The fact that there has been no major nuclear terrorist attack should not lull us into a fall sense of security. The threat remains.

The United Nations has taken advantage of the lull to complete plans for assistance to spontaneous returns and to advance its preparations for the coming return season (October 2005 May 2006).

With such resistance to change, it is no wonder that so many political leaders try to lull their subjects to sleep, hoping that when everyone wakes up, it will all have proven a dream.

The Philippines welcomes the resumption of direct dialogue on practical matters between Belgrade and Pristina after a lull of more than 12 months and the expressed willingness of Belgrade to engage in that important process.

Other possible constraints on growth included a lull or even reversal of the trend in appreciating housing prices in many large economies and a significant rise in long term interest rates and risk adverse financial markets.

But the long term nature of this challenge must not lull us into inaction. We must start reinventing our productive systems now, precisely because the path of change will be so long and the environmental dangers are already so pressing.

But the long term nature of this challenge must not lull us into inaction. We must start reinventing our productive systems now, precisely because the path of change will be so long and the environmental dangers are already so pressing. nbsp

The fact that neither the mayhem in the Middle East nor the crisis in Ukraine seem to touch financial markets should not lull us into complacency. The memory of August 1914 should remind us how the world stumbled into catastrophe.

In the US, slower private sector deleveraging given the fiscal stimulus from the extension of unemployment benefits for 13 months, the payroll tax cut, and maintenance of current income tax rates for another two years could lull policymakers into assuming that relatively large fiscal and current account imbalances can continue indefinitely. This could generate financial strains over the medium term and protectionist pressures in the short term.

NEW DELHI The lull in headline grabbing terror attacks appears to be over. But do the recent suicide attack on the Bagram air base outside of Kabul, a key United States military installation in Afghanistan, and the failed car bombing in New York City s Times Square mean that the war on terror (a phrase that the Obama administration has deliberately sought to avoid) has reignited?

But if we have learned anything at all from the tragic assassinations of the region s greatest peacemakers, Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, it is that the guns do not remain silent for long. During any lull, a fanatic from either side could jump to center stage and, through an act of utter madness, kick up the settling dust and dash the hopes of the many on both sides who still long for a lasting peace.