ECONOMIST Paul Krugman has recently written a column in The New York Times on the depreciating Indian rupee. He comes to the conclusion that India’s present currency crisis is fundamentally different from the East Asian currency crisis of 1997-8, since India’s debt, denominated in foreign currency, is small compared to what it was for the East Asian economies then. Hence he argues that there is no cause for India to panic; the rupee will depreciate for a while and then settle down, which would mean an upsurge in inflation for a while before prices too settle down.

THE world seems to be moving on two different tracks on the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Almost the only narrative in the US is did Assad regime use chemical weapons, but what should be the US response. The evidence of Assad government using chemical weapons needs to be at least plausible, for the world to accept US military strikes. In the rest of the world, barring perhaps only France, there is deep scepticism about such US claims.

A FIVE-MEMBER delegation of the CPI(M) led by Prakash Karat, general secretary, visited China for a week between June 16 and 22, 2013 at the invitation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The other members of the delegation were A K Padmanabhan, member of the Polit Bureau, Jogendra Sharma, member of the Central Secretariat and P Madhu and Rama Das, members of the Central Committee.

The delegation had discussions with the Central leaders of the CPC in Beijing and visited two provinces – Jiangsu and Henan.

ON April 16, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) spelt out its response to the “US high ranking officials” who were reportedly vying with each other “to talk about dialogue” with it.

THE latest round of talks to resolve the long running dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme seem to have once again ended without making much progress. The talks, the second within a short span of time, had taken place in the salubrious climes of Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, in early April. The venue was carefully chosen, as Kazakhstan had positioned itself as an honest broker between the West and Iran.