At our Boston Seders the conversation among the adults was more about Putin than about Passover. I am not sure there were 4 questions but here are some takeaways:

First of all, this is not a prequel to a resumption of the Cold War or a nuclear holocaust. Despite the centenary, we do not face another World War, mainly because there is more jaw-jaw going on between the sides than war-war.

Vladimir Putin is taking advantage of a window of opportunity to curtail European sanctions over the dismantling of Ukraine. In a few years, dependency on natural gas from the Gazprom pipeline network will have diminished as alternative energy becomes available. Now, Russian gas still is crucial.

Putin is also creating an alibi for future economic setbacks in Russia as lower demand for its raw materials takes hold. Xenophobia and nationalism are his weapons of choice. By mobilizing memories of Russia's fight against fascism and former greatness, he sets the future propaganda line. Instead of grousing about friend-of-Putin oligarchs, Russians can be called to sacrifice for national glory and power. The alleged foreign threat (from fascists, Nato, and the USA) gives the regime the crisis excuse it needs. It will demand the Russians unite while cracking down on dissent in the press, on the Internet, among intellectuals.

Russia's economy already is close to a recession which is causing hardship and uncertainty, capital flight and hoarding, emigration and demonstrations, according to today's New York Times. Putin needs a scapegoat for economic uncertainty and decline.

The second Seder was Tuesday night and after it we were subject to yet another Russia-style snowstorm. In Boston the stuff sticks to the ground. We also could see amorous male wild turkeys showing off their gorgeous feather arrays to female turkeys amidst the snow and dying bluebells. Life goes on.

More for follows from Britain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Jordan, Lebanon, Mongolia, Israel, Cyprus, and Canada, a company report, plus much news of how capex is financed, and on drug companies. There will be a blog tomorrow despite US and British markets being shut for Good Friday. There will be no blogs next Monday and Tuesday because of the latter part of Passover (in the Diaspora, where I live.)

*Schlumberger Ltd thanks to its technology was able to increase its sales and profits despite the horrible winter in both North America and Russia which normally would cut drilling rates. SLB shares hit a 3rd sequential 52-week high this morning on the news. The Dutch Antilles-incorporated oilfield services firm net income rose 26% year over year to $1.59 bn, or $1.21/sh in Q1. It also beat the Bloomberg consensus forecast of $1.20./sh. Sales rose 6.3% y/o/y to $11.2 bn or 5.7% based on constant currencies, below forecasts. However, sales varied hugely by region, up 12% in North America, 19% in the Middle East and Asia, down 7% in Latin America, and up less than 1% in Europe and Africa.

SLB's technology for electronically mapping where pockets of oil can be found is the key to its growth, which is far faster than the rate of new drilling. It benefits from US and Canadian oil company spending on fracking, which uses SLB's HiWay pathfinder along with a diamond drill-bit called "The Stinger", Bloomberg reports. It expects sales to rise 6% the rest of 2014, half in North America and half in the rest of the world. It is spending ~10% profits on R&D and acquisitions including the buy of the rest of SES Holdings Ltd (Saxon) of Calgary, a land-rig fleet owner. The dividend will be kept at 40 cents in line with prior quarters but there may be more share buybacks. Yield is 1.6%. Deutsche Bank rates it Buy with a target price of $111.94; currently it is at ~$101.

*Sir Andrew Witty was given the CEO top job at GlaxoSmithKline with a mandate of getting the UK drug giant to clean up its act. He has been defeated by the "detail" staff paid commissions based on the orders for prescription drugs they get from doctors and hospitals. They continue suborning doctors as before.

The initial revelations concerned bribery of Chinese doctors by GSK salespersons who got GSK bribes via bent travel agents. The bribes GSK salespeople used could take the form of free drugs doctors could sell; paid trips to conferences about drugs, both as attendees and speakers, with their spouses coming along; and tickets and vouchers that as in China could be turned into hard cash.

Now the list of countries where GSK reportedly engaged in bribes has grown well beyond China and reportedly includes Poland, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. Most of these bribery cases were revealed by the Wall Street Journal and FiercePharma but are now being investigated by the governments of the countries where the drug company is charged with having engaged in them.

Sir Andrew has been wrong-footed again and again. He states that it is against company policy for recipients of tickets and vouchers to cash them in. He has proposed that by the end of 2016, no more free trips for conferences will be given to doctor-customers. Nothing yet about free samples, a staple of the detail sales pitch (the theory is that the doctor gives them to patients to see how well they work and eventually they result in orders.) Measures to cut interaction between salespersons and government offices have not yet been defined. GSK keeps pretending these investigations are into "rogue salespeople" when it is clear that there was insufficient control from the top.

As a shareholder, I think GSK's reputation has been tarnished more than that of other drug giants by the combination of high-minded rhetoric without real sales reform. Andrew Witty should resign. Jeremy Levin would be a good replacement candidate having been forced to resign from Teva over boardroom disputes.

Separately, GSK received US FDA approvals for its diabetes treatment, Tanzeum or albiglutide, which helps regulate blood-sugar levels in early type 2 diabetes. It is a member of the GLP-1 class which includes competing drugs. Tanzeum, called Eperzan, which must be injected weekly, is already on the market in Europe and US sales will begin in the autumn. Deutsche Bank expects sales to hit $360 mn by 2018, no blockbuster, because of the spate of rivals.

GSK got approvals for its Ellipa chronic obstructive pulmonary disease drug. a potential blockbuster, under the name Incruse in Canada, the first for the daily nasal squirt.

*GSK partner Galapagos' psoriasis treatment, GSK2586184, cut the severity of the skin disease in a phase IIa trial while there were no serious side effects. The trial is being run by GSK alone after GLPYY halted trials in lupus and delayed those for ulcerative colitis for the same GLPYY drug. However there is another trial for a different Galapgos drug for ulcerative colitis it is running itself, due to report phase II data in June and other trials with JnJ, and AbbVie of drugs from inflammatory disease, arthritis and cystic fibrosis. To finance its in-house work, GLPYY sold off its contract research arm to Charles River Labs raising $179 mn.

*Teva voluntarily recalled its generic of Eli Lilly's cymbalta anti-depressant (duloxetine) because of breakage of the capsules, made in Jerusalem. The LLY drug had $5.4 bn/yr in sales. TEVA wants to sell as much as it can during its 90-day FDA exclusivity.

Teva and Pfizer settled their suit over Celebrex (celecoxib) of which Teva will launch a generic in 4 sizes by year-end. The arthritis and pain med had sales of $2.2 bn/yr last year, according to IMS. Mylan will also produce this generic.

Separately, Teva launched the US generic of Sunovion's Lunesta sleeping pill (escopicione) in 3 formats, which had $850 mn/yr in sales.

All this good news should not keep us from worrying that the US Supremes may allow interim sales of generic copaxone by Sandoz and Mylan before it considers Teva's challenge to a lower court ending its patent protection for the multiple sclerosis drug. It runs out next month and the US Supreme Court may not even hear arguments in the case until Oct. and not rule on it until the middle of 2015.

*Covidien bought New Wave Surgical of Florida last week. Now Zacks says the sale was for over $100 mn, to be confirmed by public filings. New Wave makes the defogging heated endoscopic lens protector system, called D-help, for keeping them clean during laparoscopic or robot surgery. The system won FDA approvals and launched 8 1/2 years ago. It aimed to expand and couldn't raise finance, so COV came to the rescue.

COV also got FDA ok for its Kangaroo camera equipped disposable feeding tube used in hospitals, a first. It will ensure patient safety without human beings having to enter the hospital room. I used to think of Ireland as a great source of nurses. Now it is a source of machines to avoid hiring nurses.

*Adrian Henneh, CFO, told the Reckitt Benckiser conference call yesterday (transcript for www.seekingalpha.com) that RBGLY expects to continue to lose market share for its Suboxone opioid replacement films, now off-patent. He muttered about a "capital market solution" which might involve sale or spinoff of RBGLY's pharma operations, while keeping the much more lucrative OTC drug "healthcare" lines in house. It has named a "strategic review advisor, Howard Pien to evaluation the pharma business. He says it is worth ~GBP4/UK share or GBP 2.9 bn but its sales fell 11% in Q1 to only GBP 170 mn, so that price is a stretch. JP Morgan says the pharma biz is worth only GBP 1.3 bn.

The rest of the conference call and interim results drew faint praise from our reporter, Martin Ferera who criticized "very little detail and no financials." "Sales rose 4% vs expectations of 3.7% (in constant currencies." "It reaffirmed full year growth target at 5%", he writes. "Healthcare grew 11% and household cleaning declined."

Deutsche Bank today upped its target price to GBP 48 from 46 and kept its buy recommendation.

*Delek Group barely celebrated Passover despite being Israeli-owned. It sold its European refinery and gas station assets in Delek Petroluem Ltd to a European private equity group for euros 355 mn. It sold 55% of its US insurance arm, Republic Companies for $121 mn with an option to acquire the rest for another $99 mn plus 6.5% annual interest on that sum.

On the spend side it submitted to Cyprus's government gas company DEFA an offer to supply natural gas from the Israeli offshore Leviathan field (of which it is a leading shareholder) to start in August and run to 2022 with possible extensions. It is subject to Israeli antitrust and other marketing approvals. DGRLY

*Agrium also got some cash, thanks to generosity from Alaska which added fertilizer plants to a list of potential beneficiaries for state 40% tax credits to offset shuttered plants. The initial bill was only for refinery spending but now AGU's Nikiski plant is also eligible, because it is in the constituency of state House Speaker Mike Chenault. Reopening the urea and ammonia plant will cost ~$200 mn of which Alaska will pay $80 mn. Thanks to reader BM for spotting this news.

*Ecopetrol got Bogota ok to borrow up to $2 bn over the next two years for capital expenditures to build out its investments. This is a target but it still has to find underwriters and banks. EC is mostly owned by Colombia but we are shareholders too.

*How else do you finance big plans? Liberty Media has found a way. It is using the Dutch and Luxembourgeois arms of its financing sub Telenet Group Holding to raise euros 3.913 bn ($5.36 bn) in credit facilities to be used for various terms at a cost of 2.75 to 3.5% over euribor, the euro benchmark. The facilities are offered by unnamed banks to LBTYA and LBTYK, controlled by US serial cable entrepreneur John Malone. The shares are off on the news, rightly in my view. The margin requirement for LBTYA has been raised to 40% from 25% to protect against other financing.

*An example of what Russia will have to forgo post-Ukraine is popular Candy Crush, which Tencent will offer in China to lure people to its mobile QQ and Weixin free gaming sites. Games are a substitute for criticism of the regime in China, which controls Internet social media through its Great Wall and citizen volunteers. Russia lacks this kind censorship savvy, for now. King Digital, the UK developer of Candy Crush, had a meh ipo but will gain from royalties from TCTZF. Both Tencent and its 38% parent, Naspers of S. Africa, are up on anticipation of the pricing of Alibaba being juicy. NPSNY.

Nancy Zambell, the new editor of Dick Davis Investment Digest, quoted my taste for Naspers (and JP Morgan China Region Fund which has ~5% of its assets in Tencent) in its issue 756.

*CAE, maker of simulation training machines for airplanes, was rasied to a buy from a market perform rating by Cormack today. The Canada firm was tipped by Patti the Biotech Maven who happens to have a pilot in her family, but it does also make training devices for surgeons.

*The NY Society of Security Analysts will hear from Mongolia Growth Group next Thursday about investing in Mongolia. MNGGF.

*While the price has barely budged, volumes traded in Hadasit Biotech Hldgs, the research financing arm of the bankrupt Jerusalem Hadassah hospital, are up sharply. HADSY was oversold to members of Hadassah, a US women's Zionist organization, after its endowment was lost to Bernard Madoff. The US charity couldn't stop the Israel courts from taking control of the vital health centers.

Dr. Phillip Frost, whose Opko Healthcare stock has now been renamed Opko Biotech, is the rumored buyer of HADSY. OPK is also shopping in the US having bought Inspiro Medical Ltd., a maker of dry powder inhalers for respiratory diseases today.

*Compugen is also up 5.35% in US trading but CGEN is less likely to lure in Dr. Frost who want control on the cheap. It reports after Passover.