The Londoner

Is China making an unprecedented leap to the top of the global economic hierarchy? Yes, Martin Jacques asserts confidently in his buzz-generating When China Rules the World. He sees the country, which recently passed Japan to become the world's No. 2 economy, rising smoothly to the top spot by continuing to follow a thoroughly distinctive, Confucian-tinged development path. No, say China skeptics like economist John Markin and hedge-fund honcho James Chanos, with equal self-assurance. They predict that bursting bubbles will lead to a Chinese equivalent to Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s. To them, as George Friedman pithily puts it in his best-selling The Next 100 Years, which is sometimes displayed near Jacques' tome in airport bookstores these days, China is just "Japan on steroids." While we're too aware of how regularly — and speedily — bold forecasts about China are proved wrong to offer one of our own, our research into 19th century America a...

Taliban Fighters There are at least 12 channels of contacts with insurgent leaders in Afghanistan , involving states, organisations and freelancers. They have one thing in common: none have got far. A diplomat in Afghanistan refers to them, somewhat dismissively, as the "peace industry" – toiling away mostly out of sight, producing little of substance. The hope is that when all sides consider the time ripe, the fragile strands will coalesce into something more durable. The painstaking work of forging contacts with a fierce insurgency has been going on for almost as long as the war. What has changed recently is these talks have been gaining press coverage. That does not mean they are making more progress. It is more likely that it is now in the interest of some of the parties to advertise them. In Washington, the December strategy review is coming up, and it suits the US military and the Kabul government to demonstrate a political dividend for the military and civil inves...

Louis Berger, a major construction company headquartered in New Jersey, has  agreed to pay out a record $69.3m in fines (pdf) , the largest ever such penalty imposed on a contractor working in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. The company has been awarded  billions of dollars in contracts for the construction of roads, schools and electrical plants in Afghanistan . Harold Salomon, a former senior financial analyst at the company, discovered that company officials were sending bills  for items like the cost of the music system in its Washington, DC office to the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Salomon blew the whistle on estimated overcharging of up to $20m and took the company to court with the help of Phillips & Cohen, a trial law firm in Washington, DC. "Today I can affirm to those who told me the Louis Berger Group can get away with anything that they were wrong," Salomon said in a press statement, when the settlement was announced on 5 Novem...

Marco Rubio Mr Rubio, 39, a darling of the Tea Party and touted as a future presidential candidate , was born and raised a Catholic by his Cuban parents. However, for the past six years he and his wife have attended the Christ Fellowship , a Florida congregation which describes itself as “non-denominational” but is affiliated to the Southern Baptist Convention , whose theology is firmly anti-Catholic . According to the St Petersburg Times, Mr Rubio has donated much of the $66,000 he has given to charity since 2000 to the Christ Fellowship. Alex Burgos , a spokesman for Mr Rubio, told The Daily Telegraph on Friday: “[Marco] regularly attends Catholic Mass, and he was baptised, confirmed and married in the Roman Catholic Church . On the final Sunday of the campaign, for example, he attended Mass at Christ the King Catholic Church in Tampa ... He also attends services at a Christian church with his wife and children.” Asked why Mr Rubio attended a non-Catholic church ...

May the Lord the former president so ostentatiously worships have mercy on my soul, and those in Iraq without water, electricity and medicine forgive me, but I just cannot suppress a twinge of sympathy for George W Bush. The source of this pity pang isn't the usual one with those struggling bemusedly with the loss of power (Mrs Thatcher literally unable, for example, to dial a phone number). So far as the practicalities, Mr Bush has adapted well. Apparently he concludes his memoir Decision Points with the familiar anecdote of how, within days of leaving Washington, he was picking up his dog's mess with a plastic bag in a Texas park. Evidently he regards this as a cute vignette of the transience of power, as well as his own endearing lack of pomp. Yet what causes the stab of pity is the stupidity at which it hints. How could anyone in possession of a three-figure IQ (still a moot point with Bush) fail to see what a golden gift that image is to satirists? There he is, in the cart...

There have been violent scenes as tens of thousands of people protested against plans to treble tuition fees and cut university funding in England. Demonstrators stormed a building in Westminster housing the Conservative Party head quarters, smashed windows and got on to the roof. Outside, a crowd of thousands surged as placards and banners were set on fire and missiles were thrown. Student leaders condemned the violence as "despicable". They say about 50,000 people took part in a march through Westminster earlier. A stand-off is still taking place between about two dozen demonstrators and the police, with 32 people having been arrested so far. Read the full story here . Related Posts: 1.  Boris Johnson vs David Cameron: populist maverick against political insider 2. The population of the UK will rise from 61m to 71.6m by 2033 3. Why British Tabloid (Gutter Press) Spreads Hate Against Pakistan, Pakistan Cricket Team & Muslims In General 4. British Pakistanis – A Serious ...

By  Jeremy Warner   Here’s a finding that will have any red-blooded American spluttering into his cornflakes. According to the Conference Board, a highly respected economic research association, China will overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy by 2012, or within two years. OK, so in dollar terms, that’s obviously not going to be the case. It will be a lot longer than two years before China overtakes the US on that measure. But in terms of purchasing power parity, according to  the Conference Board’s latest world economic outlook , China is already nearly there, and by 2020 will have reached a size of output which is nearly half as big again as the US. Here’s the Wkipedia link explaining what PPP is , but broadly speaking the idea is to measure output according to the volume, not the price of goods and services produced. The assumption made is that identical goods will have the same price in different markets. In practice, this is obviously not the case. A taxi ...