Yeah, its great. Nice to see you. Some Breaking News for you, official figures released in the last hour show the uk economy is no longer in recession. The economy grew by 0. 6 in the first three months of this year. The uk entered recession after output fell during two consecutive quarters at the end of last year. Most economists had predicted growth of 0. 4 . This is the fastest growth rate for more than two years. Well, i think its encouraging that we, in the last quarter, have grown faster notjust in france and germany, but also the United States. But i think more significant is the longer term data that is coming out now about the uk economy. We can see that since 2010 we have created morejobs in the uk than anywhere else in europe. Weve attracted more greenfield foreign direct investment, notjust done anywhere in europe, but anywhere in the world outside of the United States and china. In terms of the most rapidly growing industries, we have by far the largest Tech Industry in eu
our international correspondent based in london who is joining us here. matt, look into your crystal ball if you can. how do you think moscow will react to this when these sanctions come out later on this afternoon? we don t know but it s going to be just another layer of sanctions, hallie, as ron mentioned. this isn t goi to be anything particularly new. whatever the obama administration decides to do with regard to punishing russia, it s only going to amount to the latest sanctions since putin annexed crimea from ukraine. obama and european union tried to focus those sanctions not on the russian people but putin s confidantes, state companies that bring in quite a bit of russia s revenue. this involved freezing individuals assets, closing bank accounts, preventing them from making deals with americans and putting traffic bans on