麻豆约拍

Fresh talks to overcome political turmoil in Italy are being held. We hear from Lorenzo Fioramonti, a Five Star Movement member of parliament and Lorenzo Codogno, former chief economist at the Italian Treasury Department. Also in the programme, with the price of oil doubling over the past two years, our regular US economic commentator, Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute, tells us why the cost of crude oil has been rising. In South Africa there has been a mixed reception to the passing of a new minimum wage law. We get the trade union perspective from Matthew Parkes, parliamentary co-ordinator for the Congress of South African Trade Unions in Capetown. We head to Freetown in Sierra Leone, to meet fashion designer Mary Ann Kaikai, who's proving a hit with some of the world's biggest retailers. And we explore why Swiss watch makers have clocked a rise in demand for traditional time-pieces.

(Picture: Italian PM-designate Carlo Cottarelli. Picture credit: EPA.)