By MARCUS GEE, Toronto Globe and Mail

Zhou Xiaoguang knows a thing or two about surviving hard times. As a girl of 17, she left her poor Chinese village to make a living as a peddler. She sold embroidery hoops, needles and patterns, hefting a 200-pound sack as she moved by train from town to town.

Through all the recent months of bad news, Detroit could always offer itself one consolation: Hey, there is always China.

The dramatic rise of the Japanese yen is shining a light in another dark corner of the global financial system -- a corner that, like the U.S. subprime mortgage market, turns out to be hiding goblins.

SEOUL, South Korea -- As the rest of the world buzzes over the news that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il may be sick or incapacitated, the neighboring country that would be most affected by his demise -- South Korea -- is giving a collective shrug.

When it unleashed its troops in Georgia, Russian leader Vladimir Putin was doing more than delivering a beating to a cocky former dependency. He was delivering a message: Russia is back.

When Una Kim de Vitton set out to study the success of Indian companies, she wondered: How on earth do they do it? Indian firms have become international leaders in software development, information- technology and other highly technical fields. Yet the Indian education system is notoriously weak.

A Canadian company hopes that an American Idol-style English proficiency contest in China will give a boost to its interactive language teaching Web site.Toronto-based Lingo Media Corp. says that its subsidiary Speak2Me Inc. will sponsor the 2008 Jiangsu English Star Television Contest.

To the outside world, the reaction of Myanmar's military regime to last week's devastating cyclone seems not just obscene, but inexplicable.

MUMBAI, India -- Anand Mahindra was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year when Robert Lane, chairman of U.S. farm equipment concern Deere & Co., approached him.

MUMBAI, India -- Teams with names like the Delhi Daredevils. Tycoons and Bollywood stars bidding against each other for "icon" players. Teen-age bowlers turned into millionaires overnight. Television contracts worth hundreds of millions.Suddenly awash in new money, Corporate India is shaking up the tradition-bound gentleman's game of cricket.