India

Every once in a while, says New York magazine, there appears a character who floats above “the wretched, amoral, meatheads” of Wall Street. Andrew J Hall is such a man.

Global warming is changing the Earth's climate so fast that influential scientists fear it is already outrunning our ability to prevent the planet from overheating.

John Holdren, US President Barack Obama's chief scientific adviser, is only the latest to suggest radical geo-engineering measures may have to be considered to keep the Earth habitable.

"It's got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table," he said. He recently compared the crisis with being "in a car with bad brakes driving towards a cliff in the fog".

Few things stir the blood more than Wall Street firms getting into a good old scrap. Put aside the internecine squabbling at Morgan Stanley - they don't come much better than the current dust-up between Citigroup (metals "super cycle") and Goldman Sachs (oil "super spike"), and Merrill Lynch - whose chief equity strategist, David Bowers, on Monday poured water on the idea of what he described as a resources bubble.

By Frank W Moore, IDDS Research Analyst
INTRODUCTION

In the past decade China's growing military capability hasattracted a great deal of attention, but details about the currentand likely near-future state of China's military power have beenin short supply. While it is true that China is modernizing itsforces and increasing defense spending, the prospective improvementsin overall military capability need to be set against the verylow-technology starting point of China's armed forces.