BBC Business Daily (Business)

Business Daily goes behind the old Iron Curtain to sample business life twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We'll talk to East German consumers who like East German goods. Steve Evans talks to a Hungarian who's done nicely from capitalism - but fears that his fellow citizens just don't get it. And John Cassidy of the New Yorker unravels the US economy.

In Business Daily today a special insight into the complex back room dealings of a government battling for its political survival. We are in Guinea, West Africa which is resource rich but cash poor, where they recently announced a $7 billion mining deal, but is the deal worth the paper it's written on and can the economy survive international condemnation?

The BBC has tracked a shipping container for a year. It's now home, sitting in a car-park at BBC headquarters, and we broadcast from inside. Hear the box's story as it crossed the planet, carrying everything from bathroom scales to cat food. What does its journey to Shanghai, Los Angeles, New York, Yokohama and Brazil say about world trade? How did our planet come to have a single sized container for trains, ships and trucks and in all parts of the world? And what does happen when containers...

Rupert Murdoch criticised websites that offer links to his news free to readers. Many newspaper publishers say that they spend fortunes on teams of reporters who dig and write, but the results of their work then appear on other websites known as "aggregators". The aggregators argue they're serving the public interest and sending readers to newspapers' sites. One of them is Google News which aggregates headlines from more than 4,500 English-language news sources all over the world, grouping...

Business Daily talks to the top man at one of the world's big food companies. Will the Chinese develop American tastes? What will happen to food prices? And Lucy Kellaway asks - are women in work letting down their feminist fore-mothers by flirting?

The world's largest economy was once in recession - but is that now all in the past? New figures show that the US economy is now growing at a rate of 3.5 per cent a year, and maybe the grimmest days are behind us. Or should we brace ourselves for years in the economic doldrums?

Business Daily today takes an unsentimental look at Africa and offers some hard-headed solutions. It's not about aid. Nor about fancy schemes. It's about simple ideas that might make a difference. Is the African problem too many African borders?

In Business Daily should world leaders concentrate on fighting the fires of a global recession, or on re-building the worlds financial architecture and stopping beggar my neighbour trade rows? - And we ask, is the fast flow of information of the internet making the whole economic mess worse, does fear spread faster online?

Business Daily has bracing thoughts about the global downturn - one, some companies do emerge stronger from recession - two, parts of the world are still desperate to hire skilled workers - and three, its not the end of the world if you are downsized, retrenched or just plain sacked - it might just be the best thing that ever happened to you.

Here's a thing - is a recession the ideal time to start a business? Business Daily grapples with this counterintuitive idea - and hears from a former boss at Google who reckons you can get ahead - when all around you are panicking!

Business Daily cuts through the controversy over genetically modified crops and reports on how the technology has worked out on the ground. Does it live up to its promise? What about farmers who want to farm in the traditional way? Are fears well-founded?

The credit crisis - on the face of it - has nothing to do with Africa. But will Africa suffer because of it? We hear from the World Bank about fears that some of the worlds poorest will get even poorer.