New York Times: Dire Forecast for Global Economy and Trade
The world economy is on the brink of a rare global recession, the World Bank said yesterday, with world trade projected to fall next year for the first time since 1982 and capital flows to developing countries predicted to plunge 50 percent. The projections are among the most dire in a litany of recent gloomy forecasts. The bank prognosticates the global economy will eke out growth of 0.9 percent in 2009, down from 2.5 percent this year and 4 percent in 2006. Developing countries will grow an average of 4.5 percent next year — a pace that economists said constituted a recession.

AFP: Goal of halving hunger by 2015 ever more elusive: UN
A look at yesterday’s report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization with an eye on the Millennium Development Goals. The FAO’s Director-General Jacques Diouf told a news conference yesterday that, “the world goal of reducing hunger by half is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve.”

-Chandler Smith