Jude Law Joins Greenpeace Protest In London

Is London Big Enough For A Second Startup Hub?

View gallery British musicians Damon Albarn (L) and Paul Simonon (R) along with British actor Jude Law (2-R) take part in a protest against the detainment of Greenpeace activists by Russia outside the Russian embassy in central London on October 5, 2013. (AFP Photo/Carl Court) 19 hours ago London (AFP) – British actor Jude Law joined hundreds of people gathered in London Saturday as part of worldwide Greenpeace protests over Russia’s jailing of activists opposed to Arctic oil drilling. “Sherlock Holmes” star Law, joined by Damon Albarn, the frontman of British band Blur, and guitarist Paul Simonon of The Clash, voiced support for his friend Frank Hewetson, one of 30 Greenpeace activists threatened with up to 15 years in prison. British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood also turned out to join demonstrators who held up placards showing the faces and names of those detained. Police said about 800 people had gathered for the protest that lasted about two hours. Organisers put the number at 1,000. “Of course I am worried about Frank because I care about his family and I care about him but I know that he is incredibly durable,” Law told reporters as he took part in the demonstration held outside the Russian embassy. “I think that it is very interesting that the people over there (Greenpeace activists) probably knew there would be an arrest involved and the threat of a conviction is probably part and parcel of the act of drawing attention to the drilling in the Arctic which we all know is an international problem which needs confronting.” Law added: “What is ludicrous is that they have been charged with piracy which has a threat of 15 years in prison.” Greenpeace supporters held vigils across the world Saturday in support of the activists, whose imprisonment has sparked a new row between Moscow and the West. A 950-tonne icebreaker sailed by Greenpeace was impounded by Russian authorities last month after it approached the world’s first oil rig in the pristine Barents Sea — the focus of energy companies from around the world. A court in Russia’s northwestern region of Murmansk has since charged all crew members — who come from 18 different countries — with charges that carry jail terms of up to 15 years. Society & Culture

Photo by Olivia Harris, Reuters LONDON – In a spartan office in the London headquarters of De Beers, Elliot Tannenbaum holds a cloudless stone the size and shape of a domino to the light: a rough diamond worth millions, even before it is cut and polished. A veteran diamantaire, Tannenbaum’s family firm is one of some 80 buyers handpicked by the diamond giant to buy rough gems from its mines, under an arcane system of pre-determined allocations and regular sales meetings known as “sights”. “I have been coming here some ten times a year for 35 years, I have missed only two or three sights. It is part of our routine,” says Tannenbaum, whose Leo Schachter group, founded in New York and now headquartered in Israel, is a major manufacturer of polished diamonds. But this week’s sight is De Beers’ last in London. From now on, the action will be in Gaborone, dusty capital of Botswana. The office allocated to Tannenbaum’s firm, his dedicated De Beers contacts and the black-and-yellow attache case stacked with clear plastic bags of diamonds will move south along with the whole of the company’s sales operation – 85 out of 300 London-based De Beers employees. The 2011 decision to move – which will cost more than $120 million, including shiny new offices in Gaborone – follows years of negotiations between Anglo-American-owned De Beers and Botswana, the largest producer of gem diamonds and home to mines like Jwaneng, the world’s richest. The move secured a new 10-year contract for the sorting, valuing and sales of diamonds from the Botswana mines run by Debswana, a 50:50 joint venture between De Beers and the southern African country’s government – the longest sales contract agreed to date between the two sides. It will shift more than $6 billion of annual rough diamond sales from an international financial centre to a comparative backwater with a population of 230,000, in one of the most dramatic examples of a producing country battling successfully to keep value and profits from the raw materials at home. The change will test Botswana’s ability to develop skills and services, lower an unemployment rate stuck at roughly 18 percent and diversify an economy still dependent on diamonds for more than 80 percent of exports. By separating sales from corporate headquarters, the move is also arguably the biggest challenge De Beers has faced to the way it does business since the current sales model was set up nearly a century ago to secure its then-dominant position. END OF AN ERA The shift south, long expected in one form or another, raises practical questions – visa difficulties, a lack of direct flights and suitable hotels – but has also sparked a debate around the future of De Beers and its role in the gem market.

Goodbye London: De Beers heads to Africa

Around September last year a piece of land became available behind Westfield [shopping center in West London]. There was a bunch of warehouses back here, and so we took over the whole warehouse and turned it into our own West London incubator that houses a whole host of different businesses. Having our own four walls was good, he explains. The Advantages Of Heading West This location in FIG Village has other advantages besides a simple set of walls. A lot of the companies we work with are actually out West. If you look at where Cisco, where Microsoft Microsoft , where the big B2B tech is, its actually out this side of town, as is Discovery Channel, Sky and the BBC, Hill says. Wazoku, which provides an internal idea generation and management platform for the BBC has clearly benefited from this proximity. But has being away from the East London tech action created other hassles for the fledgling company? Quite the opposite, claims Hill. A lot of clients, theyre struggling for meeting space in Central London. Theyre really happy to come to us. Weve got a huge space. Weve got a Muay Thai boxing gym in here, so we have two boxing rings in the office people find it quite quirky. If were going to meet clients, then the fact that we can show them an interesting space that isnt just four desks in a really expensive Shoreditch office gives us some more credibility, Hill says.