Lin’s appointment thus marks a major break with political tradition. Hitherto there have been hardly any appointments of Chinese to senior positions in the major international Organizations Martin Jacques IN June, Justin Lin Yifu, a Beijing professor, will take up the post of chief economist at the World Bank. Nothing could be a clearer sign of the times.

This is the number two job in one of the two major international economic institutions, the other being the International Monetary Fund. Earlier, incumbents have included the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, the former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and the UK’s Nicholas Stern.

Twenty thousand desperate textile workers in Bangladesh went on the rampage, giving rise to fears of wider instability,
since the garment industry accounts for three-fourths of the country''s exports, writes Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics, Cornell University

The world economy has many problems but none more pressing than what is happening to food prices. There have been food riots in Haiti, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Indonesia and several other nations.

JS Raman

There was a time when evenings witnessed repetition of the same routine in every Indian middle-class home. The family would settle down to watch its favourite soap on television or the weekend feature films or any of those programmes on the forthcoming elections.

By Tion Kwa

High energy prices pose a monumental challenge to economic growth. Everyone knows this. But high food prices stir more visceral fears. The concern today is that the world faces a serious crisis as a result of accelerating prices of food staples.

Dr Manzur Ejaz

Rising commodity prices have left fragile developing economies neither here nor there. Developing countries pressured or advised by the World Bank, IMF and the US, opened their markets to attract foreign investments. For most of them, real foreign investments have remained illusive because it was a zero sum game to start with. However, global speculative capitalist forces, unhindered by national restrictions, have started destroying them at an accelerated speed.

Praveen Swami

With its spectacular high-rise buildings, magnificent museums and art galleries, Philadelphia represents the finest face of the United States. Another America is hidden less than an hour’s walk away. Polished glass and steel give way to run-down homes, and the silence on the streets is punctuated, every so often, by the wail of police sirens.

Dr HA Rizvi

Lack of clarity on the status of Musharraf and the judges issue, as well as indecision on economic and security policies raises doubts about whether or not societal forces will continue to maintain a friendly posture towards the government in the next six months

M.S. Swaminathan

Mark Dummett and Alastair Lawson

Dr Manzur Ejaz

The Maoist movement has shown that sometimes a movement believing in a violent revolution is the only way to usher in a contemporary democracy

Mao Zedong must be smiling over what happened in the Nepalese elections the other day. Even Mao’s countrymen may be wondering how some people can follow their prophet’s outdated revolutionary prescriptions and change the course of their fate.

Simon Jenkins

COME on, confess it, you have not enjoyed a story so much in years. A round-the-world marathon with all-in wrestling, kick boxing, rugby tackling and sanctimonious steeplechasing, staged free of charge in the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco by the International Olympics Committee — and before the Beijing games have even started. To add to the joy, nobody gets hurt except politicians.

A dramatic rise in the worldwide cost of food is provoking riots throughout the Third World where millions more of the world''s most vulnerable people are facing starvation Paul Vallely

A dramatic rise in the worldwide cost of food is provoking riots throughout the Third World where millions more of the world''s most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages grow and cereal prices soar. It threatens to become the biggest crisis of the 21st century.

Workers from Bangladesh has lately been unjustly maligned as a purveyor of criminal activity within Saudi borders, and this sort of generalization is a gross injustice to the majority of the two million workers who come from that South Asian country, writes Tariq A. Al-Maeena of Arab News

Of late Bangladeshis have been attracting a lot of media attention, but mostly for wrong reasons. This group of expatriates has lately been unjustly maligned as a purveyor of criminal activity within the Kingdom’s borders, and this sort of generalization is a gross injustice to the majority of the two million workers who come from that South Asian country.

Mark Dummett

There is a simple enough way of judging how serious Bangladesh’s food crisis has become this year - it is to count the changing number of people queuing up to buy government-subsidised rice each day.
As the weeks have passed and the sun above Dhaka has become stronger, so the queues are now forming earlier, and more and more people are joining them.

Rakhal Das wants to be on the first train to Dhaka, the way he was on the last train from there to India more than 42 years ago

Subir Bhaumik in Calcutta

Rakhal Das, 54, wants to be on the first train to Dhaka, the way he was on the last train from there to India more than 42 years ago.

High in the Himalayas, Bhutan has always revelled in its isolation. That is why a somewhat reluctant electorate was apprehensive about what democracy might bring, Chris Morris

The day after its first parliamentary election, the world’s newest democracy is already learning that politics can spring a surprise. High in the Himalayas, Bhutan has always revelled in its isolation.

Is India, the world’s second most populous nation, facing a food crisis, asks Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
Is India, the world’s second most populous nation, facing a food crisis?

This question is vexing policy makers and analysts alike even as creeping inflation - around 7% now - is sending jitters through the Congress party-led ruling coalition.

Jonathan Power

FIRST it was Mitt Romney who wrote in Foreign Affairs that “radical Islam’s threat is just as real as that posed before by the Nazis and the Soviet Union” And now, last week, it was John McCain saying the US needed a leadership “to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism”.