Current affairs

WASHINGTON, DC - The decision of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami not to seek the presidency again has revealed how muddled Iranian presidential politics now is.

When reports spread that insurance giant AIG would give top executives huge bonuses after a $170 billion taxpayer bailout, you could feel the anger rumbling in Middle America like boiling magma before the eruption of a volcano.

NEW DELHI - With the world's most developed economies reeling under the incubus of what is already being called the Great Recession, India at the beginning of the year took stock and issued a revised estimate for GDP growth in the 2008-2009 fiscal year.

NEW HAVEN - On April 2, the G-20 will hold a summit in London to discuss what we may hope will be an internationally coordinated plan to address the world economic crisis. But can such a plan really work?

"The Obama administration must remain unequivocal in its pursuit of the two-state solution" 

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The laughs grate, the performances seem grotesque.

BEIRUT - On February 24, violent confrontations between Shia pilgrims and the Saudi religious police and security forces occurred at the entrance to the Prophet Mohamed's Mosque in Medina.

The film "Fitna" by Dutch parliament member Geert Wilders has created an uproar around the world because it links violence committed by Islamists to Islam.

BRUSSELS - There is no shortage of analyses of what went wrong in the world's capital markets over the past 18 months.

The way we view banks is conditioned by their key role in keeping the economic wheels turning. The unwillingness of banks to lend seems to go against the natural order, as if teachers were to stay at home on a school day.

BORDEAUX - In a new best-selling book, French media consultant and author Alain Minc says he can see the day in the near future when all Nobel Prizes will go to Asian scientists and writers.

Austin Dacey, the well-known atheist thinker, writes in The Secular Conscience that secularism is in danger of losing its soul to relativism.

REYKJAVIK - No one yet has any real idea about when the global financial crisis will end, but one thing is certain: government budget deficits are headed into the stratosphere. Investors in the coming years will need to be persuaded to hold mountains of new debt.

There was no gasp, merely a lingering sigh that came with the announcement that the vast bulk of US combat forces would be leaving Iraq by August 31, 2010, with the final departures taking place at the end of December 2011.

LONDON - Bipartisanship seems to have taken a drubbing in Washington since President Barack Obama got to the White House.

Presenting a new and earthy face of French cinema, the outsider candidate "Séraphine" won seven awards at the Césars, the annual French film competition, including best film and best actress of 2008.

MUNICH - To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never have so many billions of dollars been pumped out by so many governments and central banks. The United States government is pumping $789 billion into its economy, Europe $255 billion, and China $587 billion.