India Car Ads: Ford Sorry Over Women In Boot

Ford has apologised after car adverts in India showed women bound and gagged in the boot of vehicles.

The car manufacturer said it "deeply regretted" a series of adverts for the India-manufactured Ford Figo. 

One of the adverts shows a cartoon of Italy's ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi flashing a Victory sign with three women captive in the boot.

Another depicts Paris Hilton driving with the Kardashian sisters - bound and gagged.

The tag line on both reads: "Leave your worries behind with Figo's extra-large boot."

The adverts were created in India, a country still reeling from a series of shocking sex attacks on women, including the gang rape of a student on a Delhi bus.

A salesman with customers and the Figo in a Mumbai showroom

They appeared online on the Ads of The World website but have been pulled before featuring on any other paid sites.

Ford said: "We deeply regret this incident and agree with our agency partners that it should have never happened. 

"The posters are contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency within Ford and our agency partners. Together with our partners, we are reviewing approval and oversight processes to help ensure nothing like this ever happens again."

Advertising agency WPP said it regretted the ads, which should never have been created in the first place.

In a statement to The Huffington Post, WPP said: "We deeply regret the publishing of posters that were distasteful and contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency within WPP Group.

"These were never intended for paid publication and should never have been created, let alone uploaded to the internet.

"This was the result of individuals acting without proper oversight and appropriate actions have been taken within the agency where they work to deal with the situation."

Mr Berlusconi is currently on trial for allegedly paying a 17-year-old girl for sex when she attended some of his parties. Both deny any wrongdoing.

The Figo - manufactured in Chennai, India - launched in 2010.

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Girl, 9, Hikes Out Of Canyon After Car Crash

A nine-year-old girl in California, who survived a car crash that killed her dad, has trekked for a mile in near darkness out of a remote canyon to get help.

Celia Renteria clambered out of the wreckage of the Ford SUV after it was launched about 200ft (60m) down an embankment, flipped over several times and came to rest on rough ground.

Her father, 35-year-old Alejandro Renteria, was left unconscious by the smash, just off a semi-rural stretch of the Sierra Highway in Acton at about 1am on Sunday.

Celia Renteria in hospital. Pic: Family video/KCAL-TV

She acted calmly throughout the ordeal, her family said. 

She even turned off the engine after smelling fuel.

Celia then hiked back up to the road to a commuter rail station, where she flagged down a passing motorist just over an hour later.

"She walked quite a distance in a very, very threatening environment. It's very black out there, very dark," California Highway Patrol Sergeant Tom Lackey told KABC-TV.

"It's very steep and it's brushy and there's also coyotes in the background."

A helicopter transported the girl to the Los Angeles Children's Hospital.

She was treated for minor injuries including bumps and bruises and a cut on her face.

Relatives released a short video of her in her hospital bed to local station KCAL-TV.

Emergency workers found her father's dead body in the car.

"They were really close. And that hurts me the most," Amber Mejia, the girl's sister, told the TV station.

Celia told authorities that she and her dad were on their way back home from a party, when he had difficulty negotiating the winding roads.

The California Highway Patrol is investigating if alcohol played a role in the crash.

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Zimbabwe: EU Suspends 'Majority' Of Sanctions

The European Union has suspended the majority of its sanctions against Zimbabwe after it held a "peaceful, succesful and credible" constitutional referendum.

The decision removes restrictions against 81 people and eight firms, but President Robert Mugabe and two companies, including a state-run diamond miner, remain on the list.

In a statement, the EU said it recognised  "the importance of the referendum and the adoption of a new constitution as a major step".

The new constitution, which was approved by nearly 95% of voters, limits the powers of the presidency after 33 years of rule by Mr Mugabe.

More than half of the country's six million voters took part in the ballot, which was backed by both Mr Mugabe and and his main political rival and prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe joined a power-sharing deal in 2008

The result paved the way forward for presidential and parliamentary elections expected to to be held this year which are being seen as a showdown between the two men.

Among the measures in the new constitution is a two-term limit for the president. However, it will not apply retroactively, so Mugabe could still theoretically rule for the next decade.

The new constitution and referendum were conditions of the power-sharing deal signed by Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai after disputed elections in 2008.

Although the referendum passed without any problems, critics seized on the arrest of four staff members from Mr Tsvangirai's MDC party and a leading human rights lawyer as evidence that Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF is trying to intimidating rivals ahead of the elections.

Lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa was released by authorities on Monday.

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Cyprus Bailout Deal Wins Eurozone Approval

Deposits above 100,000 euros (£85,000) in the Bank of Cyprus will be hit with a levy of "around 30%" under the EU bailout deal, a government official has confirmed.

Spokesman Christos Stylianides told state radio that the charge would be paid as the second largest Greek Cypriot lender is destined to be wound up.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev discussed issues with his deputies

The island's last-minute deal to secure a 10bn euro (£8.5bn) EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved bailout by eurozone ministers, saved the country from a banking system bankruptcy and eurozone departure.

However Russia, which is the source of many large uninsured Cypriot accounts worth up to 20bn euros (£17bn), reacted angrily on Monday to the levy news.

Angry Greek Cypriots have taken to the streets

"The stealing of what has already been stolen continues," Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was quoted by news agencies as telling a meeting of government officials.

A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin added that the president has asked the government to restructure a 2.5bn euro (£2.13bn) loan to southern Cyprus.

Russian news agencies quoted Mr Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, as saying that the president has instructed the government to work out the terms for restructuring the loan, which was made 2011.

The British arm of the so-called bad bank, Laiki Bank UK, said customers could continue to withdraw their cash but warned that large deposits may be at risk.

Laiki Bank UK operates as a branch of its parent and gave clearer guidance on its website on Monday telling customers they are protected up to 100,000 euros by the Cyprus Deposit Protection Scheme and not the UK's compensation scheme.

"This means that if our bank is unable to meet its financial obligations, your eligible deposits are protected up to a total of 100,000 euros per depositor," the notice said.

Christine Lagarde and the German finance minister at the Eurogroup

Key markets across Europe, excluding Italy because of a budget deficit issues, reacted positively in midday trading.

The second-largest bank, Popular Bank of Cyprus - known as Laiki - will effectively be shut down and split into a "good bank" and a "bad bank".

Sub-100,000-euro deposits in Laiki will be safeguarded and transferred to the Bank of Cyprus, the so-called "good bank", while those above the 100,000-euro limit, which under EU law are not insured, will be frozen and hit with the levy of around 30% to resolve the debt crisis.

The move will yield some 4.2bn euros (£3.6bn) overall - the bulk of the 5.8bn euros (£4.9bn) Cyprus needed to raise as part of the bailout conditions.

But it is unclear to say when the bailout and bank restructuring will return Cyprus to growth, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso admitted afterwards.

Banks have been closed this past week

"I am confident that the programme will work, but let's be honest. At this moment, we cannot say exactly what the impact is going to be," Mr Barroso said.

"It will depend on the level of implementation and the commitment of Cyprus itself."

The deal followed fraught negotiations between Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and the troika of creditors - the IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank.

"We've put an end to the uncertainty that has affected Cyprus and the euro area over the past week," Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who chairs the meetings of the 17-nation eurozone's finance ministers, said.

"We believe that this will form a lasting, durable and fully financed solution," IMF chief Christine Lagarde said.

Advertised property for Russians in the southern Cypriot port of Limassol

President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, added: "I welcome the agreement reached by the Eurogroup and the Cypriot authorities early this morning.

"The agreement is essential to ensure a sustainable future for Cyprus in the euro area. This is first and foremost true for its people, who are living through times of great uncertainty."

After the eurozone's finance ministers' approval, several national parliaments, such as Germany's, must also approve the bailout deal, which might take another few weeks. EU officials said they expect the whole programme to be approved by mid-April.

Cyprus' outsized banking sector was crippled by exposure to crisis-hit Greece and has been used as a haven for foreign funds.

In a vote on Tuesday, the country's 56-seat parliament dismissed a levy on depositors as "bank robbery".

The country's finance minister Michael Sarris then spent three fruitless days in Moscow trying to win help from Russia. The two countries share historic religious ties.

Cypriots were outraged by the original proposal and have been queuing at cash machines ever since the government ordered banks to close last weekend.

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Spain's Bankia Shares Fall Below 1p Value

Shares in nationalised Spanish lender Bankia slumped on Monday after a rescue fund valued the stock at less than one penny each, before a planned injection of fresh capital.

The valuation wiped out investors in the country's fourth-biggest bank and was widely expected as the government tries to draw a line under Spain's biggest-ever bank failure and give Bankia a fresh start.

But the pain for investors, many of them small Spanish investors who bought into the lender's July 2011 initial public offering at 3.75 euros (£3.18) a share, is unlikely to end there.

Bankia is expected to dip far below the new bailout price in coming months as investors focus on the bank's weak state, a struggling Spanish economy and a new government plan to partially merge Bankia with two other troubled lenders.

Under Bankia's recapitalisation, hybrid debt and preference shares are due to be converted into discounted ordinary shares.

Analysts believe thousands of the bond and preference share owners will sell their new ordinary stock at the earliest opportunity to try to recoup some their heavy losses, pulling the shares down further.

Bankia stock was at 0.155 euro (1.33p) by 2.45pm GMT on Monday, compared to their Friday close of 0.25 euro (2.1p).

Selling pressure was so great that trading in Bankia shares began more than an hour after the market open.

Analysts expect Bankia shares to progressively adjust to the 1 euro cent valuation before the cash injection due in May, but say it could later fall as low as 0.004 euro.

The bank, formed in 2011 from the merger of seven savings banks, is showing tentative signs of recovery as it prepares to receive an injection of 10.7 billion euros (£8.7bn) in European bailout funds in May.

Spain's government requested 41 billion euros from its European partners to rescue Bankia and other lenders that had amassed bad debt from the country's 2008 property market crash.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mentor Joe Weider Dies

Arnold Schwarzenegger has paid tribute to his mentor and "father figure" Joe Weider, a leading figure in bodybuilding, who died at the age of 93.

Weider brought the young Austrian weightlifter to the US early in his career and helped him achieve the American dream as he became an international movie star.

The Canadian, who was a bodybuilder himself, helped popularise the sport and played a key role in introducing Schwarzenegger to the world.

Weider created one of bodybuilding's leading events, the Mr Olympia competition, in 1965 and reportedly discovered the Austrian at a contest in Europe two years later.

He relentlessly promoted Schwarzenegger, who won the Mr Olympia title a then-record seven times - every year from 1970 to 1975 and again in 1980.

Arnold Schwarzenegger initially found fame as a champion bodybuilder

Weider also created the Ms Olympia contest in 1980, the Fitness Olympia in 1995 and the Figure Olympia in 2003.

He spread the message of health and fitness worldwide with publications as Muscle & Fitness and Flex, of which The Terminator star is now the executive editor.

Weider's publicist Charlotte Parker said he died of heart failure in Los Angeles.

Following his death, Schwarzenegger said in a statement: "I knew about Joe Weider long before I met him.

"He was the godfather of fitness who told all of us to be somebody with a body. He taught us that through hard work and training we could all be champions.

"As I read his articles in Austria, I felt that he was speaking directly to me and I committed to move to America to make my vision of becoming the best bodybuilder, to live the American dream, and to become an actor a reality."

Schwarzenegger, who was elected governor of California in 2003 and served two terms before retiring from politics, added: "Joe didn't just inspire my earliest dreams; he made them come true the day he invited me to move to America to pursue my bodybuilding career.

"I will never forget his generosity. One of Joe's greatest qualities is that he wasn't just generous with his money; he freely gave of his time and expertise and became a father figure for me."

Weider once said of his protege: "Every sport needs a hero and I knew that Arnold was the right man."

Schwarzenegger said Weider was the godfather of fitness

Schwarzenegger also said he helped land him his first movie role, in Hercules In New York, by passing him off to the producers as a German Shakespearean actor.

"He was there for me constantly throughout my life, and I will miss him dearly," Schwarzenegger added.

Born in Canada in 1919, Weider grew up in a tough area of Montreal. He said he was a small, skinny teenager who was being picked on by bullies when he discovered the magazine Strength.

He said he tried to join a local wrestling team, but was turned down by the coach who feared he was so small he would be hurt.

Weider built his own weights from scrap parts found in a railway yard and pumped them relentlessly. He was eventually invited to join a weightlifting club.

He won his first bodybuilding contest at the age of 17, and soon after began to publish his first magazine, Your Physique.

He is survived by his wife of more than 50 years, Betty.

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Musharraf Returns To Pakistan Despite Threat

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has defied Taliban death threats to return home after more than four years in exile.

The 69-year-old ex-dictator was whisked away by security forces as he arrived at Karachi airport and did not stop to greet hundreds of supporters who had waited for him.

It is unclear if the security forces detained Mr Musharraf, who faces criminal charges in three cases including one involving the assassination of ex-premier Benazir Bhutto, or acted out of concern for his safety.

His return came after the Pakistani Taliban released a video threatening to unleash a squad of suicide bombers to assassinate him if he sets foot in the country.

Hours before his arrival, a car bomb exploded near the Afghanistan border, killing 17 soldiers and injuring dozens more.

Mr Musharraf greets supporters on his flight home to Pakistan

Mr Musharraf said he was prepared to risk any danger to stand for election on May 11, marking the first time an elected government has fulfilled its term and handed over power to another elected government.

"I don't get scared ... by such kind of threat … I am going back to save Pakistan," said Mr Musharraf, who escaped three al Qaeda assassination attempts as ruler.

Mr Musharraf is expected to make his way to the tomb of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the father and first president of Pakistan.

He plans to hold a public rally for his All Pakistan Muslim League party, but police said they had withdrawn permission following the Taliban threat. However, the party's information secretary said the rally would go ahead "at any cost".

Mr Musharraf has been living in London and Dubai since leaving Pakistan

Mr Musharraf has failed to follow through on previous promises to return home but flew in from Dubai after a Pakistani court granted him pre-emptive bail on Friday.

The order prevents his immediate arrest in the three cases in which he is implicated.

Under the pre-emptive bail, he has 10 days to appear in court, which Mr Musharraf promised he would do.

He said he would "face these cases with bravery", adding that "elements in Pakistan and outside" were spreading rumours that he was not returning, but the granting of his bail would address some of those concerns.

The ex-president seized power in a bloodless coup as army chief of staff in 1999 and left the country after stepping down in August 2008 when Asif Ali Zardari was elected president after the murder of his wife, Benazir Bhutto.

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Tilda Swinton Sleeps In Glass Box For Art

Tilda Swinton has reprised one of her more unusual roles - sleeping in a glass box.

The Beach actress, who is known for both arthouse and mainstream films, is performing her one-person piece at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The Moonrise Kingdom star began presenting her work, which is called The Maybe, on Saturday.

Swinton arriving at the premiere of Moonrise Kingdom in 2012

In The Maybe, 52-year-old Swinton lies sleeping in a glass box for the day.

The exhibit will change locations within the museum every time Swinton performs.

There is no published schedule for the piece, which will be staged six or so more times this year.

Swinton first performed the piece at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1995.

In 1996, the British star performed it in the Museo Barracco in Rome.

Swinton won an Oscar in 2008 for best supporting actress for her role in legal drama Michael Clayton, which also starred George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Sydney Pollack.

Her other films include Burn After Reading, The Beach and The Chronicles Of Narnia.

She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performances in The Deep End and We Need To Talk About Kevin.

The actress was recently seen alongside David Bowie in the video for his single The Stars (Are Out Tonight).

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Berezovsky Death: Police Give Home 'All Clear'

Boris Berezovsky: A Profile

Updated: 10:23pm UK, Saturday 23 March 2013

Boris Berezovsky was once one of Russia's most powerful kingmakers, a member of the influential group of Russian tycoons referred to as the "oligarchs".

Born in Moscow in 1946, the son of a civil engineer, he gained a doctorate in applied mathematics, before becoming one of a number of Russian businessmen who took advantage of Perestroika.

He made his money founding the car company LogoVAZ in 1989, selling local Russian cars and importing Mercedes.

As his wealth grew so too did his sphere of influence and in 1993 he entered the Kremlin's inner circle, eventually earning the nickname Rasputin, after the mystic adviser to the Romanovs.

By the mid-1990s Mr Berezovsky owned a stake in the oil company Sibneft and had a majority share in Russia's main television channel, ORT.

In 1997 Forbes estimated his wealth was $3bn.

At Davos in 1996 he joined forces with other businessmen who had flourished in the ruins of the Soviet Union and they formed a pact, known as the "Davos Pact" in which they agreed to bank roll Boris Yeltsin for his second presidential run.

Together with members of Mr Yeltsin's family, like his daughter Tatyana Yumasheva, and like-minded politicians, like Anatoly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar and Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, they effectively ran Russia during Mr Yetsin's second term as his health faltered.

When it was clear a successor was needed, it is said that it was Mr Berezovsky who hand-picked the ex-KGB head, Vladimir Putin.

He may have made him king but Mr Putin soon made it clear that he was not to be anyone's puppet and shortly after he became President the two men fell out.

Mr Berezovsky resigned from the Duma and set himself up in opposition then left the country on business. He never returned.

In November 2000, while travelling, he was summoned for economic crimes but he did not respond and set up home in London. He was granted asylum in the UK in 2003.

Mr Berezovsky vowed that he would bring Mr Putin down, but after a series of assassination attempts, he also lived in fear for his life.

According to Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian FSB agent who was assassinated in London in 2006, a Russian agent was preparing a hit on Mr Berezovsky in September 2003.

Mr Litvinenko had also claimed in 1998 when he was an FSB agent that he himself had been ordered to kill Mr Berezovsky.

In 2007, Scotland Yard said it had foiled a plot to assassinate Mr Berezovsky in the UK. The alleged hitman, a Chechen national, was arrested in London and deported to Russia.

Mr Berezovsky also survived an assassination attempt in Russia in 1994 when a car bomb exploded, wounding him and decapitating his driver.

And as Mr Berezovsky's power faded in his self-imposed exile, so did his wealth.

According to the Sunday Times Rich List by 2011, his net worth was only about $900m (£591m).

Mr Berezovsky's stake in Sibneft eventually led to a court battle with Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, which is estimated to have cost him £100m, and speculation about his financial well-being.

In 2012, he lost the High Court case in which he accused his fellow oligarch of breach of trust, breach of contract and claimed Mr Abramovich "intimidated" him into selling shares in Sibneft for a "mere $1.3bn" (£800m) - "a fraction of their true worth".

In July 2011 his ex-wife Galina Beshanrova, 53, won the biggest divorce settlement in history, said to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

Mr Berezovsky ran up further legal bills of more than £250,000 later in 2012 fighting a case against his former lover, Elena Gorbunova.

Ms Gorbunova, who had two children with Mr Berezovsky, complained that she had not been given millions promised by him.

On Wednesday, Mr Berezovsky sold Red Lenin, an Andy Warhol screen print, for £133,875 at Christie's auction house, prompting more speculation about his financial situation.

Demoralised by the Abramovich case, the Kremlin claims that Mr Berezovsky, the kingmaker, was a broken man in the days before he died.

He had written, Mr Putin's spokesman claimed, to beg forgiveness and to finally return to Russia.

He never did.

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Cyprus Bailout: President Arrives For Talks

Eurozone Once More On The Brink

Updated: 3:45pm UK, Sunday 24 March 2013

By Ed Conway, Economics Editor

It's an unfamiliar feeling these days, travelling to a country with capital controls - or the threat of them slamming down any moment.

You bring more cash than usual because the ATMs don't all work, but you can't take too much or you might not be allowed to take the remainder back home. The feeling's even odder when the country in question is in the euro area.

I'm writing this from on board a flight to Cyprus, filled with an odd combination of locals, tourists and journalists talking about bank haircuts and capital controls. There is, dare I say it, a palpable air of excitement. No-one is quite sure what we will witness over the next few days - and for good reason.

The Eurozone is once more on the brink. It's deeply reminiscent of last summer, when Europe contemplated chucking Greece off the edge. Around that time I asked one of the continent's senior policymakers (someone not prone to hyperbole) what would happen in Athens. He looked me straight in my face and said: "Put it this way: if you've got any money in Greece, get it out. Now."

Of course, the brinksmanship came to an end when, in that famous London speech, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi vowed to do "whatever it takes" to save the single currency. The Europeans realised that to toss Greece aside could feasibly take down the euro.

The rest is history: the ECB unveiled its Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme, markets gradually calmed down and, notwithstanding continued pain on the periphery, the crisis died down.

Until now. This weekend, once again, Europe is looking off that cliff-edge, contemplating the economic collapse and, possibly, the euro exit, of one of its members. In 48 hours we shall know just how serious it is this time around. And that slightly apprehensive sense of excitement on board is reinforced by the knowledge that nothing like this has happened for generations.

There hasn't been a system-wide closure of banks in a European nation since the 1930s. Even the collapse of Credit Anstalt - the event that triggered the European Great Depression - took down Austria's system for only two days. Rarely has economic policy been quite so confidence-sappingly shambolic. There are few examples - save for Argentina at the turn of the millennium - of a country having to resort to a cash economy because of the collapse of the banking system.

And then there are the capital controls. This weekend the Cypriot Parliament passed a bill enabling it to impose controls over a quite disturbing range of transactions: limiting the amount of cash coming in and out of the country, restraining electronic transfers and potentially even forcibly converting instant access bank accounts into time-limited ones.

To say that Europe hasn't seen anything like this in a generation is to understate the significance of this: the free movement of capital is a fundamental element of the European Union. I'm not talking merely about a Treaty of Rome aspiration, or the inconvenience of not being able to leave the country after a holiday with all one's cash - the ability for money to flow between different parts of the Eurozone is a fundamental element of the entire monetary edifice.

Don't take it from me, take it from David Marsh, who put it this way in his monumental history of the single currency, The Euro: "The ... liberalism of an integrated European financial market is one of the essential conditions within the Euro area required to provide the economic flexibility and financial lubrication to offset the rigidity of permanently fixed exchange rates."

If capital controls are in place, it's the end of this monetary system as we know it - at the very least it's probably the end of Cyprus's place within it. A euro within Cyprus will suddenly be worth significantly less than a euro in Germany or, for that matter, Greece. Or to put it in more economic, and slightly more doomsday terms, consider this: there's a pretty fundamental rule in economic policy that nation states must choose two (but not three) of the following: independent monetary policy (in other words the power to set your own interest rates), a fixed exchange rate and free movement of capital. Economists call this the "impossible trinity" or trilemma, because you can never have all three at any one time. If Cyprus is to abandon the free movement of capital, the next economically-logical step is for it to have its own independent monetary policy - in other words to leave the single currency.

Which begs the question, why has Cyprus readied these controls? The primary and most obvious motive is that it fears a sudden and enormous outflow of money from its financial system when the banks finally reopen. Simon Ward of Henderson reckons the instant capital flight could be around 15bn euros, which is about three-quarters the size of the Cypriot economy. It would be far greater were it not for the fact that many bank accounts and investments do not permit instant access. Capital controls would at least force some of this money to remain in the country - if unwillingly. Of course, it would also obliterate the economy's reputation as a place to invest for decades, but one has to presume that by this stage the Cypriots feel they have nothing left to lose.

Which brings one to the secondary motivation: brinksmanship. The imposition of capital controls would be an enormous one-fingered salute to the eurocrats in Brussels, who know full-well that measures of that kind would bring Cyprus one giant leap closer to leaving the single currency. It's no coincidence that this law was passed well before the Cypriot President's flight up to Brussels for the make-or-break summit tonight: it's intended as a sign that if the Europeans aren't prepared to help, it is prepared to countenance the alternatives.

Unfortunately for Cyprus, its hand looks decidedly weak. For one thing, the talks between the Finance Minister Michalis Sarris and the Russian authorities over a possibly supplementary bail-out to add to the 2.5bn euros one from earlier in the crisis have, predictably, fallen through. There will be no white knight coming to its rescue. Neither have the markets helped: a plunge in stock market indices or a spike in other nations' bond yields over the past week might have given Brussels cause to think twice. As it is, investors have simply shrugged their shoulders at this forsaken island.

Their rationale is, in the first order, quite sensible. Cyprus is tiny. The population of the Greek half of the island is, at 800,000, slightly smaller than Liverpool. The entire island has fewer people than Glasgow. The country's gross domestic product of around 20bn euros is less than a couple of percentage points the size of France. Even the overblown banking system is, en masse, equivalent to a medium-sized German bank.

Plus, as far as many Europeans are concerned, letting go of Cyprus might provide a useful reminder to the rest of the euro periphery of what they could expect in the event of departure: financial chaos, economic ignominy and a lengthy period of self-imposed (rather than Brussels/Berlin-determined) austerity.

If you think you've heard this all before, you're not wrong: it was precisely what some eurocrats were saying last summer, shortly before Europe turned back from the abyss. So it might be part-bluster. After all, saving Cyprus would cost a fraction of what it cost to bail out Greece.

But then, set against that, it is a German election year. Cyprus made the mistake of turning itself into an offshore laundry for dirty Russian money. Teaching it (and Moscow) a lesson would go down pretty well in Berlin. Hence the European Central Bank's deadline of Monday for the country to come up with a deal, before it switches off the financial life-support of liquidity from Frankfurt.

So that's where we are today. No-one knows how this episode of brinksmanship will end. The fudge of a deal is slowly baking in the Nicosia sun. One of the two main Cypriot banks will be restructured (for which read nationalised); high-end deposits in the other one will be taxed punitively. It's a lot like the deal the IMF suggested before someone (President Anastasiades allegedly, although he denies it) proposed taxing all depositors, not just the wealthy ones.

The main difference is that the Cypriot people have had their economy taken away from them. They are the great victims: both to their Government, for turning their state into a satellite Russian financing hub, and to the Nicosia/EC/IMF nexus which has destroyed their financial system in one short week. Cyprus was not in anything like the state Greece's economy was before this crisis: a smart bail-out deal could have had it back on the road to health before too long. Even if their savings are not taxed, after this mess it's hard to see why any Cypriot will put faith in the Government or the banks for generations to come.

Which is why we're all here today. To see what happens when a nation state is cruelly mistreated by those who claimed to have its best interests at heart.

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