By Mary Hennock

China's parliament is frequently dismissed as a rubber stamp body whose delegates agree with every government measure and avoid controversy. This year's session has seen a new trend at work. The two-week gathering of the National People's Congress has seen protesters lobbying hard against a key government policy. No, not Tibet independence activists, angry farmers, or unemployed workers, but company bosses. Many delegates are entrepreneurs, and they're objecting to China's new labor contract law, introduced just over two months ago. "The law is overly-protective of workers' rights," delegate Zong Qinghou told Reuters, adding, "It isn't reasonable." Zong is the chairman of Wahaha Group, China's biggest private soft drinks company.

Beijing isn't alone in its "edifice complex," the massive urban makeover that has transformed the Chinese capital in the run-up to the Summer Olympics. In Shanghai the remodeling of the city's famous Bund waterfront has led to some raised eyebrows. My colleague Duncan Hewitt writes from Shanghai:

When Shanghai does something, it doesn't do it by halves. For years, local urban planners have admitted that the city made a mistake in the 1990s, when it routed one of its major highways right along the famous Bund waterfront. Since then conservationists have dreamt of the day when the traffic would be rerouted, or even put underground in a tunnel, to spare the historic structures from pollution and improve the view of the famous old stretch of colonial-era buildings.

In Brazil these days, armor is the new normal. From bullet-proof luxury rides to the caveirão, a police assault wagon built like a tank, Brazilians have fortified themselves against the hazards of modern living. In Rio, one evangelical Christian church in a crime-ridden favela is raising a steel-plated, 30-meter containing wall to keep the flock from harm's way when the shooting starts. So fashionable is the concept these days that Brazilians have even come to believe that their charmed economy is innured to world economic downturn.

No doubt there is some ground for optimism. Inflation is under control. Hard currency reserves are topping $160 billion, a continental record. Foreign debt is history. And while the largest economy on earth skates on the edge of recession, Brazilian officials confidently project growth of 5 percent or more this year, or, if the international markets tank, "maybe a little less," shrugs Finance Minister Guido Mantega. Give us your best shot, the bulls in Brazil seem to be saying, for Latin America's drowsy  giant has not only stirred but "decoupled" - or broken free - from the vagaries of the globe's overlord economy. 

The War on Terror has burned through America’s human and financial resources and empowered radical Islam. But for China, it’s been a lucrative reprieve.

However weakened are Sino-US ties – and they’ve taken a beating this year – the most important trans-Pacific relationship would be a lot worse if not for the Bush administration’s pre-occupation with the Middle East. His predecessor will likely declare a victory of sorts in Iraq and Afghanistan and slowly draw down the US military presence there. The White House will focus on domestic concerns like health care, immigration, and trade. Media interest in the terrorist threat will wane. (If there is a clash of civilizations and no one around to videotape it, does it get posted on YouTube?)

Stock markets in the developing world are not for sissies. Who can forget the scenes of late last decade, when financial contagion swept bourses from Bangkok to Buenos Aires, bringing traders to their knees? It was no different in Brazil, where in 1999 the overvalued real collapsed practically overnight, taking the São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) with it. It wasn't long before the sages started dissing Latin America's biggest economy, calling for financial rainmakers to take the B out of BRICs, the acronym for the world's trendiest emerging markets - Brazil, Russia, India and China.

What a difference a decade makes. On October 26, the traders will be frantic again, this time clawing each other for a chance to get a piece of one of the world's hottest properties. Yes, Bovespa is going public. And if the market buzz is to be believed, by the closing bell on Friday, Brazil will have shepherded one of the largest IPOs of the year.

For the last two years running, bankers in London, New York and Tokyo have reaped record-breaking bonuses, sending bountiful ripples through their local economies in the form of everything from gasp-worthy bar bills to astronomical property prices. Many movers and shakers, buoyed by a record $3,300 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions activity globally in the first half of this year, were hoping that the coming bonus season would prove three’s the charm.

That was, of course, until America’s subprime mortgage crisis sent the global economy into a penny-pinching credit crunch.

Cutting edge greenhouse technology in the Netherlands could mean trouble for Kenya's flower industry.  Kenyans have long considered themselves to have an environmental advantage over Europe. Although they rely heavily on air transport—which leaves a hefty carbon footprint—Kenya's climate allows it to grow its plants outside as opposed to indoors, where temperature and light must be controlled artificially. But a new study from the Hague-based Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI) shows that difference in carbon dioxide emitted in the production of Kenyan and Dutch roses is smaller than previously thought. And the gap is quickly closing as the Netherlands switches to new, non-polluting methods to heat its greenhouses.

The Netherlands horticultural sector aims to become climate neutral by 2020. Its new heating technology, currently under trial, involves capturing energy with solar panels during summer and storing it in water inside permeable rock materials 120 meters under ground.  The warmed water then gets pumped up to the greenhouse during the winter months while cold water is circulated in the summer. The first greenhouse to use this system opened in Holland last year and further trials are going on in the country right now. At a time when the world is increasingly conscious of the carbon footprint left by shipping commercial goods around the globe--most often calculated as "food miles"--such development could make a big difference to buyers.

If flower consumers do start favoring Dutch suppliers, it would deal a huge blow to Kenya, which sees the 700 million it earns in exports of flowers, vegetables and fruit annually as critical to the health of its economy. Kenya is currently the leading flower exporter to the European Union, supplying 38 percent of all imported flowers sold there. LEI claims that previous reports that emissions from Kenyan flowers, including airfreight, were nearly six times lower than Dutch flowers are just wrong—partially because they neglected to take into account variations in flower weight between Kenyan and Dutch varieties. No doubt Kenyan officials will dispute this new study, which has yet to be published in full, and continue to resist the introduction of carbon labeling on all imported flowers.  But everyone will have to agree that what matters most these days is not what you call a rose. It's the carbon it costs to get there.

There are many misdemeanors a Russian oligarch can commit with impunity, from fraud to murder, and many of them have done so. There's only one really unforgivable crime in the unwritten code of Russian laws known as 'ponatiye', or understandings, and that is defiance of the Kremlin's will.

Mikhail Gutseriyev, former chief executive of Russian oil group Russneft, committed exactly that crime last month.