If you haven't yet had a chance to read E.J. Graff's superb piece "The Lie We Love" from our November/December issue, it's now available for free on ForeignPolicy.com. The piece is an exploration of the dark side of global adoption and the myth that millions of healthy babies are waiting for adoption in the developing world. Too often, Graff argues, these infants are "manufactured" to meet Western demand.

To accompany the piece, Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism has put together this online map showing the countries where the most serious adoption irregularities occur. Click through for in depth country data and check back as more countries are added:

Capitol Hill seemed like the center of the universe last night as U.S. senators scrambled to save U.S. workers, students, and Joe Sixpack from financial disaster. But what about the other constituents of America's economic domain? I'm talking about other countries. How have they reacted to this spiraling crisis? Let's take a look at a few major players:

I use a 1-5 scale to indicate how urgent the crisis is for a country -- 1 means not at all concerned, and 5 represents hair-on-fire panic.

Japan (3)

Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa is not worried:

I understand that the impact (of the financial crisis) on the Japanese economy is very small compared to that in the U.S. and Europe," Nakagawa said. "I expect the Japanese markets to undergo a thorough risk analysis and act calmly."

While the government of the world's No.2 economy is closely monitoring the situation and does urge swift approval of a bailout by the U.S. Congress, some also believe the crisis is a golden opportunity for Japanese banks to expand their international influence. Nomura Holdings has already picked up Lehman Brothers' Asia operations and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is slated to become Morgan Stanley's largest shareholder. Japanese banks will probably be on the prowl for more good deals.

Continental Europe (4)

There would be something comical, even pleasurable, in watching the frenetic agitation of the banking world," wrote Laurent Joffrin, editor of Libération newspaper, “if millions of jobs were not at stake, not to mention the economic balance of the planet.

"Schadenfreude" is on everyone's lips, of course in Germany, but especially in France, as the above comments, quoted by The Economist, show. Sentiments are deeply conflicted though. Political leaders feel vindicated about the misgivings they've held about "Anglo-Saxon" free markets, but are struggling to contain knock-on effects from the U.S. crisis since European markets are so tightly intertwined with those of the United States.

For French President Nicolas Sarkozy, "the idea that markets are always right was a mad idea." But he has personally striven to promote more competition in France and is likely to pursue regulatory reform, rather than a rollback of market liberalizations.

"The U.S. will lose its status as the superpower of the global financial system." This is the view of German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück, who gave an "impassioned" speech at the Bundestag last week denouncing American greed and regulatory failures. Major German newspapers are guarded, though. Some accuse Steinbrück of using the United States as a scapegoat for Germany's slowing economy and most are generally supprotive of swift action by both U.S. and German politicians.

Britain (5)

With a string of bank failures, a gummed up credit market, and housing woes of their own, British authorities are moving to ensure financial stability at home, but are also looking to Washington for leadership. Deposit insurance has been upped from £35,000 to £50,000. David Cameron, the opposition leader, ended his attacks on Labour's economic policies and vowed that American-style partisan strife would not catch on across the pond.

China (3)

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says he's very "concerned" about the U.S. crisis and that China should "make a foothold in expanding domestic demand." Since China's economy relies so much on exports, its growth rate could take a hit if demand from U.S. consumers slows. Not to mention the sizeable stakes its sovereign wealth fund has in Blackstone, the $119 billion private equity fund, and (former) investment bank Morgan Stanley. So, there's one reason why the Chinese government may be very interested in a bailout of U.S. financial firms.

All of these countries are eagerly waiting to see if the proposed U.S. bailout will pass the House this week. Whether the U.S. financial juggernaut can stage a comeback and lend some degree of stability to markets will have a huge impact on how countries around the world proceed.

Screenshot from bbc.co.uk

This week's map is the centerpiece of The Box, a new multimedia project from the BBC. The producers have painted an ordinary shipping container with the BBC logo, outfitted it with a GPS transmitter, and released it into the wilds of global shipping routes. Along the way, the Beeb will be producing video and text content on trade and globalization, based on the box's activities.

You can follow the progress with only a few hours delay here. After its launch last Monday, the box picked up a shipment of scotch whisky in Glasgow and is now back in the South of England waiting to be shipped off to East Asia.

Also be sure to watch Declan Curry's feature on how the standardization of shipping containers made much of what we call globalization possible. It's truly one of the more underrated technological innovations of recent history.

(Hat tip: Ethan Zuckerman)

On this August Friday afternoon, you're surely looking for a distraction or two if you are unlucky enough to be at the office like the rest of us. Look no further than FP's latest (first?) interactive quiz: Spot the Fake Drug. Given a choice between real medicines and counterfeit ones, can you recognize the dangerous fakes?

And check out Roger Bate's fascinating -- and disturbing - (subscribers-only) look at the growing global fake drug trade in the latest issue of FP. He reveals how counterfeiters in India and China mix chalk and dust into phony Viagra pills and cancer meds that are sold around the world. After taking the quiz, you may be more worried than ever about these fakes winding up in your neighborhood pharmacy.

In India, more women are wearing jeans and other Western clothing. That's bad news for sari weavers in the city of Varanasi. Demand for Varanasi's famed, 6-meter silk saris, which have been hand-woven there for centuries, is falling, as the Christian Science Monitor recently reported.

The problem is due to much more than changing fashions, however. The hand-woven saris -- which typically have ornate patterns and scenes, such as Mughal processions of horses and elephants -- have to compete against cheaper copies that are churned out by machines, some of which are in China. The result: Varanasi's hand loom weavers are plunging into grinding poverty.

In the face of creative destruction, perhaps weavers could reframe their product. "What we really need is for crafts in India to reposition themselves, like in Italy, where handmade has a high value," Adarsh Kumar of the All India Artisan and Craftworkers Welfare Association told the CSM.

Indeed, couldn't ornately woven fabric be used to make table linens, decorative sofa pillows, tunic shirts that could be paired with jeans, and even Western-style dresses? And all marketed to people worldwide, not just Indians? In fact, one Canada-based businesswoman is using such logic to preserve alpona, another Indian art form that's been in decline.

It looks like the business savvy to reposition Varanasi saris hasn't yet materialized. And if it doesn't, weavers' lives may be left in tatters.

The September cover of Esquire is going to be pretty cool. An electronic ink diplay, built on the same technology that E Ink used in the Amazon Kindle, will flash the words "the 21st Century Begins." The logistics of pulling of this feat are a story in globalization:

First Esquire had to make a six-figure investment to hire an engineer in China to develop a battery small enough to be inserted in the magazine cover. The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China. They are shipped to Texas and on to Mexico, where the device is inserted by hand into each magazine. The issues will then be shipped via trucks, which will be refrigerated to preserve the batteries, to the magazine's distributor in Glazer, Ky.

So, has the magical world of Harry Potter and its animated Daily Prophet sprung into being? Esquire Editor-in-Chief David Granger sees a bright future for e-ink:

Pointing to the prototype sitting on a conference room table, Mr. Granger said, "The possibilities of print have just begun. In two years, I hope this looks like cellphones did in 1982, or car phones."

Alternatively, it could look a lot like this.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Scrap metal is piled up at a metal recycling facility on July 17 in Chicago, Illinois. With scrap metal prices near historic highs, many communities are experiencing an increase in thefts of metal including cemetery ornaments, plumbing pipe, gutters, and even manhole covers.

The globetrotting documentarians over at Current Vanguard have just posted an interesting new short film from the Philippines, where the primary export is the country's own citizens.

"Destination Anywhere" looks at the 20 million Filipinos who work abroad in fields ranging from housekeeping to medical care. The billions of dollars in remittances they send home every year account for about 10 percent of the Philippines' GDP. While this is generally viewed as positive for economic growth (President Gloria Arroyo has described the overseas workers as "heroes of the republic".) it doesn't do much for the kind of longterm development and savings that could stimulate job creation at home. Plus, as the film's director, Tracey Chang, finds, there are enormous social costs when you consider the Philippines' millions of separated families.

For more on the relationship between remittances, corruption, and poor economic planning, check out "The Remittance Curse" in the current issue of Foreign Policy.

Monday's ruling by a French court that eBay must pay French luxury goods manufacturer LVMH $60.8 million and do more to prevent counterfeit sales (think: fake Louis Vuitton handbags) raises big questions about globalization and the future of e-commerce.

As International Herald Tribune blogger Daniel Altman puts it, who should police the Internet? There's a potential slippery slope here, Altman points out, if countries are left to their own devices and sue portals such as Amazon for books considered libelous or YouTube for videos considered indecent.

The French, at least, have a history of holding Internet providers accountable for content hosted on sites they own. There's precedent in the United States, too, from the 2001 decision ordering Napster to prevent illegal file sharing between users of its site.

To some, Monday's ruling reeks of protectionism. The ruling condemns eBay's unauthorized sales of certain perfumes, limiting the sale of these luxury items to approved channels such as perfume and department stores, not the open market.

What's the answer? Leaving regulation to national courts may lead to a hodgepodge of different rulings in different countries, making it difficult for multinational firms to navigate.

Altman asks if a "global authority" to help nations and multilationals sort out e-commerce is necessary. Perhaps, but it's hard to imagine what such an authority would look like or how it would operate. I think it's safe to say eBay is on its own for now.

If you're a struggling American newspaper trying to maintain quality and improve local coverage, what's one possible solution?

Outsource to India, says the deputy editor of the Orange County Register, California's fifth-largest newspaper. On a one-month trial basis, Mindworks Global Media, an India-based company, will copy-edit some of the Register's stories and lay out pages for a community newspaper at the same company that owns the Register.

This isn't the first time an American news outlet has outsourced to India. Last year, Passport blogged about a Pasadena, California, news Web site that hired Indian journalists to cover meetings of the Pasadena City Council, which are broadcast over the Internet.

There are bound to be some hiccups and gaffes along the way, but it could work better than expected. Mindworks says on its Web site that its workers are "trained thoroughly to become familiar with the client publication and the region," and some employees are bound to have been educated at American universities. And perhaps articles about India and other countries will include more nuance and context.

For American editors and reporters, increased outsourcing is understandably scary. But what if it's key to fundamentally reinventing newspapers, whose U.S. circulation and advertising revenue have been plummeting? Those of us who work in journalism will have to up our game and make ourselves relevant. It's creative destruction at work.

iStockphoto.com

Via World Politics Review and 2point6billion comes this story from the Times of India about Mumbai's mysterious manhole shortage. It seems that in the last few months, over 1,500 manhole covers have been stolen from the city and surrounding region by organized gangs, with predictable consequences for sanitation and safety.

Who's the culprit? According to local authorities, it's China, where massive Olympic construction projects have driven up the global prices for iron ore. The municipality bought the covers for about $80 and they're now selling on the black market for about $130.

A senior official said that he/she had also heard of thefts being reported in Europe and North America. Just to bring things full circle, many of those covers were also probably manufactured in India.

Mike Brown/Getty Images

FP readers already know the story of "How Sushi Went Global." And it's generally no secret that you can get a spicy tuna roll everywhere from Bangalore to Belize. But barbecue? Yes, apparently slow-cooked pig's butt is starting to go global, too.

The word out of the 2008 World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, the world's largest pork BBQ contest held last weekend in Memphis, is that the globalization of barbecue is in the "embryonic" stages.

The trend can apparently lead to some awkward interactions:

At one point this year, a member of the Deominox team [from Belgium] was trying to talk his way in past the gate. The 'good old boy' working the entrance [had to ask for] help.... The language barrier almost got the Deominox team disqualified when it turned in its blind box in the whole-hog contest. Two of the non-English-speakers handled the delivery, but they missed the deadline after walking past signs they didn't understand. A sympathetic official interceded and successfully made the case for giving the team a break and letting their samples be judged...."

Now, before getting carried away about diluting of an American icon, it's important to remember that around two-thirds of this year's contestants still hailed from Tennessee. Perusing the list of winners, I don't see any foreign teams. Nor did I see baby backs on the menu the last time I was in Beijing. Of course, that was two years ago....

In the United States, the Oreo cookie is a classic. Millions of American children have enjoyed dunking the sweet treat -- white cream sandwiched between two round, crisp, chocolate cookies -- in milk as an afternoon snack.

Kraft Foods, makers of the Oreo, introduced the cookie to China in 1996. But the Chinese didn't exactly take to them. So starting in 2005, the Wall Street Journal reports, Kraft engaged in a classic case of adapting a product to suit local tastes. The Chinese found the cookies too sweet, so Kraft reduced the sugar in them. China was developing a thirst for milk -- a product that traditionally hasn't been a Chinese dietary staple -- so Kraft launched a campaign, complete with Oreo ambassadors, to "educate" the Chinese on how to dunk the cookies in milk.

The most radical change was in the shape. Noticing that sales of wafer cookies were increasing faster than those of traditional biscuit-like cookies, a new version of the Oreo was created: a long, narrow, layered stack of crispy wafers and vanilla and chocolate cream, all coated with chocolate. Whoever said Oreos have to be round?

Of course, amid rising food prices and increased demand for chocolate (whose consumption in China has nearly doubled in the past five years), the success of the Chinese Oreo brings to mind the broader question of "Can the World Afford a Middle Class?," a topic recently addressed in FP and one that fans the flames of Chinese frustrations with the West.

(Meanwhile, Oreos have been trying to colonize British biscuit tins, the BBC reports.)

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images

Ah, globalization at work: Workers at a factory in China's southern Guangdong province were making "Free Tibet" flags, naively unaware of what the colorful flags -- banned in China -- represented.

The owner of the factory said the orders for the flags had been placed from overseas.