Foreign Policy magazine has just released its 2009 list of failing states or those at risk of failure and South Asia makes for sobering reading.

All of India's neighbours, except for tiny Bhutan, figure in the list of top 25 states that are faltering, although their rankings have improved marginally over the previous year.

So Afghanistan remains at number 7 in the table of failing states topped by Somalia. Pakistan is ranked 10th, just marginally better than its 9th position in last year's table which perhaps reflects the belief that the state has begun to fight back the militants who threaten its existence.

(The higher you are on this list, based on 12 indicators measuring state cohesion and performance, the closer you are to failure)

You can see the full report of The Failed States Index 2009 here.

But just to distil it, here are the rankings for South Asian nations as they changed over the past year. Myanmar is ranked 13th which is what it was in 2008.

Bangladesh has moved down to 19th position from 12th the previous year, reflecting perhaps the return of an elected civilian government there.  But it remains at risk and as a Reuters analysis here points out there is a tendency to neglect the militant threat in Bangladesh, with all the attention focused on the violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sri Lanka takes the 22nd spot and Nepal 25rd, both slightly less at risk this year than in 2008 but still very much in the world's top 25 states.

And India? Foreign Policy puts it at 87th position, a healthy score for a country that some thought wouldn't survive especially during the Sikh revolt of the 1980s, and other insurgencies in that period.

Giant neighbour China, according to the editors of the magazine, is more at risk with a score of 57.

[Photo of a U.S. Marine in southern Afghanistan]

There is little doubt that the BRICs -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- have become big players in Africa. According to Standard Bank of South Africa, BRIC trade with the continent has snowballed from just $16 billion in 2000 to $157 billion last year. That is a 33 percent compounded annual growth rate.

What is behind this? At one level, the BRICs, as they grow, are clearly recognising commercial and strategic opportunities in Africa. But Standard Bank reckons other, more individual, drivers are also at play.

In a new report, the bank looks at what each of the individual BRIC countries is trying to do. To whit:

-- Brazil's immediate intererest in Africa is securing access to natural resources, particularly oil. But is also motivated by a desire to create a new "Southern Axis" with itself at the forefront.

-- Russia is also interested in Africa's natural resources. But it faces a problem because of the sullied reputation of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. So Moscow has also embarked on a rebranding programme within the continent by ramping up its aid programmes.

-- India is attracted to Africa in part because of long historic ties. Commercial engagement, however, is also motivated by a need to guarantee the natural resources it needs for its own growth. Furthermore Africa is seen politically as a key ally in the pursuit of a competitive advantage over its Asian competitor China.

-- For China, Africa provides a long-term partner in its ongoing bid to gain global economic ascendancy, providing it with the resources, markets, geopolitical support, and, eventually, food and social security in the form of a growing and engaging diaspora.

A full copy of Standard Bank's report, which was written by Simon Freemantle and Jeremy Stevens, can be found here.

(Photo: Jeremy Gaunt)

While Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in Russia captured all the attention,  Singh's talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao may turn out to be just as important in easing off renewed pressure on the complex relationship between the world's rising powers.

India said this month it will bolster its defences on the unsettled China border, deploying up to 50,000 troops and its most latest Su-30 fighter aircraft at a base in the northeast.

While upgrading the defences has been a long-running objective, the timing seemed to suggest New Delhi's renewed fears of "strategic encirclement" by China by deepening ties with all of its neighbours, not just Pakistan but also Sri Lanka and Nepal.

The chief of the Indian air force, reflecting the anxieties in the security establishment, said China was a far bigger threat than Pakistan because so little was known about Beijing's combat capabilities.

Predictably enough, the Indian military moves and statements drew a strong response from China's official media warning that New Delhi's tough new posture was dangerous if it thought it would compel China to cave in. Beijing was in a different league, both in terms of national power, economic scale and global influence, the media said.

On Monday, Hu and Singh met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the BRIC meeting that followed in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. Details from the meeting were sketchy, but the Press Trust of India said the two leaders supported an early meeting of a joint economic group to push trade ties. 

They also touched on the border dispute at the heart of the more than four decades of distrust, noting that top negotiators were due to meet in August. The People's Daily said Hu stressed on expanding economic cooperation and investment flows and aims to take bilateral trade to $60 billion in 2010. It stood at $51.8 billion in 2008, the paper said.

India's decision to attend the SCO, where it has observer status, was also a step forward. Since its inception the forum has been seen in India as China-centric with the main strategic objective of limiting U.S. dominance on China's periphery and in that way prevent the hemming-in of both China and Russia.

By attending the summit is New Dehi signalling its intention to engage China on a broad front and not shy away?

And did Beijing shift ground a bit by acceding to the declaration by the BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India and China - calling for U.N. reform and saying that the grouping understood and supported India and Brazil's aspirations to play a greater role in the United Nations.

Both Brazil and India are candidates for permanent members of the Security Council and Beijing has long been cold to the idea of at least its southern neighbour getting a place on the high table. It wasn't a ringing endorsement at Yekaterinburg but perhaps the first shuffling of chairs?

[Manmohan Singh and Hu Jintao at the SCO summit and a Chinese soldier at the border]

Power play in South Asia is always a delicate dance and anything that happens between India and China will likely play itself out across the region, not the least in Pakistan, Beijing's all weather friend.

And things are starting to move on the India-China front. We carried a report this weekabout India's plan to increase troop levels and build more airstrips in the remote state of Arunachal Pradesh, a territory disputed by China.  New Delhi planned to deploy two army divisions, the report quoted Arunachal governor J.J. Singh as saying.

Other reports in the Indian media said the air force was beefing up its base in Tejpur in the northeast with Su-30 fighter planes, the newest in its armoury. The HIndustan Times said it was part of a decision to move advanced assets close to the Chinese  border.  The IAF base in Tejpur which is in the state of Assam is within striking distance of the border with China in Arunachal Pradesh.

Arunachal evokes especially painful memories for India - for this is where the Chinese advanced deep inside, inflicting heavy casualties on poorly-equipped Indian soldiers in the 1962 war. The Chinese retreated but have refused to recognise Arunachal as part of India, and that along with other disputed stretches of their 3,000 km border has remained at the heart of more than four decades of distrust.

Indeed the renewed Indian defence deployment comes days after the air force chief said China posed a bigger and more potent threat than Pakistan.

And what of the Chinese? What do they have to say to the noises coming out of India?  While official China hasn't appeared to react publicly,  the Chinese media has responded. The Global Times said in a hard-hitting editorial the Indian government's tough new posture "is dangerous if it is based on the anticipation China will cave in".

China is in a different league, it says, by way of international influence, overall national power and economic scale and India's politicians don't seem to have realised this. On the contrary, they seem to think that they would be doing China a huge favour simply by not joining the so-called  “ring around China” established by the United States and Japan, it says.

China is not going to compromise on its border dispute with India, and it was up to New Delhi to figure out why it can't have stable relations with many of its neighbours such as Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka while Beijing can, the Global Times says.

The Global Times is a popular tabloid and has been taking a strident tone on foreign policy issues. But it is published by the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, and can't really be ignored.

Are we seeing the beginning of a more open, declared rivalry  between the world's two most populous countries? Where does Pakistan fit in all this? Is New Delhi going to organise its energies and defences to meet the perceived threat from China and leave Pakistan to figure out its own troubles?

And what of the Chinese? Are they going to turn up the heat on India? As this analysis notes, New Delhi is already wary of China's role in Pakistan, and now reinforcing its fear of strategic encirclement are Beijing's expanding ties with India's smaller neighbours such as Sri Lanka and Nepal.

 [Indian troops at the Indian-China trade route at Nathu-La; an Indian and a Chinese soldier also in Nathu-La] 

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India has been fretting for months that it could be pushed into the background by the United States' economic dependence on China and by the renewed focus on Pakistan by President Barack Obama's administration.  That anxiety appears to have increased lately -- perhaps because the end of the country's lengthy election campaign has opened up space to think more about the external environment -- and is focusing on China.

In an interview with the Hindustan Times, Indian Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major said China posed a greater threat than Pakistan.  “China is a totally different ballgame compared to Pakistan,” he was quoted as saying. “We know very little about the actual capabilities of China, their combat edge or how professional their military is … they are certainly a greater threat.”

The Mint newspaper followed up with a editorial calling China "perhaps the gravest external threat" to India's security. "That India is in an unstable neighbourhood is clearer than ever this summer," it said. "But troubles from Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Nepal pale when compared with China."

The increased anxiety has been driven by the end of the war in Sri Lanka, where the government's victory was attributed partly to a supply of Chinese weapons, and where China has been building a new port on the island's southern coast.

"This is part of a broad move by China into the Indian Ocean, which India has traditionally considered its sphere of influence," said British newspaper The Times. Chinese engineers are building another port at Gwadar in Pakistan; roads are being cut or improved through Burma to help trade routes between Yunnan province in China and the Indian Ocean; ties are being improved with island nations such as the Seychelles; surveillance stations are being sited or upgraded on Burmese islands."

But even without the Sri Lankan trigger, Indian analysts have suggested that India may no longer enjoy the favoured position that developed under former president George W. Bush, when Washington forged close ties with Delhi, in part as a counterweight to China.  Facing the twin challenges of financial crisis and a military stalemate in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is dependent on India's two main rivals -- China to pay for American debt and Pakistan to help it defeat the Taliban.

"The crux of the matter lies in the US's relationship with China," retired Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar wrote in the Asia Times. "At first glance, it may appear there is hardly any ellipsis between George W Bush's policy of engaging China in 'constructive, candid and cooperative' ties and Obama's search for a 'positive, cooperative and comprehensive' US-China partnership. But the reality is that the US today has a much greater need of strategic engagement with China and arguably to 'upgrade' the partnership in the direction of an elevated dialogue on global political issues."

"To be sure, China's global influence has increased and a full-blown US-China strategic partnership - as evident from the mere talk of an exclusive 'G-2' matrix - will figure on the radars of countries such as India (or Japan) as a high probability if not an inevitability. The Obama administration will have to work hard to reassure India that it is not being relegated to a subordinate status."

India's loss does not automatically mean Pakistan's gain.

Pakistan has traditionally regarded China as its most reliable ally. In the past, Sino-Indian rivalry has helped it to win military supplies from China along with financial and diplomatic support. But rivalry between its two giant neighbours has not necessarily always played in its favour. India developed nuclear weapons to counter China's nuclear capability.  Pakistan, according to the Pakistan Army's official website, saw this as "coercive diplomacy" targetting not China, but Pakistan, and began its own nuclear weapons programme after India carried out its first nuclear test in 1974.

Nor did Pakistan necessarily gain from India's defeat by China in a border war in 1962, which left India with an enduring anxiety about its long, unmarked borders. When it feared Pakistan was planning to take control of the mountains beyond Kashmir -- an area so remote that it had never been demarcated -- India sent troops to occupy the heights above the Siachen glacier in 1984. Although India had been burned by what it saw as Chinese encroachment in its border areas before the 1962 war, its actions on Siachen were directed against Pakistan. (Twenty-five years later, the Indian and Pakistan armies are still deployed on the heights above Siachen, with India commanding the higher positions.)

Nor does Pakistan automatically gain from ever-closer ties between the United States and China.

According to this McClatchy report, the Obama administration has appealed to China to provide training and even military equipment to help Pakistanis counter the growing militant threat. "The proposal is part of a broad push by Washington to enlist key allies of Pakistan in an effort to persuade Islamabad to step up its efforts against militants while supporting the fragile civilian government and its tottering economy." it says. Richard Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, had visited China and Saudi Arabia, another ally, in recent weeks as part of the effort, it said.

In the past, Pakistan prided itself as a go-between, facilitating the Cold War thaw in relations between the United States and communist China in the early 1970s.  That may seem like a long time ago, but in a region with a fierce attachment to history, is Pakistan really ready to have Washington and Beijing talk over its head about what is best for it?

(Photos: President Obama meets President Hu in London; and Indian soldiers in Siachen)

By Tamora Vidaillet and Darren Ennis

Reporters at a long-awaited summit between the European Union and China in Prague Castle learnt more about the art of stage managing set-piece events than about the state of the EU-China relationship.

The Czech Republic, which holds the EU presidency until the end of next month, pulled out all the stops to ensure security was tight for Wednesday’s fleeting visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and a handful of ministers, who were kept away from journalists by barriers.

Ushered into a stuffy holding room hours before the meeting, journalists were kept from stepping outside even for a smoke for fear of escaping into the sprawling compound of the castle.

Outside, other aspects of the summit were subjected to similar controls. About 60 peope protesting against alleged Chinese abuses of human rights were kept well away from the eyes of Wen, who swept into the castle in a motorcade of black limousines.

Instead of letting Wen arrive to a chorus of abuse, Chinese men in suits carefully orchestrated a more friendly crowd of local Chinese well-wishers who merrily waved Czech and Chinese flags as Wen and his entourage drove by.

Once Wen’s car was safely within the sealed confines of the castle, the men handed out McDonald’s hamburgers to thank the crowd, which held up two banners in Chinese declaring their love for the premier.

Back in the castle, journalists from as far afield as Japan, Brussels, London and Paris waited impatiently before finally getting permission to go to what had been hailed as a news conference.

What an anti-climax. Rumours that plans to have a question-and-answer session would be scuppered proved true. Czech President Vaclav Klaus started a series of scripted statements. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso signalled for Wen to go next, but Wen made it clear he wanted the final word after what he described as 20 hours of flying time to visit Prague for just a few hours.

After his long statement, there was no time left for questions — on issues such as human rights or currencies — leaving journalists wondering why they had bothered to travel all this way.

Aides acknowledged it was more of a ceremonial, set-piece event than a meeting of substance.

A pink dragon-like alien from outerspace (who for some odd reason is called “Blue”) is driving through space one day when he gets into a traffic accident with some space debris and falls to earth. The creature lands in Southeast Asia (where bizarre traffic accidents are commonplace) in a place called “ASEAN Village”. It is here, waiting for his spaceship to be fixed, where Blue learns about ASEAN and its acheivements over the past 40 years, and its aspiration to become one big happy ASEAN Community.

Environmental activists dressed in orangutan suits at the ASEAN summit in Hua Hin, Thailand, Feb. 28, 2009. REUTERS PHOTO/Adrees Latif

This is the storyline from a new comic book and animated cartoon for schoolchildren that the ASEAN Secretariat has commissioned to propagate the idea of an ASEAN Community, one not so unlike the European Community, which the leaders of today are hoping to bequeath the children of tomorrow. And as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations gets set to host its annual pow-wow with other Asia-Pacific powers this weekend in Thailand, the story of a stranger in a strange land seems apt.

At the risk of being snide, observers can sometimes feel like they’ve dropped out of the sky and landed in a puzzling world where people speak in a profusion of arcane acronyms at ASEAN’s confabulations. (North Korea barked at ARF. AWGEE issued an impressive enviornmental paper. BIMP-EAGA went to CARD, connected the DOTS, and an agreement was nearly in their GRSP before they had to go back to the KRIBB for a ZOPFAN)

What is this ASEAN village anyway? The devil is truly in the details here. ASEAN is aiming to become an integrated political/security, economic and cultural community by 2015. But what does an integrated political community mean exactly in a grouping that includes Myanmar’s truculent junta, not to mention the communist states, kingdoms and boisterous democracies that comprise the rest of the ASEAN village?
If all that isn’t confusing enough, ASEAN is also intent on creating some sort of East Asian community with its dialogue partners in the “East Asia Summit” – Japan, China, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India — though it seems even more vague and ambivalent about that.

The idea had its genesis in the early 1990s, when Malaysia’s outspoken premier Mahathir Mohamad campaigned for a conclave of Asian tiger economies which he dubbed the East Asia Economic Caucus – pointedly exlcuding non-Asians from the clique. (Some wags called it the “caucus without the Caucasians”.) The United States, loathe to see China gain ascendancy in the region, pushed strenuously (working through Japan) to include its allies “Down Under” in the group.

A demonstrator walks past a picture depicting ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra as a superhero during an anti-government protest outside Government House in Bangkok April 7, 2009. Supporters of Thaksin are holding big demonstrations to try to embarrass it an the annual East Asia summit this weekend that Thailand is hosting. REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom

I remember covering an ASEAN meeting in Brunei in 1995 when Australia’s then foreign minister Gareth Evans unrolled a huge map of East Asia which absurdly showed Siberia at the top, Antarctica at the bottom and the Australian continent smack dab in the middle. Malaysia’s foreign minister (and future prime minister) Abdullah Badawi was beside himself. He stormed up to the podium, pointed with a shaking finger at the map and declared: “Australia is not there, it’s down there,” gesturing vehemently at the floor.

So ASEAN wound up caucusing with the Caucasians in the end, launching this annual East Asia Summit four years ago, as an encore act to its annual meetings. And as in a Bertold Brecht play, they have been 16 leaders in search of an existential purpose ever since.

The first summit in Kuala Lumpur was almost an umitigated disaster. China and South Korea were barely on speaking terms with Japan because of its prime minister’s visit to the controversial Yakusuni war shine. At the second summit in Cebu Philippines, the voluble host, Philippine President Gloria Arroyo took a stab at defining the East Asia community, describing it as “many concentric cirlces” converging on areas of common ground such as trade. You could almost see the bubbles floating around.

This weekend’s meeting in Pattaya, Thailand will try to find common ground in dealing with the financial crisis, which has begun to pinch Asia’s largely export-dependent economies. The leaders will sign agreements on energy, climate change, food security. They will be filled with important sounding acronyms and they will be legally pretty much worthless.
If the leaders ever begin to talk seriously, say about a single currency or monetary union as Europe did a quarter-century or so ago, then they can truly start being a community. Or a village if they prefer. Until that happens, Dr. Mahathir had it right. This is a caucus without much focus.

A farmer pushes a bicycle as he walks along a paddy field in Ngai Cau village, 20 km (12.5 miles) outside Hanoi, April 4, 2008. The East Asia summit this weekend in Pattay, Thailland is expected to talk about a food security agreement. REUTERS/Kham

Cubans indulge baseball mania at Havana’s “Hot Corner”

For all the shouting and nose-to-nose confrontations, visitors to Havana’s Parque Central might think they had walked into a brawl or counter-revolution … but here in the park’s Hot Corner,  the topic almost always under discussion is baseball, Cuba’s national obsession.

Iraq’s orphans battle to outgrow abuse

At night, Salah Abbas Hisham wakes up screaming. Sometimes, in the dark, he silently attacks the boy next to him in a tiny Baghdad orphanage where 33 boys sleep on cots or on the floor. Salah, who saw both his parents blown apart in a car bomb, can never be left alone at night.

Colombian soccer club tries to forget cocaine past

Colombian soccer champions America de Cali are first to admit cocaine dollars had a hand in their sporting heyday. But after years of paying the price, they’re trying to wipe the slate clean … Cali’s mayor is leading a campaign to have the team removed from a U.S. anti-drugs blacklist.

Big French press find brand power helps online

In a grimy part of eastern Paris an editorial conference is underway, similar to planning meetings in newsrooms everywhere, except this is being blogged live and readers can join in … The meeting is at Rue89 … one of the interactive  sites to have appeared as a global crisis in the press squeezes French newspapers.

Shy teen spotlights battle over failing schools

A shy 14-year-old girl plucked from obscurity by the White House has come to symbolize a battle over how to fix dilapidated U.S. schools. Ty’Sheoma Bethea’s story proves that one small act — in this case writing to President Barack Obama — can have a big impact. It also highlights a battle over how far the federal government should fund U.S. education.

Toxic jatropha shrub fuels Mexico’s biodiesel push

All his life elderly Mexican farmer Gonzalo Cardenas has planted a stalky weed that grows wild in southern Mexico to form a sturdy live fence around his tropical fruit trees. Now it turns out the weed, jatropha, could be used to fuel jet planes.

Malaysia Christians battle with Muslims over Allah

The congregation at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral on Borneo island intones in Malay: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of Allah”. Now the government in this mostly Muslim Southeast Asian nation wants to prevent “Allah” being used by Christians.

Rape inquiry sheds light on racism in Italy

When police arrested two Romanians for the rape of an Italian teenager in Rome, a paper owned by the family of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, reported: “The Romanian beasts have been caught.” Three weeks later, prosecutors admitted the “beasts” could not be guilty — DNA tests had ruled them out .

China’s last eunuch spills sex, castration secrets

Only two memories brought tears to Sun Yaoting’s eyes in old age — the day his father cut off his genitals, and the day his family threw away the pickled remains that should have made him a whole man again at death. China’s last eunuch was tormented and impoverished in youth, punished in revolutionary China for his role as the “Emperor’s slave”.

The Red Sea might save the Dead Sea

Abundant water from the Red Sea could replenish the shrinking Dead Sea if Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians decide to commission a tunnel north through the Jordanian desert from the Gulf of Aqaba. The Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance project would supply the biggest desalination plant in the world.

Development takes toll on Chesapeake crabs

It doesn’t look like a disaster area. Crab boats dart back and forth on this inlet of the Chesapeake Bay as they have for generations … But watermen aren’t pulling blue crabs out of the Bay … the U.S. Commerce Department declared the fishery a federal disaster last September.

U.S. energy future hits snag in rural Pennsylvania

When her children started missing school because of persistent diarrhea and vomiting, Pat Farnelli began to wonder if she and her family were suffering from more than a classroom bug. After trying several remedies, she stopped using the water drawn from her well in this rural corner of northeastern Pennsylvania, the forefront of a drilling boom in what may be the biggest U.S. reserve of natural gas.

Before Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president in 2007, he made clear he wanted to break with France’s old way of doing business in Africa – a cosy blend of post-colonial corruption and patronage known as “Françafrique” that suited a fair few African dictators and the French establishment alike.

He has made the same point during his past visits to the continent.

“The old pattern of relations between France and Africa is no longer understood by new generations of Africans, or for that matter by public opinion in France. We need to change the pattern of relations between France and Africa if we want to look at the future together,” Sarkozy said in South Africa early last year.

This week he is back in Africa for a visit on which France’s business interests play a very prominent role.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sarkozy called on the country to work with former foes Rwanda and Uganda in a partnership based on exploiting the region’s natural riches.

Another stop was in neighbouring Congo Republic to see President Denis Sassou Nguesso, an old friend of France who seized power in the oil-producing state in 1979, lost it in a 1992 election and then returned five years later via a civil war. In the past, Congo Republic symbolised as much as anywhere the old style of diplomacy.

After the Congos, the schedule takes Sarkozy to Niger, a particularly important country for nuclear power dependent France because of the uranium mining interests of French state-controlled nuclear energy group Areva. It is building a huge new mine in Niger, where the government is fighting Tuareg rebels who demand more of the region’s wealth.

Sarkozy is doing nothing different from other world leaders by bringing along a bevy of executives keen to sign deals. France also faces a great deal of competition from China and others in what it used to treat as its “backyard” and is keen to ensure it does not lose out.

In Brazzaville, Sarkozy repeated the pledge he made a year ago to renegotiate all France’s accords with African countries and to make sure they are published in full. But the pace of progress so far has raised questions over how determined France is to break with the past. What do you think the prospects for change are? Is it important?

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy with Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso in Brazzaville March 26, 2009. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Brinker International which owns casual dining restaurants Chili’s Grill & Bar, Maggiano’s Little Italy and On the Border brands, says that outside the United States it’s on track to open about 300 outlets over the next five years which would bring it’s total overseas presence to about 500…many of those are already located in the Middle East and Mexico. Even though the company’s international president John Reale concedes there has been a slowdown in sales “they are still up in the high single digits” which is more than they can say in the U.S. where mid-tier chains across the board have seen comparable-store sales turn negative as consumers tighten their budgets. Reale says the biggest challenge for the remainder of 2009 is trying to understand consumer behavior, but he does see a bright spot. Prices for real estate around the world, which had prevented the company from opening in some locations, have come down “30 to 40-percent.” Click here to hear what Brinker International President John Reale had to say:
Reale interview from Reuters TV on Vimeo.