As so many commentators noted, in some sense he simply failed to show up. Perhaps he also thought that, well ahead in the polls, he did not have to bother to engage the pesky fellow who imagined replacing him in the White House.

The Americans are happy that India s pesky left, reduced to a paltry 24 seats, has been all but eliminated from national government. India s Communists had tried to topple the Congress led government last year in an attempt to scuttle the nuclear deal brokered by the United States, and had vowed to upend it.

Developing country governments will be only too pleased to borrow without the pesky conditions that the World Bank and existing regional development banks typically attach to their loans. And, as a region, East Asia will now get more of the roughly 8 trillion that the Asian Development Bank has estimated that the region will need to keep growing through 2020.

DENVER Insanity, Albert Einstein is reported to have said, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For those who have long scoffed at the possibility that China might be willing to deal decisively with its pesky North Korean neighbor, the results of US Secretary of State John Kerry s recent visit to Beijing will be all too predictable.