The Londoner

German voters re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday and allowed her to ditch the center-left Social Democrats from her government and form a coalition with her preferred partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party, instead, according to reliable projections. German Chancellor Angela Merkel won a second term in Sunday's federal election and will be able to form a government with the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), dumping the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) with whom she has ruled since 2005 in an uneasy coalition, projections showed. She will have a comfortable center-right majority in the Bundestag lower house of parliament with an estimated 323 seats, 15 more than the absolute majority of 308 seats, according to a projection broadcast on ZDF television. According to the ZDF projection, Merkel's conservatives won 33.8 percent, down 1.4 points from the 2005 result of 35.2 percent, while SPD support fell to a record low of 23.0 percent, down 11.2 ...

Pakistan made it two wins from two in the Champions Trophy as Shoaib Malik's masterful 128 set up a 54-run win over an out-of-sorts India in Centurion. Malik and Mohammad Yousuf (87), who put on 206 together, built up their score gradually before cutting loose in the last 15 overs to rack up 302-9. Rahul Dravid took 103 balls to reach 76 and when he was seventh out in the 42nd over, India quickly lost their way. They were all out for 248 with five overs and one ball remaining. With such a strong net run-rate, it would take a heavy loss to Australia, and two other results going against them, to prevent Pakistan, the World Twenty20 champions, making the semi-finals. India's key match could be against Australia, with the winner of that likely to take the other semi-final berth from Group A. A critical difference between the two sides was the effectiveness of each set of spinners. India off-spinners Harbhajan Singh and Yusuf Pathan were cut for a succession of wonderful boundarie...

This time a year ago, the world was reeling from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the multi-billion dollar rescue of Merrill Lynch and insurance firm AIG. But for Joern Schuetumpf, a German publisher, life was looking up. Mr Schuetumpf, director of Karl-Dietz, was revelling in the increase in sales of one of his books which was now selling at seven times the usual rate. That book was Marx's Das Kapital, the founding text of communism. On television and radio outlets across the world, Marxists, socialists and anti-capitalist groups seized the moment in the post-Lehmans-world, to declare that the Western economic era was over. Even before the crisis there were warnings. In March 2007, American writer and journalist Tom Wolfe said "we may be witnessing the end of capitalism as we know it". Then in September last year, the British political philosopher John Gray said that "the era of American global leadership is over... in a change as far-reaching in its implications...

For once, India and Pakistan will not be playing on an island. India-Pakistan matches are usually separate events within the main event, oblivious to the larger picture of the tournament, but this game doesn't seem to be the usual matter of life and death. For once, this match, though the first big clash of the Champions Trophy in terms of traditional rivals coming face to face, is more about the cricket. What's helped is the tight draw in the tournament format. Pakistan, who have been more vocal in setting up the match (Shahid Afridi, Umar Gul and Younis Khan have been quoted on how badly they want to beat India), will know only net run-rate can keep them out of semi-finals if they win this match. India, blighted by injuries to Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan, have a year and a half of good work done in ODIs to defend. A loss in their opening match will leave them needing to beat Australia and possibly run-rate calculations to go their way. The build-up for this...

Poverty in India is widespread with the nation estimated to have a third of the world's poor. According to the a 2005 World Bank estimate, 42% of India's falls below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day (PPP, in nominal terms Rs. 21.6 a day in urban areas and Rs 14.3 in rural areas)