The Great Debate UK
from The Great Debate (India):
Is India ready to tackle swine flu?
With the number of swine flu fatalities in India touching double figures on Tuesday, panic is slowly setting in.
Schools, malls and cinema halls in Pune are already shut and nearly a thousand people across India have tested positive for the virus.
The H1N1 flu outbreak, declared a pandemic on June 11, has spread around the world since emerging in April and could eventually affect 2 billion people, according to WHO estimates.
But is India ready to tackle the outbreak?
More supplies of flu drug Tamiflu and testing kits are being imported and private hospitals are being asked to help state-run hospitals cope with a surge in people rushing to get tested.
from The Great Debate (India):
India, Pakistan reach cautious win-win perch
By C. Uday Bhaskar
(C. Uday Bhaskar is a New Delhi-based strategic analyst. The views expressed in the column are his own)
The joint statement issued by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani at Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt on the sidelines of the NAM Summit has generated considerable comment in both countries and is being interpreted across a wide bandwidth that ranges from outright condemnation to cautious cheer.
from Davos Notebook:
The shift in power from West to East
One news theme I've asked our journalists to be alert to this year is the shift in power and emphasis from est to East.
The rise of China's economic power during 30 years of reform and opening to the world is just one manifestation of this; the knowledge and service powerhouse that India has come in a globalised world is another. At Davos this year I'm moderating a panel on Asian innovation that will surely highlight software advances in Japan, Korea and Thailand as well.
from The Great Debate:
Scoop! U.S. offers to cooperate with world
-- Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
An American president vowing to cooperate with the rest of the world would barely be news if it did not follow eight years' of George W. Bush's tenure in the White House.
Barack Obama's inauguration address was thin on foreign policy specifics, but his pledge to work with allies and adversaries on global problems from nuclear weapons to climate change was a message many have waited impatiently to hear.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Assessing U.S. intervention in India-Pakistan: enough for now?
In the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, India's response has been to look to the United States to lean on Pakistan, which it blames for spawning Islamist militancy across the region, rather than launching any military retaliation of its own. So after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's trip to India and Pakistan last week, have the Americans done enough for now?
According to Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, Rice told Pakistan there was "irrefutable evidence" that elements within the country were involved in the Mumbai attacks. And it quotes unnamed sources as saying that behind-the-scenes she “pushed the Pakistani leaders to take care of the perpetrators, otherwise the U.S. will act”.
from The Great Debate:
Hidden emotions, hidden agendas
Wow, Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times let fly with a zinger with his opinion piece "Calling all Pakistanis", presumably aimed at stirring compassion in Pakistani hearts over last week's horrifying attack in Mumbai.
Pakistanis were 
ready enough to take to the streets to vent their anger and indignation over cartoons in Denmark, why can't they demonstrate a shared sense of outrage over the cold-blooded killing of 171 people in the country next door, asks Friedman.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Mumbai attack and Obama’s plans for Afghanistan
As if the challenge facing President-elect Barack Obama of stabilising Afghanistan was not difficult enough, it may have just got much, much harder after the Mumbai attacks soured relations between India and Pakistan -- undermining hopes of finding a regional solution to the Afghan war.
As discussed in an earlier post, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has blamed a group outside India for the attacks which killed at least 121 people. The coordinated attacks bore the hallmarks of Pakistani-based Kashmiri militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India says was set up by Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
from The Great Debate:
New economies want power before paying
--Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist, the views expressed are his own--
Anyone who expected the major emerging economies to write fat checks in exchange for being invited to the first G20 leaders' summit on rescuing the world economy will have been disappointed.
But that should only have surprised the naive.
Despite intensive lobbying by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Saudi Arabia and China, the rising powers were never likely to make a cash down-payment to the International Monetary Fund before getting more seats and votes at the top table.
