Professor William Beeman's postings on the prestigious Gulf 2000 Web site underscore something that, in the journalism business, is known as floating a trial balloon. Interested parties feed tantalizing morsels of seemingly credible factoids to correspondents, who then proceed to develop the "story" at will. Their editors at headquarters play up the story at will, too. G2K members must undoubtedly know that most newspapers have fraught with internecine comeptition: editors of various desks a...

I have the dubious distinction of having been a witness to both a stoning-to-death in Nigeria, and a public execution of a (presumably) adulterous couple in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The latter episode: Bill Stewart, then of Time Magazine, and I happened to be in Riyadh, he for his magazine, and I as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. I don't recall the exact circumstances, but we found ourselves in a square where the couple was brought out of vans. They seemed to be ina daze; I'm...

India has wasted three years debating a modest proposal for diverting some of its foreign reserves to plugging the country's abysmal infrastructure deficit. It's only now that China is all set to carve out $200 billion from its reserves into a sovereign wealth fund that India is hastening to reach a decision on what to do with its own low-yielding cache. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said in a speech at the London Business School last week that, the government has "persuaded" the Reserve...

Sir Salman may well get a Nobel Prize for Literature. In fact, his supporters have long campaigned for it, and when Sir V. S. Naipaul -- a fellow writer of Indian origin -- got the prize in 2001, there were some Rushdie backers who felt that Naipaul's cohort had simply done a better job at mobilizing what it takes for the Nobel. What it takes is relentless lobbying. Just ask Jagdish Bhagwati, the University Professor at Columbia University, and arguably the world's greatest authority on tr...

Bob Hormats is an author of great perceptiveness and intellectual depth. For more than four decades, he has been engaged with the issue of globalization -- long before the term "globalization" became en vogue. As vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, Hormats has had access to the corridors of high finance all around the world. As a member of several administrations in Washington, he's had access to the corridors of power in many chancelleries. Hormats writes with clarity and depth, an...

By The Associated Press (June 7, 2007) India's economy is still showing signs of overheating in some areas despite a drop in overall inflation in recent weeks, the prime minister's top economic adviser said Wednesday. C. Rangarajan, who heads the Indian prime minister's Economic Advisory Council, said he was also concerned over the surge in foreign money coming into India, complicating efforts by monetary authorities to cool the economy. The Indian economy has grown more than 8.5 per...

Just read this on line BusinessWeek report: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh challenged business leaders Thursday to ensure the poor benefit from India's economic boom, and to shun the West's "wasteful lifestyles" of greed and conspicuous consumption. "Such vulgarity insults the poverty of the less privileged," Singh said at the annual conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry, a leading business group. He promised to continue fostering a business-friendly environment, but said...

We may have a rather long wait ahead of us before South Africa's Thabo Mbeki publicly denounces or scolds a fellow African head of government. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe may be a villain along the lines that the editorial page of The New York Times specifies (May 17), but he's Africa's villain -- a native son -- and, moreover, a fellow traveler of Mbeki during the long struggle against colonialism and apartheid. Both share a socialist past, and both men enjoy a personal friendship that was for...

Bernard Lewis is clearly losing his acuity, and clarity of thought, as evidenced in his Wall Street Journal op-ed article. It's almost as though he wrote that article to please the editors of the Journal's editorial page, whose views concerning the Islamic world are sometimes at variance with reality on the ground. I am saddened by Professor Lewis's decline. His best work is well behind him. Unlike, say, George Kennan who kept writing vigorous, well argued prose almost until his death in 2...

The thumping victory by Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party in legislative elections in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, represents a seismic shift in the nation's politics. Home of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has dominated the Indian political landscape since the country's independence from the British 60 years ago, Uttar Pradesh has the largest bloc of seats in the national parliament, where a coalition led by the Nehru-Gandhi Congress Party has run the federal government since 2004...

"Anthony Cordesman, "Iraqi Perceptions of the War: Public Opinion by City and Region," May 2, 2007, released by CSIS. Available at: http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,3868/type,1/ Some of the study's observations: * Most Iraqis still want a unified country - only the Kurds want federalism; * 78% of Iraqis oppose the presence of U.S. forces on their soil, though far fewer favor an immediate pullout; * Most Iraqis thought the surge -- sending additional...

Very many years ago, when I was just starting out in journalism as a copyboy at The New York Times, I wrote a letter to David Halberstam. I told him how much I'd enjoyed reading his book, "The Best and the Brightest." I told him that I thought that I'd never read a more compelling work of nonfiction, and that I found his style totally engaging. To my surprise, I received a hand-written thank-you note from David. I still have it. Over the next four decades, I got several opportunities to me...

The Times of India has an excellent article today (April 24) in which the paper says that although coalition politics might require parties to make compromises on their ideology, the parties haven't by any means jettisoned their driving ideology. Here's a telling quote: "Even Congress is unable to shake off much of its ideological baggage. For most of Man mohan Singh's tenure as prime minister, Congress has been harping on economic reform and growth. However, Congress hasn't been able to aban...

Shashi Tharoor, an established author and self-styled celebrity -- and unsuccessful candidate for UN secretary general -- is now taking on India's minister of commerce and industry, Kamal Nath. Tharoor committed himself to responding to questions for Nath's forthcoming book, "India's Century: Unleashing Entrepreneurial Energy in the World's Biggest Democracy," to be published by McGraw-Hill in August. When those questions were e-mailed to him, he suddenly decided he was too busy to respond. H...

It's been a while since I was last in New Delhi. I'm astonished by the acceleration in energy. Change is everywhere -- from the new roads and buildings, to the shopping centers. Most of all, there's a new attitude toward economic progress. It's also winter in Delhi, a time of crisp mornings and bracing evenings. How lovely to be in India again.