This is getting close to a week old, but is still quite hilarious, even more so with Stallone's signature bad timing of taking a huge ad contract in wartime. MOSCOW (Reuters) - Hollywood actor Sylvester Stallone, mighty destroyer of Soviet opponents in the "Rambo" and "Rocky" movies, now plans to advertise Russian vodka. Russian vodka producer Synergy said on Friday it had signed a one-year contract with Stallone, who will appear in television and newspaper advertisements for the vodka brand Russian Ice, starting September 1. Sources valued the deal at $1 million. Stallone -- whose film character John Rambo killed Soviet troops by the dozen in Afghanistan and whose Rocky Balboa humiliated Soviet boxer Ivan Drago -- will advertise the product under the slogan: "There is a bit of Russian in all of us." "The advertising campaign concept was based on the ...

By William Patalon III Executive Editor Money Morning/The Money Map Report As rocky as the global markets have been, the worst is yet to come, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (ADR: RBS) warns. RBS analysts have warned clients to brace for a full-blown crash in the global stock-and-bond markets over the next three months as the conflicting realities of slowing growth and rising inflation paralyze the world’s major central banks - causing “all the chickens [to] come home to roost,” Great Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported. The report, which first surfaced late Wednesday, raced across the Internet yesterday (Thursday), though it appears that European news organizations are giving it much wider play than their U.S. counterparts. The predicted swoon would cause the U.S. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index - already down 15% from its trading high of 1,576.09 reached ...