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World Service,23 Dec 2015,49 mins

Pressure Builds on Russia as US Increases Sanctions

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The United States is increasing pressure on Russia to stop its conflict with Ukraine by imposing additional financial restrictions on 34 individuals and entities. The sanctions will remain in place until Russia has fulfilled its side of the Minsk peace agreement, and come a day after the European Union extended its own sanctions against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. Russian banks and government officials are among those on the US government's list. We speak to Gary Hufbauer, a former member of the US treasury now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Elon Musk has popularised electric cars, unveiled batteries to power entire homes and now he's recycling rockets. His company SpaceX has successfully landed an unmanned rocket vertically, paving the way for new technology in space travel in which re-using rockets could dramatically slash the cost of blasting off. Dr Nigel Bannister, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester, gives us his thoughts on Musk's mission. The Indian parliament passes a bill allowing sixteen year olds to be tried as adults in serious cases, and we visit a remote village in Malaysia to see the how poverty is rife among the country's minority populations. Plus: the world's largest lottery prize El Gordo, The Fat One or Fatty in English, is announced in Spain. Throughout the programme we're joined by Mitchell Hartman of Marketplace in Portland, Oregon and Puja Mehra, Economics Editor at The Hindu, in Delhi

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