Big Boss Interview

Vladimir Putin has recognised the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine. In a televised address, the Russian president said Donetsk and Luhansk were ancient Russian territories, and described Ukraine’s government as a puppet regime controlled by foreign powers. We hear the thoughts of Washington Post correspondent Mary Ilyushina in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, and Chris Weafer from analytics firm Macro-Advisory Ltd gives us his take on the potential economic fallout if tensions in the region increase further. Plus, UK prime minister Boris Johnson says England's remaining Covid laws will be abandoned, telling parliament it’s time to rely on vaccinations and treatments, rather than government intervention. We speak to Kate Nicholls of UKHospitality, on how a sector which has suffered during almost two years of restrictions is hoping for a rebound. The BBC's Sarah Hawkins reports on plans afoot in Sacramento, California to give everybody the legal right to housing, and how such an idea might work in practice.Throughout the programme we are joined by Emily Feng, Beijing Correspondent for NPR radio and by Professor Peter Morici from the University of Maryland.

(Photo: Residents of Donetsk celebrate after Russia recognised the territory’s independence; Credit: Getty Images)

Tesla boss Elon Musk has accused US regulators of targeting him for "unrelenting investigation" because of his criticism of the government. In a court filing, the billionaire says the Securities and Exchange Commission has engaged in "outsized efforts" to monitor the firm that "seem calculated to chill his exercise" of free speech. We speak to Michelle Fleurry in New York.

The Indonesian President Joko Widodo called on global unity to revive the global economy hit hard by the Covid pandemic. He was speaking at the start of the G20 meeting of finance ministers in Bali. One of the challenges those ministers will have to deal with is the amount of debt facing the world's poorest countries. According to figures from the International Monetary Fund almost 60 percent of low income countries - most of them in Africa - are at risk of struggling to pay back their debts. We asked Marcello Estevao from the World Bank what could be done.

Two years on from the start of the pandemic, most visitors are still banned from Japan. The world’s third largest economy has one of the strictest border controls in the world - but how is it affecting the people there and the national economy? Tamsin Ford of the BBC's Business Daily has been on a virtual tour of Tokyo’s foodie hotspots with Yukari Sakamoto - chef and author of a book called Food Sake Tokyo. She explored what impact has the lack of tourists had on Yukari's business.

Hong Kong has changed a great deal over the past ten years. The political leadership is in lockstep with the Communist Party leadership in Beijing - they've made the Legislative Council far more compliant - and they've implemented a National Security Law. If that's the case, Hong Kong's value as an in-between space - halfway between China proper and the global marketplace - doesn't really exist anymore. The American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong reported last year that 44 percent of their members were contemplating pulling out. We hear from Tara Joseph, the President of AmCham.

Rahul Tandon is joined throughout the programme by Andy Uhler from Marketplace in Austin Texas, and Rebecca Choong Wilkins from Bloomberg in Hong Kong.

Picture: US entrepreneur and business magnate Elon Musk. Credit: PATRICK PLEUL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Twitter has announced what it is doing to try and tackle the problem of trolling and hate. It will expand the 'Safety Mode Feature' which allows users to temporarily block accounts which send harmful or abusive tweets. We speak to Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. Two of the world's biggest lager makers, Carlsberg and Heineken, have warned that inflation in the manufacturing process is driving up brewers' costs and will make a pint more expensive. So how worried should beer drinkers be? We hear from Bart Watson Chief Economist for the Brewers Association. Have US pharmaceutical companies created a web of disinformation to boost their profits? That's the accusation of Dr John Abramson, a family physician and faculty member at Harvard Medical School as laid out in his new book about Big Pharma, 'Sickening' - Dr Abramson explains further. And in France, a long list of covid rules are being dropped – and clubs can reopen right away. We hear from Parisian DJ, Francois X.

Rahul Tandon is joined throughout the programme by Yoko Ishikura in Tokyo and Steven Bertoni from New York.

Picture: Twitter logo seen displayed on a smartphone. Credit: Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The Ukrainian government has said its websites and banks have been hit by cyber attacks. Two state-owned banks, PrivatBank and Oschadbank, had been targeted by “massive” denial of service attacks and other failures which interrupted banking services. We hear from General Keith Alexander, the former director of the US National Security Agency and founding commander of United States Cyber Command. Earlier this month, after years of delay, a deal was signed by the French energy giant Total Energies giving the green light to a controversial pipeline running from Uganda to Tanzania. The project's backers say it will usher in economic development across the region, but activists question the environmental impact of the project, as the BBC's Joshua Thorpe has been finding out. A new study has found that a quarter of the world's rivers contain potentially toxic levels of pharmaceutical drugs and it's been concluded that the pharmaceutical products found in them are a threat to human health and aquatic life. We get details from Dr Veronica Edmonds Brown, an Aquatic Ecologist at The University of Hertfordshire.

Jamie Robertson is joined throughout the programme by Sushma Ramachandran, journalist and columnist at The Tribune in Delhi, and Andres Franzetti, Chief Executive Officer at The Risk Cooperative from Washington.

Picture: PrivatBank logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen. Credit: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Amid warnings from the West that time really is running out, the G7 group of nations has reiterated that it is ready to impose sanctions on Russia if it sends troops over the border; we hear from Anders Aslund, senior fellow at the Stockholm Free World Forum and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. Greed is considered one of the seven deadly sins, and of all of those sins it is one of the few that people will rarely admit to. But where would western capitalism be without it? The BBC's Elizabeth Hotson has been taking a look at whether it is a good thing. Plus, authorities in New Zealand have been trying to disperse anti-vaccine protesters from outside the country's parliament and hit upon a plan to play Barry Manilow's greatest hits on a loop. The protestors were tougher than they thought, so they upped the anti and started playing Baby Shark (Doo Doo Doo) and when that failed belted out James Blunt's 2005 hit, You're Beautiful. It seems even under this barrage of sound, protesters have not been moved, with hundreds still remaining outside parliament. We discuss which records you just can't stand.

Throughout the programme Jamie Robertson is joined by Jasper Kim in Seoul and Takara Small from Toronto.

Picture: Ukrainians take part in a military training for residents. Credit: Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

With inflation rising faster than expected, we hear from the BBC's North America Business correspondent Michelle Fleury and economist Cary Leahey. Plus, blockades across some of the busiest border crossings between Canada and the United States are disrupting supply chains of America's biggest car companies. We hear from Peter Campbell, Global Motor Industry Correspondent at the Financial Times. And Tesla is being sued for alleged racial discrimination and harassment by a California regulator which claims the electric carmaker operates "a racially segregated workplace". Dana Hull automotive and technology reporter for Bloomberg tells us about the allegations. Plus, the BBC's Ivana Davidovic reports on why the use of robots has risen by 40% in North American workplaces since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. And we're joined throughout the programme by Alaezi Akpuru entrepreneur and Creative Director at Virgioli Fashion in Lagos, Nigeria and Alexander Kaufman senior reporter at HuffPost, based in New York.

(Picture of dollar bills, picture via Getty Images).

The Dutch central bank has said it "deeply regrets" its founders' role in the slave trade. We get reaction from Linda Nooitmeer, chair of the National Institute for the History and Legacy of Dutch Slavery.

Also in the programme, we look at what's happening on the US-Canada border where the ongoing vaccine protests first started. Truck drivers have blocked the most important commercial crossing, Ambassador Bridge. We get the latest from Nate Tabak who's been covering the story.

As the cost of living rises rapidly in America, so has the use of gifting platforms such as the BuyNothing project. It is one of a number of schemes that help people give away things they no longer need, as the BBC's Michelle Fleury reports.

And as the US postal service comes under fire for spending billions of dollars on a new fleet, we ask journalist Michael Sainato what the public thinks.

Fergus Nicoll is joined throughout the programme by financial professional Jessica Khine in Malaysia and Dante Disparte, head of global policy for financial services firm Circle, who's in Washington DC.

(Picture: Antony Blinken arriving in Melbourne. Picture credit: Getty Images.)

There are calls for a windfall tax on some of the world's biggest energy companies after they posted huge profits at the same time as consumers' bills face massive increases. We speak to Professor Arun Advani of Warwick University about the economical and moral implications of one-off taxes. In the US the Justice Department has seized $3.6bn in Bitcoin from an online theft which occurred six years when the digital tokens were worth just $71m. The BBC's Michelle Fleury in New York takes us through what happened. The EU announces tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to mitigate supply chain problems in the manufacture and roll out of microchips; Peleton navigates a bumpy road and are robots set to be the pets of the future? Throughout the programme we're joined by Ann Dwyer, editor of Crain's Chicago Business and by James Mayger of Bloomberg in Beijing.

Photo: A gas hob Credit: PA

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz makes his first visit to the US since taking office in December. He and Joe Biden held a press conference where the US President declared his confidence in German as a dependable ally amid concerns Scholz had been slow to react to events in Ukraine. We speak to Thorsten Benner of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. Around the world people and businesses are feeling the pinch as the cost of living goes up - the BBC's Tamasin Ford looks at what's causing price rises. A new report criticises some of the biggest companies in the world for lacking integrity in their green claims and climate promises - we hear from the the report's co-author Thomas Day of the New Climate Institute. The BBC's Jessica Murphy reports from the so-called freedom convoy in Ottowa in Canada, and the Chinese authorities reinstate the original ending to the movie Fight Club, after inventing their own ending two weeks ago. Throughout the programme we're joined by Stefanie Yuen Thio - Joint Managing Partner at TSMP Law in Singapore and Peter Morici, economist at the University of Maryland in the US.

Photo: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz answers questions at a press conference in Washington, DC Credit: EPA

President Vladimir Putin is due to begin a visit to Beijing on Friday - with the Kremlin saying that he'll sign more than a dozen trade deals with his counterpart Xi Jinping. Later in the day, Mr Putin will attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics - which is being boycotted by the United States, Canada, Australia and the UK. We hear from Chris Weafer, the CEO of the investment consultancy Macro-Advisory in Moscow.

Also in the programme, the Governor of the Bank of England has told the BBC that employees negotiating their salary this year should not ask for too big a pay rise - so they can help bring inflation under control. Mr Bailey said he was concerned that rising inflation would become ingrained in the economy.

Plus - the inflation rate in Turkey has hit an eye-watering 48% year-on-year. The BBC's Victoria Craig reports on whether tourism might help offset some of the country's bigger economic problems.

Rotterdam has confirmed it will dismantle a historic bridge to allow a superyacht built for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to fit through. The record-breaking luxury yacht is being built by Dutch firm Oceanco and was linked to Mr Bezos last year.

And, a billion-year-old black diamond is going up for auction. Nikita Benani is jewellery specialist at Sotheby's and tells us about the diamond, named The Enigma, which is believed to be the largest cut diamond on earth, and may have been formed from a meteor impact.

Fergus Nicoll is joined by Rachel Cartland in Hong Kong and Paddy Hirsch in Los Angeles.

(Picture: Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping/AFP)