Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.

Coming up, tensions in the Middle East, protests in Russia.

There seems to be war and politics everywhere these days,

but some also say the stresses of economic decline are apparent as a result of cheap oil.

For countries like Saudi Arabia, core Middle Eastern producers and Russia, which are overwhelmingly

dependent on the revenues from fossil fuels, this is pretty disastrous. But some Australians are

celebrating as a result of a shift towards solar power.

We're all more autonomous.

We all can decipher ourselves what we want to buy from the grid and what we want to generate locally.

That's a much, much smarter way of going.

It's much less wasteful.

And ultimately it's going to cost us all less.

That's all coming up in Business Daily from the BBC.

The international political talk this week is of possibly more sanctions against Russia,

this time over its support for the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

But there has, of late, been another local concern as well for the Russian government.

That's the sound of some of the protests on the streets of Moscow over the last month.

These were one among many demonstrations

that developed over weeks in the country. They were prompted by opposition activist Alexei

Navalny, who last month published a film alleging massive corruption on the part of the Prime

Minister, Dmitri Medvedev, an allegation the Prime Minister denies.

The allegation, though, has struck a court, especially among some younger Russians.

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