But with the new government having announced the biggest round of budget cuts since World War II, the Bank still expects the resulting slowdown in spending to bring inflation down over the next two years.

BBC: UK inflation rate in surprise October increase

Part II looks at both China and India in the 2005 round of the UN International Comparison Programme (ICP) that is being coordinated by the World Bank, the Regional Banks and Economic Commissions.

FORBES: Buy India, Sell China

This was a round-the-world cruise taken by Craig Venter on his yacht, Sorcerer II, which studied the diversity of micro-organisms in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.

ECONOMIST: A new domain of life

For someone who had never gone faster than 8 knots on a sailboat, watching him and his crew in the 1989 Whitbread Round-the-World Race blaze through the Southern Ocean on the 90-foot Steinlager II was nothing short of incredible.

FORBES: The Real Deal... Mike Horn Takes Young Explorers to the Far Corners of the Planet