NEW YORK — For three decades, the blazing growth of China's coastal manufacturing regions has been fueled by a seemingly endless stream of workers migrating from China's poorer, rural interior.

WASHINGTON — The transition in Myanmar that began two years ago — from a military to a quasi-civilian government — is the largest and most encouraging turnaround in the developing world in years.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Four years ago, as the economy seemed to be in absolute free fall, it was Andrew Parlin, an economic analyst, an astute student of history and then head of a Boston-based investment company, who called the bottom for GlobalPost. As he now points out with considerable modesty, he wrote a piece more than a week before March 9, 2009, but that was the day we finally published it. And, as it turns out, March 9, 2009 was indeed the date that most analysts cite as the lowest day for the markets to close during the Great Recession.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — I loved Comandante Hugo Chavez. I loved him not because I’m some sort of pinko populist, but because he makes teaching Latin American politics so much more fun and fascinating. He provided so many great teaching moments to share with my students.

Since the 2002 coup, he has given me a steady stream of new material. His anti-American, and especially anti-George W. Bush, views became near obsessions. Chavez believed that the United States was plotting to assassinate him, or even launch a full invasion of Venezuela. Now Vice President Nicolas Maduro claims that enemies, including the US, caused Chavez’s cancer.