Yet, of all the Millennium Development Goals, maternal health is the slowest to be achieved.

Africa, long the world s slowest growing region, is now averaging roughly 5 annual GDP growth.

Europe is, moreover, the continent with the slowest rate of economic growth in the world.

Algeria infamously has the slowest Internet speed in the world, ranked last out of 176 countries last year.

But everything is relative Germany s trend growth rate is just 1.1 , and the country has been the slowest growing EU country since 1995.

Many countries and companies are forging ahead, signaling a determination not to be held hostage by the slowest at the official negotiating table.

Over the last decade, Germany has been the slowest growing economy in the European Union, and Europe has been the slowest growing continent in the world. From 1995 to 2005, Germany will have grown by only 14.6 , while the old EU on average will have grown by 24 , the US by 39.9 , and the world economy by 45.6 .

Indeed, Pakistan s rate of economic growth is the slowest on the South Asian mainland one half that of Bangladesh and one third that of India.

Given that Germany also has one of the eurozone s lowest investment rates, its GDP growth is likely to be among Europe s slowest in the coming years, making significant wage increases unlikely.

Moreover, by casting every problem as mainly caused by global warming, the solution almost automatically becomes cutting CO2 emissions, though this often is the slowest and costliest way to achieve the least good.

Ronald Carver, a professor of education research and psychology, claims that the fastest college graduate readers can only read about 600 words per minute, at most twice as fast as their slowest counterparts.

South Korea s economy grew at a mere 0.4 in the same period the slowest pace in two years while Japan s GDP contracted at a larger than expected 2.3 , as the yen s strength weighed down exports.

Indeed, Pakistan s rate of economic growth is the slowest on the South Asian mainland one half that of Bangladesh and one third that of India. A sharp increase in the prices of essential commodities means that the real income of the bottom 60 of the population has declined.

Mind you, even the weak growth of the last few years in Latin America marks the region s best performance since the 1970 s, and incomes are actually catching up slowly to those in the US, Europe, and Japan. Nevertheless, Latin America remains the slowest growing of any of the world s developing regions.