By Ryan McCarthy and Ross Chainey

In an empty, snow-covered parking lot about a mile outside of the center of the gathering of the world’s elite, the Occupy Davos activists have set up a small camp of igloos and yurts. There are no badges or panels at this gathering – most of the day’s work is focused on building (and re-building) the camp’s series of tunnels and igloos. The handful of activists at the camp on Tuesday were upbeat, but realistic about their chances of changing the World Economic Forum’s agenda.

The Occupy Davos movement, members said, had no real coordination with the protests going on in the U.S., though a few activists came from other areas of Europe and the U.S. The group’s organizers expected 60 or so activists to join the group later in the week when the World Economic Forum kicks off. For its part, the WEF has allowed the protesters to stay on site, and even brought in supplies.

-Jamie Jemmeson is a Trader at Global Reach Partners, the foreign exchange company. The opinions expressed are his own.-

The alarm bells have been ringing in the UK since the surprise contraction in Q4 GDP 2010.  The Bank of England (BoE) remains in limbo between the ECB, who recently hiked despite their problems with sovereign debt and the US, where quantitative easing remains in force until at least June. The release of the preliminary Q1 GDP on the 27 April could be instrumental in determining not just how the currency and financial markets perform, but in directing measures the BoE and coalition government may have to take. Since the surprise contraction in GDP, the BoE has been forced to sit on its hands and watch inflation continue to increase while reiterating its belief that this is just a temporary phase. There is a real dilemma in the UK that has split the market; will the UK face the daunting reality of a double dip recession?

Matthew Elderfield, Head of Financial Regulation at the Central Bank of Ireland, will lay out his vision for a new Irish regulatory landscape at a Thomson Reuters Newsmaker on Wednesday 6 April.

‘Ireland: Re-shaping the Regulatory and Banking System’ will be hosted by Reuters’ Jodie Ginsberg, UK and Ireland Editor, and will be streamed live to the Reuters UK website as part of our rolling coverage from 0830 BST.

George Osborne has delivered his budget speech for the 2011/12 fiscal year to parliament.

The Chancellor said corporation tax would be cut by two percentage points to 26 percent from April, rather than by just the one point originally planned. A levy on banks would be increased to help pay for it.

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Mark Spelman, Global Head of Strategy at Accenture, stopped by the Davos town library (our WEF headquarters) to talk about what he believes have been the key developing themes at this year’s meeting.

In this first video, Spelman talks about key growth trends and the reasons behind the sense of ‘cautious optimism’ at Davos 2011.

Youth isn’t a group that is closely associated with the World Economic Forum in Davos. There was much discussion before the meeting of the gender quota imposed by the WEF to try to increase the number of female participants, but there are just five teenagers at Davos this year, all of them from the Global Changemakers network.

I caught up with one of them, 18-year-old Trevor Dougherty, who wrote this post for us prior to the start of this year’s Davos,  to hear how his first WEF annual meeting is going. We will hopefully hear from the other four ‘changemakers’ before the end of the conference.

This time last year, the online team here in Davos broke off from its coverage of the WEF for an hour or so to follow another Reuters live event – the unveiling of Apple’s iPad.

Back then, there were many gaps in our knowledge of what the iPad could do. We didn’t even know what it would be called.

Reuters has added an exciting new dimension to its Davos coverage this year. As well as Insider TV’s regular Davos Today morning show (streamed live on this website every morning at 7 a.m. CET during the annual meeting), there is now also an afternoon show to be broadcast at 2:30 p.m. on 26, 27 and 28 January.

Davos Today with Chrystia Freeland will feature many of the biggest names at Davos in discussion with Reuter’s Global Editor-at-Large. Topics range from China, India and the U.S. to Trust in Institutions, the Future of Finance and Failed States.