Big Boss Interview

A two day general strike is under way in India today, as workers protest government economic policies. We hear how everyday life has been affected from Nikhil Inamdar, BBC India Business correspondent in Mumbai. President Biden has a big new budget to take to congress - we hear from Chris Low from FHN Financial who says this bill is notable for having some sweeteners for the other side. Workers at three different Amazon warehouses in the US are voting on whether to organise unions. The BBC's Michelle Fleury reports from one of the facilities, in Staten Island, New York, on whether this effort is likely to succeed. And Jeffrey Sonnenfeld at the Yale School of Management, explains how the so-called "Business Retreat" from Russia could pressure President Putin into retreating from the war with Ukraine.

(Picture of protesters during a nationwide general strike against the policies of the central government, in Ahmedabad, India. Photo by Sam Panthaky via Getty Images).

At a Nato summit in Brussels, its members have discussed boosting defence spending. We get the very latest from the summit from BBC Brussels correspondent Jessica Parker.

Also in the programme, the BBC's Jonathan Head reports from Thailand on the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on tourists from the two countries who find themselves stranded there, either because sanctions mean there are no flights to return to Russia, or the war in Ukraine means a return to the country is currently out of the question.

New York's famous yellow taxi cabs are being added to the ride-hailing platform Uber. Chris Mills Rodrigo is a journalist at The Hill and discusses the move.

And the streaming service Spotify has released figures showing how much it paid artists in the past year, in a bid to become more transparent. But it's still unclear what exactly musicians are paid. Eddie Fu of the pop culture website Consequence gives his reaction.

Sasha Twining is joined throughout the programme by Dante Desparte, chief strategy officer and head of global policy at Circle, from Washington, and Sushma Ramachandran, an independent business journalist and columnist at the Tribune Newspaper, who's in Delhi.

(Picture: Nato leaders. Credit: Getty Images)

Russian president, Vladimir Putin, says Moscow will begin insisting that payments for Russian gas - from unfriendly countries, as he put it - are made in roubles. He's given the Russian central bank a week to find a way of switching these payments away from other currencies. Jane Foley is head of FX strategy at Rabobank and explains what the impact will be.

In the UK, prices are rising faster than wages and the Bank of England says inflation could hit double digits this year. Finance minister Rishi Sunak announced measures today which he says will help ease the pain for consumers. We speak to Roger Bootle, the chairman of the macro-economic research company Capital Economics, to get his assessment of Sunak's response to the cost of living crisis.

A special report from the BBC's Ed Butler investigates the world of ethical investment, to see just how ethical they really are.

And we hear from Guy Gadney, CEO of AI company Charisma Entertainment, on his way back from the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, about the likely trends in gaming for 2022.

Sasha Twining is joined throughout the programme by Bloomberg Opinion columnist Shuli Ren in Hong Kong, and by Takara Small, a tech journalist at CBC from Toronto in Canada.

(Picture: Russian president Vladimir Putin. Credit: Getty Images)

The electric car salesman was in Brandenburg as the first vehicles rolled off the line. Germany has a proud history of automobile manufacturing, so how will an American car manufacturer fare in the country? We speak to the finance minister of the state of Brandenburg. The Malaysian finance minister, Zafrul Aziz, is in the UK seeking new investment in his country and reassuring investors that the days of the 1MDB scandal are over. We speak to him on his outlook for the year ahead. The UK and the USA have reached an agreement to drop tariffs on steel put in place during the Trump years and also frees up trade in whiskey, jeans and Harley Davidson motorbikes; the BBC's Dharshini David tells us more. The war in Ukraine continues - Tamasin Ford speaks to refugees caught up in the conflict. Throughout the programme we're joined by Jessica Khine, Business Development Consultant in Malaysia and Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence and the host of 'The Week Ahead', a weekly Youtube show on markets and geopolitics in Texas.

Photo: Elon Musk in the German Tesla factory Credit: EPA

First we take a look at the tragic China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 passenger plane crash in southern China. Our Business Correspondent Theo Leggett outlines what we know. As Russia's war in Ukraine enters its second month, some essential goods - like sugar, flour and rice - are becoming harder to find and are much more expensive. Some regions have imposed limits on how much of certain staples customers can buy. The Russia editor of BBC Monitoring, Vitaly Shevchenko, tells us what is and isn't on the shelves while Chris Weafer from the Moscow-based consultancy Macro Advisory explains to what extent we can blame Western sanctions for the shortages. In Egypt food prices are also on the rise and the government in Cairo has imposed a cap on the cost of bread in shops. Maghdi Abdelhadi, a writer and broadcaster in Cairo, explains the huge importance of bread in Egypt and we speak to David Laborde, Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, about what is happening in Egypt and what might happen to food prices around the world. Rowena Abdul-Razak at the University of Oxford takes up the story of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release from six years in an Iranian prison, and the BBC's Ivana Davidovic takes a look at racial discrimination in Brazil.

Producer: Russell Newlove | Presenter: Jamie Robertson

(IMAGE CREDIT: GETTY)

The war in Ukraine continues. In Turkey, a proposal aimed at bringing that war to an end was discussed by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia's Vladimir Putin - we have reaction from Ukraine's deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna. Meanwhile, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to the German parliament on Thursday in an effort to build support for tougher action against Russia. Germany relies on Russian gas, oil and coal and is still paying the Kremlin hundreds of millions of dollars a day - we speak to Tagesspiegel's energy journalist Jakob Schlandt and hear from Lord Browne, former chief executive at BP. The war is taking a toll on the global economy too and the OECD has given its first assessment of the likely damage. Laurence Boone, chief economist at the OECD, tells us more. The BBC's Frey Lindsay looks at how climate change is threatening lives and livelihoods on islands in the South Pacific, and Spotify gets into the NFT space, as investor and enthusiast Peta Cooper explains. Throughout the programme Jon Bithrey is joined by Alexander Kaufman, senior reporter at Huffpost in New York and by Emily Feng, Beijing correspondent for NPR.

Photo: Zelensky address the Bundestag Credit: EPA

The increase is the first in the US since December 2018, and is aimed at controlling the country's worryingly high inflation. We get reaction to the announcement from Greg McBride, analyst at the personal finance firm Bankrate.

Britain's prime minister Boris Johnson is in the Gulf this week, asking the UAE and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil in a bid to keep prices lower. Matt Smith is from the data and analytics firm Kpler, and tells us what he thinks Mr Johnson is hoping to achieve through his visit.

Also in the programme, the US is looking to potentially tap into Venezuela's oil reserves to plug a global shortage, despite enmity between the two countries. Antero Alvarado is an energy consultant in Caracas, and tells us about the current state of his country's oil industry.

Plus, the BBC's Ed Butler asks what will happen next to Chelsea Football Club, after British government sanctions against its owner Roman Abramovich curtailed the club's income.

And as the US plans to make Daylight Savings Time permanent, we ask Professor Nicholas Sanders at Cornell University in upstate New York what the economic benefits could be. Plus, we hear the latest from the UK as journalist Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe lands in the UK after being imprisoned for 6 years in Iran on allegations that she was a spy.

Fergus Nicoll is joined throughout the programme by Stefanie Yuen Thio, joint managing partner at TSMP Law in Singapore and by Kimberly Adams, correspondent at our sister station Marketplace in Washington DC.

(Photo: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Credit: Getty Images)

Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced a 35-hour curfew to end on Thursday morning, the first curfew to be put in place in daytime. It comes after the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia visited Kyiv. We get analysis of their visit from our Poland correspondent Adam Easton.

Also in the programme, the BBC's Victoria Craig speaks to the president of Lithuania, Gitanas Nauseda, about the the latest round of European sanctions against Russia.

The city of Lviv in the west of Ukraine has been seen as a place of sanctuary for many fleeing conflict elsewhere in the country. But the war has now arrived on Lviv's doorstep, and we get reaction from Liana Semchuk from the UK-based risk analysis firm Sibylline.

And, after many Western companies have announced their withdrawal from Russia, we look at those businesses who say ending their operations there is easier said than done.

Fergus Nicoll is joined throughout the programme by Peter Landers of the Wall Street Journal in Tokyo, and by Sarah Birke from The Economist in Mexico City.

(Picture: A damaged living room in Kyiv. Picture credit: Getty Images.)

The cost of living continues to increase - we speak with the head of economic statistics at the UK's Office of National Statistics, Sam Beckett. Meanwhile, Chinese stocks plummet on Ukraine and Russia's war, and coronavirus, says US shares expert Peter Jankovskis in the US. Plus, we speak with Roman Waschuk, a businessman who fled Ukraine and is now residing in Poland, about how businesses are adapting to the invasion. Plus, the BBC's James Clayton updates us on the latest on the technology companies withdrawing operations from Russia. We discuss all this live with Patrick Barta, Asia Enterprise Editor for the Wall Street Journal in Asia and Alison Schrager, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York. Produced by Nisha Patel and Faarea Masud.

(Image: A pedestrian walks by an electronic screen displaying the Hang Seng Index on March 8, 2022 in Hong Kong. Photo by Chen Yongnuo/China News Service via Getty Images)

Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan become the first major American banks to say they'll wind down operations in Russia after the country's invasion of Ukraine. Sridhar Natarajan of Bloomberg tells us more while the BBC's Orla Guerin reports from Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv. Earlier this week the IMF approved a $1.4bn emergency funding package for Ukraine; the BBC's Samira Hussain speaks with the IMF's Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath. Outside of Ukraine, we hear about the latest devastating floods to hit New South Wales and Queensland in Australia from the BBC's Vivienne Nunis, we discuss the newly elected South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol after the narrowest victory in the country's history, and how do you keep doing business in a war zone? A Ukrainian pharmaceutical firm tells us. Throughout the programme we're joined by Nicole Childers, Executive Editor of Business, Tech and Innovation at NBC News in Los Angeles and by Timothy Martin, Korea Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal in Seoul.

Picture: the Goldman Sachs logo Credit: Reuters