Waiting for Scotland and waiting for Alibaba is something like waiting for Godot.

Today the new-look companies list in The Financial Times promised articles about “Fannie” and “Freddie”, presumably Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They were not visible on the page they were supposed to be on. Moreover, an article on Oi, a Brazilian company I am interested in was not at the page the index said to go to (and in fact not in the companies back section of the pink paper at all.)

And surely I am not the only reader who finds the 2-point type in the stock market pages hard to read?

After its bonds were re-rated to junk your editor finally sold a USA stock she has owned for years because one of her college friends had been on its board, Alcoa, AA.

How comforting it is to find that Israeli scientists have confirmed something I have long suspected: that artificial sweeteners (above all in soft drinks) come at a price. They change the balance of bugs in your gut and may wind up raising the level of your blood sugar. We wrote yesterday about a stock which may help the world's only country which has attempted a Mayor Bloomberg-style attack on big soda sales, Mexico.

More follows on this and other matters follows with news from Switzerland, Denmark, The Netherlands, Spain, Brazil, China, India, Ireland, Israel, and Jordan. Today's theme is internationalization.

*The reason I am frustrated that the FT did not in fact report on Oi is that its moves have affected my big speculation, Portugal Telecom, PT.

*Our Indian IT company is becoming almost as international as PM Modi. Infosys has agreed to an expansion of its partnership with Microsoft to include cloud and analytics services. It also added new services to its Hitachi Data Systems deal to deliver next-gen infrastructure and data-center transformation tech to the Japanese firm. And it created a new partnership with Huawei to offer cloud-based big data and communications software for the Chinese firm whose leader, Xi Jinping, is on a state visit to India.

*Vale after its Valemax monster ore carriers were banned from Chinese ports has capitulated. It will sell 4 monster 400,000 metric ton vessels to Cosco (China Ocean Shipping Co) of Beijing and then charter them back from Cosco for 25 years. Price under the “framework agreement” was not revealed. The two companies will also contract so Cosco can build ten further monster carriers. China blocked the Valemax using safety concerns but actually wanted to save Cosco its business. Vale also has a way of breaking up big shipments of ore by storing and loading onto smaller carriers in Malaysia.

*Yandex is sneaking across the Russian border to collect on-line advertisers for its search engine, to fight off google and boost its revenues from the $85 mn reached last year, itself about 10x what it got from ads in 2011. It had 60% of the inside-Russia search market last year but had 2/3 of it in 2011.

YNDX now aims to bring its ad level for Russian speakers over 71%, the level at which it closed H1. It is aiming to land add from top names and luxury brands via offerings to Russians outside the country (not just Ukraine but also the Baltic states, China, and Turkey and places where Russian expats hang out like London, Paris, and German cities.)

Yandex now opened an international ad sales arm in Lucerne, Switzerland. This will handle foreign advertisers like Lufthansa or E-Bay, TripAdvisor or Siemens, who already use YNDX to advertise to Russian searchers in western European countries like France, Germany, and Britain. Another advertiser is Alibaba which posts about internet shopping for its AliExpress and Taobao marketplace.

Russians search differently from other users because they are impatient and also less specific in what they are after according to ad agencies. So YNDX's Swiss arm has to educate advertisers, Bloomberg writes. It plans later this year to launch ads on its Turkish search site according to CEO Arkady Volozh.

Of course nobody talks about the ruble rubble or the trading bans or the arrests of oligarchs in Putin's Russia as the reason for the push outside the country. But YNDX is being smart. And while Europeans are cracking down on Russian trade they also hate google. YNDX is Dutch-incorporated.

*Schlumberger Ltd is continuing to move downstream. It today agreed to do a technical evaluation of sites in New Mexico owned by Enhanced Oil Resources of Canada which may lead in 6 months to SLB taking a stake. SLB is also Dutch.

*The Fed is fining Banco Santander because it made an unauthorized cash dividend in May via its US arm, Santander Holdings for owners of its consumer credit card and subprime lending arm, listed Santander Consumer USA. The fine was just under $21 mn and the Spanish bank also had to submit a plan to boost board oversight of management. SAN floated off the consumer finance arm to hedge funds early this year.

*Frida Ghitis who recommended the stock reports from Holland on Caesarstone, after she met a Dutchwoman who installed a new kitchen in Eppe, a tiny town, with new countertops from the Israeli firm and writes: “CSTE is looking good. Revenues up 27% in H1. Debt low (0.17 debt/equity ratio. Management is aggressively expanding production. International diversification is insurance and also a signal of improving margins. CTSE is dear at 28x earnings. I still think a buy is justified. Tot ziens.”

*Jordanian drugmaker Hikma Pharma completed its purchase of all the assets of a Bedford (Ohio) generic injectables maker, Ben Venue Labs, from Boehringer Ingelheimof Germany for an undisclosed sum. It now has acquired 4 manufacturing plants and a state-of-the art quality control and research site which were not being used by the German seller. The plants are near Cleveland which is becoming a center for healthcare industries lured in by its top draw medical facilities.

*Zurich Insurance repackaged senior notes into an entity called Cloverie which won an A+ rating from Standard & Poors based on the ranking of ZURVY.

*Fibra Uno plans an investor day in NYC on Oct. 28; FBASF is a Mexican REIT investing in commercial, office, factory, hotel, and educational facilities, but not in housing.

*I bought Novo Nordisk for $48.2972/sh yesterday. Note that the gene-linked diabetes treatement space is crowded with new drugs coming from Merck (with DPP-4, a follow-on to Juventa) and with GlaxoSmithKline tackling NVO directly with its own GLP-1 (albiglutide weekly jab vs Novo's daily one.)

*Naibu rose 18.7% today in London trading, to 22 pence bid and 23.5 pence ask, still way before our initial purchase price for NBU-AIM.

*My plot to buy back more Compugen a year after I sold part of my stake too soon was defeated as CGEN is now over $9.

*Fund note: Africa Opportunity Fund reports that its shareholder, Lazard Asset Management, which runs a fund of funds, has a stake in AROFF of just under 13%. Its Emerging World Trust Fund is advised by Alex Zagoreos who until he retired as a Lazard partner was a subscriber to this letter.