James Fallows of The Atlantic magazine is currently in Beijing, but he has lived and worked in Japan. He also witnessed the powerful earthquake that hit China in 2008. China, still scarred by the 2008 Sichuan quake, has expressed admiration for the way that Japan has responded to Friday's earthquake. Although the relationship between China and Japan strained, many Chinese have expressed compassion for the country.

If President Obama’s weekly YouTube address is any indication, America’s ability to compete globally will be an issue very much on the table during his State of the Union speech tonight. So what are the areas where we’re out-competing other countries? And are jobs and economic growth the most important indications of success in the competitive global market?

Later this week, world leaders will gather at the G20 summit in Seoul, South Korea. The meeting comes just days after the Federal Reserve's decision to buy $600 billion worth of Treasury bonds through a process known as "quantitative easing." In response to the announcement, American stock markets reacted positively. World leaders abroad did not.

China's central bank surprised the global market by increasing its interest rates for the first time since 2007. Being that it's the second largest economy in the world, the decision to increase interest rates has the global economy feeling the effects. Gold and oil prices dropped, while stocks took a negative turn in Europe and the dollar jumped.

Joining us to discuss is Sewell Chan, Washington correspondent for The New York Times.

With Wall Street indexes down for a third straight day yesterday and poor economic reports in recent weeks, the outlook for global economies does not look bright.

Four hundred tons of flowers sat rotting in the cold room of an airport in Kenya over the weekend, waiting to be shipped to Europe. These flowers are among the first collateral damage of the Icelandic ash cloud which has turned most of Europe's airspace into a no-fly zone and delayed travel for some 6.8 million people.

The United Nations is reporting that the world is hungrier than ever. This year, the number of people going hungry will top 1 billion for the first time – not a milestone anyone wanted to reach. But a new report claims to have the solution: Give women more power. The BBC's Mark Doyle joins us with the story.

For more, download the International Food Policy Research Institute's Global Hunger Index for 2009 (PDF, 2.7 MB)

Check out the interactive world hunger map from the International Food Policy Research Institute to see how countries are faring:

The International Monetary Fund says the global recession is ending. In its twice-yearly assessment of the economic outlook for the world, the IMF predicts a 3.1 percent global economic growth rate. We talk with the BBC’s economics correspondent, Andrew Walker.

The G-20 summit gets underway today in Pittsburgh, and world leaders are hoping this big economic pow-wow will help stabilize a global economy still struggling back to its feet. For an assessment of how the global financial system is faring — and to gauge if bankers have held off an even Greater Depression than the last one — we turn to Liaquat Ahamed, author of "Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World."

Scenes of Pittsburgh in "Flashdance."

You could say it's like the 1980s movie "Flashdance": It's set in Pittsburgh and the main character (the city) has shed its blue-collar threads for something more glamorous. This week "The Steel City" plays host to world leaders as the site of the G-20 economic summit. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Tony Norman has lived through the city’s ups and downs and responds as the world comes to his town.

Yesterday President Obama took to the international stage as he made his United Nations debut. From yesterday’s climate change summit to tomorrow’s nuclear disarmament talk — and anticipated flourishes from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi along the way — we take a look at President Obama’s global positioning with worldly thinkers Richard Wolffe and Reihan Salam. Richard Wolffe is a journalist and author of the bestselling book "Renegade: The Making of a President." Reihan Salam is a fellow at the New America Foundation and editor of The American Scene.

Watch the president's address to the United Nations:

Each year, more than 27 million people are trafficked illegally around the world. Stories of modern-day slavery and human trafficking are heartbreaking. But what can one person do about it? Aaron Cohen found a way to help victims. He put his “skills” as a former drug-addicted, rock-and- roller (he used to work with the front man for Jane's Addiction) to infiltrate brothels from Cambodia to Colombia, from Iraq to Israel. Then he would buy the freedom of enslaved girls. It’s a controversial approach to dealing with the problem of human trafficking. Aaron Cohen has just written a book called Slave Hunter: One Man's Global Quest to Free Victims of Human Trafficking, with journalist Christine Buckley. They both join The Takeaway to discuss the work and the controversy. Cohen is the founder of Abolish Slavery.

Jaunty Therny, a young trafficking victim, seen here at age 13 when Aaron Cohen met her in a bar in Cambodia. He bought her freedom.

Tomorrow President Obama heads to Italy for the opening of the G8 summit. He will meet with Pope Benedict, who has just issued a new encyclical calling for a new financial world order. In the paper, called "Charity in Truth," the Pope draws on traditional Catholic teaching in rebuking the profit-at-all-costs mentality of the global economy. Greed is a mortal sin, after all. For more, The Takeaway talks to David Willey, Rome correspondent for our partners the BBC.

In the current economic climate, it's hard to imagine a place where the economy is growing by 4, 5, or 6 percent. A place where banks are adding branches and holding onto their deposits. That place exists. Even in the middle of a global recession, Ghana is doing great. The African nation has enjoyed more or less unbroken growth since the 1980s, propped up by gold and cocoa exports and now, oil. BBC Chief Economics Correspondent Hugh Pym has just returned to London from a reporting trip there and he joins us now.

Global stock markets have recorded some strong gains in April with the main indices in New York, London and Tokyo rising by between seven and nine percent as investors responded to signs that the economic situation might be stabilizing. Is this the light at the end of the tunnel for the world's economies? Here to talk us through what these figures mean is the BBC's economics and business correspondent Andrew Walker.

The beleaguered Kyoto Protocol, enacted in 1992 to limit global greenhouse gas emissions, but was never ratified by the United States, is back up for negotiations this year. Will the U.S. be a real partner to the cap-and-trade agreement? In advance of the new Kyoto discussions, President Obama is meeting with the representatives of 17 governments at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in Washington D.C. The governments will be looking for indications of how others will navigate the Kyoto Protocol negotiations. For more The Takeaway turns to Andrew Revkin, New York Times environmental reporter.

When the Obama administration dropped the use of the phrase "War on Terror" earlier this month, it marked one of its most significant foreign policy shifts, according to writer Reza Aslan. Aslan is the author of a new book called The Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror, where he claims the U.S. must win over religious extremists by framing the struggle in earthly, concrete terms.

Today, China announced that it's GDP grew at a much slower rate in the first quarter of 2009, down almost 4% since this time last year and the weakest growth since quarterly records began in 1992. China says it's determined to achieve annual growth of 8 percent. So, what does this say about China's place in the shaky financial world? And what implications does China's growth have for the U.S.? To help answer those questions, The Takeaway is joined by John Pomfret. He is the author of Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China and writes the blog Pomfret's China on the Newsweek Washington Post website.

We started the week leading up to the G-20 by speaking with Dan Price, a former international economics assistant to President Bush who was responsible for setting up last year's meeting of the Group of 20 and is in London for this year's. We return to him now for his take on the summit, whether a trillion dollars is enough for the IMF, and the hope for a coordinated response to the global economic crisis.


To hear Dan Price's earlier interview, click here.

Before heading off to celebrate NATO's 60th birthday, world leaders heralded the show of unity at the G-20 summit. Their strong showing lifted global markets and mapped out a new future for financial regulation. Despite struggling to bridge deep divides over how to revive a paralyzed global economy, the leaders of the world’s largest economies agreed Thursday to bail out developing countries, stimulate world trade and regulate financial firms more stringently. For a recap of the outcome of the G-20 we turn to George Parker, political editor for the Financial Times.