Traders are so far split on the question of where the price of rice will be in 3 months time with predicted cost at $216, the same as it was for March. Do you disagree with their take on the food crisis situation? What will the price of rice be in July? The wisdom of the crowd was throughly with Mugabe remaining President past April 30 but the predictions continues with the Who will be the next president of Zimbabwe? market.

We're implementing a sea change in our commenting policy here at openDemocracy. For a long time, we've allowed anybody to comment on our articles, and while this has brought a very high level of debate to the site on some issues, it has failed to really provide conversation between you, our readers, and the authors and editorial staff who comprise openDemocracy as a publisher.

We'd love to change that, and we hope that our new commenting system is going to achieve that goal. We'll be moving all comments posted on articles over to be completely moderated, initially by our editorial team here in the office, as well as some authors, but increasingly by the community itself.

Xenophon wrote the first economics book as a treatise on how an Athenian nobleman should best manage his estate. It is often useful, when thingking about big questions of resource allocation in the World economy, to return to the Socratic simplicity of that context. If the world were your estate, what would you be doing?

I posted on Monday about doing a group annotation of JZ's book.

JZ has written an important new book: "The Future of the Internet (and how to stop it)". The PDF can be downloaded here, and you can buy it here But it has a beautiful HTML edition here.

Varnished with a pale yet discernible mixture of complacency and pomposity, the developing assumption of late regarding America’s sub-prime crisis is that greedy, careless borrowers, and not bankers, should be held accountable for much of the emerged mortgage mayhem.

With the crisis continuing in Zimbabwe over the as yet undeclared election results our Will Robert Mugabe still lead Zimbabwe on May 1st? market has only one week left to run. Do you think anything significant will happen in the next week or will Robert Mugabe stay on?

The Democratic presidential candidate race has not only torn the party in two but is increasingly highlighting weaknesses on both sides. A strident aspect to Hilary Clinton’s foreign policy appeared today, painting Barack Obama in the more mature light. When asked how she would respond to an Iranian attack on Israel, Clinton shockingly promised to "obliterate" Iran were she president. As Obama rightfully pointed out, using words such as "obliterate" "doesn’t produce good results". Not to be outdone, however, he did manage to add that he would deal with Iran ‘forcefully’ – let there be no fear of that.

You may have noticed that our banner spot is now occasionally filled with Google AdWords.

We've experimented in the past with Google Adsense, and we stopped when, after the Thai coup, our coverage of Thailand was attracting Google's advertisments for "Thai Massage Parlours". When the Google sales team rang us a month ago proposing a new set of services, they assured us that we could now filter out unwanted ads. So if anything appears that you find untoward, please leave a comment in this blog, and we'll see if we can get the filter to work properly.

The world wakes today to exciting news: US President George W. Bush has set a new national climate target. While others seek to reduce emissions, the US will now look to at least stop increasing them. By 2025.

As the clock winds down on the Bush era, it is worth considering the consequences of his decision to stand still on climate change. America is now at least eight years behind the rest of the world. It will take a long time and a lot of work to catch up and there is, as yet, little evidence to suggest that the next president can do enough.

Half a century past a promised date, Nepalis have finally voted in an election to the Constituent Assembly (CA) that will write its constitution. The Constituent Assembly on its first sitting is expected to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic.

In 2004 Greece dazzled the world by staging an Olympic Games in which the country’s ancient and modern culture was wonderfully displayed. Visitors to Athens were impressed by the way in which parts of the urban environment had palpably improved, defying the city’s image as a smog-ridden concrete jungle. In the Plaka district next to the Acropolis, where cars have been banished and the noisier night-clubs have been silenced, strollers could enjoy an agreeable mixture of classical remains, Byzantine churches and modern tavernas.