here at the austerity drive, with the property tax one of the most unpopular measures to date. And while the government has a tough time convincing its international creditors to stick with it, facing down an increasing wave of protests will be an immense challenge too.

Germany will vote on the plan on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the head of the European Commission has stressed that Greece will not leave the eurozone. There has been growing speculation that the country will be forced to default on its debts, with some observers suggesting this would inevitably lead to it exiting the bloc.

However, in his annual State of the Union address in Strasbourg, Jose Manuel Barroso said: "Greece is, and Greece will remain, a member of the euro area."

He did, however, warn that the EU was facing its "greatest challenge".

There has been widespread criticism that leaders are acting too slowly in pushing through measures to address the wider debt crisis.

Jean-Claude Trichet, the head of the ECB, has called on governments to speed up their policy response.

He told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra that leaders needed "to demonstrate their sense of direction", and do so quickly.

Deficit cut

Commission, ECB and IMF officials will decide whether to release about 8bn euros ($11bn; ￡7bn) from a 110bn bailout package agreed last summer.

Discussions with Greek officials are expected to begin on Thursday.

A key obstacle to the payment was removed on Tuesday when the Greek parliament passed a controversial new property tax bill, first announced earlier this month, that aims to boost revenues.

Greece's new property tax has proved particularly unpopular

Anyone who does not pay the new tax risks having their power cut off.

The tax is one of a number of austerity measures Athens is introducing, measures that saw Greece's budget deficit fall by more than 5 percentage points in 2010, Mr Papandreou said in a speech to German business leaders on Tuesday.

Speaking in Berlin, he said Greece would fulfil its obligations and hoped to be without a primary deficit from 2012.

He added that it was very important his country gets indications of support from "our European partners".

Renewed hope

There has been renewed optimism this week that eurozone leaders may finally be ready to take decisive action to tackle the debt crisis.

G20 leaders met over the weekend to discuss the best way forward, but EU officials stressed that no grand plan of action had been agreed.

A number of ideas were reportedly discussed, including a 50% write-down of Greece's government debts.

Other proposals included strengthening big European banks that could be hit by any defaults by highly indebted governments, and boosting the size of the eurozone bailout fund.

These helped to boost investor sentiment, with stock markets rising sharply on Tuesday.

The Dow Jones in New York closed up 1.3%, while France's Cac index ended up 5.7%, Germany's Dax 5.3% and the UK's FTSE 4%.

Asian and European markets were largely flat on Wednesday.

However, markets remain highly volatile, with investors remaining sceptical of policymakers' ability to solve the crisis quickly.

"Every time the market gets its hopes up that a solution to the eurozone crisis is near, the rug gets pulled from under it," said Ben Potter at IG Markets.

"Only when we see firm action being taken, rather than hollow promises, will confidence and sentiment begin to improve."

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Making Olympic technology work

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AppId is over the quota
28 September 2011 Last updated at 23:07 GMT Weighty task: Making the technology for the London Olympics work is a "huge responsibility" says chief integrator Michele Hyron Each week we ask high-profile technology decision-makers three questions.

Michele Hyron: Viewers will be able to choose which competition, nation or athlete they want to follow

This week it is Michele Hyron of Atos,?chief integrator for the Olympic Games in London. She is responsible for leading the consortium of IT partners to design, build and operate the massive IT infrastructure that will support the London 2012 Games.

Ms Hyron leads a team that include employees from Atos and technology partners LOCOG, as well as volunteers.

She already has nearly 10 years of Olympic Games experience, serving as operations manager at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, integration manager at Athens 2004 and quality manager at the winter Games in Salt Lake City 2002.

What's your biggest technology problem right now?

As the chief integrator for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, I suppose that people would expect me to have a long list of problems. After all, if the IT doesn't work, then effectively the Games can't take place.

It is a huge responsibility, and one that everyone takes extremely seriously, but this is now my third Olympic Games and Atos's sixth.

While the technologies advance every time and we are faced with fresh problems as we integrate new applications, we have developed a robust process that ensures that we test everything in the lab over and over again.

By the time we get to the Games themselves, we have covered an extensive testing program.

In fact, our work is analogous to training pilots in aircraft simulators.

We throw every possible scenario at the IT teams - from the failure of the communications network to someone accidentally pulling out a plug - and ensure that we can recover from these without anyone at the Games or watching on TV noticing that a problem has even occurred.

The most challenging aspect of the job, though, is undoubtedly the massive increases in the amount of data which has to be organised and channelled with split-second timing.

It is estimated that between the dawn of civilisation - some four to five thousand years ago - and 2003, mankind had created about five exabyte's of data, which is 5bn gigabytes.

Across the world, we now create that amount of data every two days and the volume of business data is doubling every 18 months.

The Olympic Games is no exception. For Beijing, we produced 50% more data than we handled at the Athens Games.

The London 2012 Games will see us process significantly more information than we had at Beijing, as we meet the demands of sports fans worldwide for the latest information on their favourite events and sports stars, and deliver this information via broadcasters, internet and mobile.

What's the next big tech thing in your industry?

Atos is a global business with a presence in more than 42 countries and a workforce of 78,500 business technologists. In many respects our industry covers virtually every aspect of IT and every industry sector.

However, from my personal perspective it is the magic that we can now work with metadata to create a completely different TV experience for watching sport which is the most exciting.

We will have the ability to offer viewers the chance to choose exactly which competition, nation or athlete they want to follow, and enable them to follow more than one sporting event simultaneously.

This digital quality service will be offered over fixed and mobile devices, and is designed to allow sports fan to watch events that aren't even being broadcast on a regular programme.

So unlike the type of technologies people are used to today, with a personal video recorder (PVR) integrated into a set-top box allowing them to select when they view broadcasts, this new approach makes the viewer the director, selecting what they watch, when and from what angle.

Our approach incorporates face-recognition technologies, and this means that a viewer can either have automatic selection of the best shot or a recommendation that they can accept or reject.

The amount of data that has to been managed to offer this service is staggering, and by 2014 we estimate that more than 90% of all data traffic in the world will be video content.

It will be the equivalent of 32 million people streaming Avatar in 3D continuously every month.

What's the biggest technology mistake you've ever made - either at work or in your own life?

As a complete beginner in software development, at the start of my career, I enjoyed developing a program in Assembler.

I made it as compact as possible, playing with the stack and using other tricks. It was great fun!

What I didn't appreciate at the time was that this piece of code was completely unmaintainable.

My colleagues were still blaming me for this work years after I moved on to other things.

It was a really good lesson so early on in my career, and taught me the importance of looking ahead and appreciating the impact of what I do, not just tomorrow but years into the future.

It also taught me that while playing with software is really fun - and it is - delivering programs that are robust and practical is what counts.

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