KUALA LUMPUR: In a vast office at the top of one of the world's tallest buildings, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad sits at a broad, glass-topped desk, scribbling his thoughts on a pad of unlined paper.

For 22 years Mahathir was the most powerful person in this land, and his thoughts were commands as he reshaped the country in his own grand image.

But he has become an irritant and a spoiler five years after stepping down, turning against his handpicked successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and he has fallen victim to the press controls he perfected as prime minister.

It is mainly a system of self-censorship in an atmosphere of pressure and intimidation that produces an obedient press and has seen the closure or banning of many publications.

"Where is the press freedom?" he exclaimed two years ago, apparently surprised to be suddenly ignored. "Broadcast what I have to say! What I say is not even accurately published in the press!"

In late September, China's third manned space mission went off without a hitch. The Shenzhou-7 is now safely in orbit. Close by is the BX-1 "companion satellite" which was attached to Shenzhou-7 and later deployed via a simple spring mechanism. This satellite weighs between 30 and 40 kilograms, and it simply orbits around Shenzhou-7, sending back over a thousand images of Shenzhou-7 in the process.

While Western space experts may be divided over the exact purpose of the BX-1 mission, it is clear that China has every intention of driving its dynamic "dual use" space agenda as far as it will go. BX-1 could well be little more than a peaceful probe merely engaged in "close proximity" operations with cameras and transmission equipment aboard. Or it could be a prototype satellite attack dog, a space surveillance and Space Situational Awareness (SSA) platform with anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities, all rolled into a single menacing platform ready to pounce.

The ASAT dimension seems extremely far-fetched, and many experts dispel talk of it. Nevertheless, this potential ASAT angle surfaced quickly as the result of a close flyby involving Shenzhou-7, with BX-1 in tow, and the International Space Station (ISS).

BAGHDAD _ The U.S. military has warned Iraq that it will shut down military operations and other vital services throughout the country on Jan. 1 if the Iraqi government doesn't agree to a new agreement on the status of U.S. forces or a renewed United Nations mandate for the American mission in Iraq.

Many Iraqi politicians view the move as akin to political blackmail, a top Iraqi official told McClatchy Sunday.

In addition to halting all military actions, U.S. forces would cease activities that support Iraq's economy, educational sector and other areas _ "everything" _ said Tariq al Hashimi, the country's Sunni Muslim vice president. "I didn't know the Americans are rendering such wide-scale services."

Hashimi said that Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, listed "tens" of areas of potential cutoffs in a three-page letter, and he said the implied threat caught Iraqi leaders by surprise.

"It was really shocking for us," he said. "Many people are looking to this attitude as a matter of blackmailing."

WASHINGTON: The White House has backed away from using American commandos for further ground raids into Pakistan after furious complaints from its government, relying instead on an intensifying campaign of airstrikes by the Central Intelligence Agency against militants in the Pakistani mountains.

According to American and Pakistani officials, attacks by remotely piloted Predator aircraft have increased sharply in frequency and scope in the past three months.

Through Sunday, there were at least 18 Predator strikes since the beginning of August, some deep inside Pakistan's tribal areas, compared with 5 strikes during the first seven months of 2008.

At the same time, however, officials said that relying on airstrikes alone, the United States would be unable to weaken Al Qaeda's grip in the tribal areas permanently. Within the government, advocates of the ground raids have argued that only by sending Special Operations forces into Pakistan can the United States successfully capture suspected operatives and interrogate them for information about top Qaeda leaders.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier heads to Pakistan Monday for talks expected to focus on the worsening conflict in Afghanistan and the financial crisis, the German government said.

Steinmeier will meet Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Islamabad, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke said at a news conference.

 

After Pakistan, Steinmeier, who is set to challenge Angela Merkel in elections next September as the Social Democratic candidate for the chancellery, will visit Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Peschke said.

Problems caused by climate change are more serious than the current financial crisis. That warning by a leading economist came as German scientists weighed in with their own grim predictions about rising sea levels.

It would be a big mistake for leaders to ignore climate change during the financial crisis, said Nicholas Stern, a former British Treasury economist, who released a seminal report in 2006 that said inaction on emissions blamed for global warming could cause economic pain equal to the Great Depression.

"That's a very important lesson, tackle risk early," Stern told a climate and carbon conference in Hong Kong.

There have been worries that countries will be unwilling to commit to climate change goals at an international meeting scheduled in Copenhagen at the end of next year. Stern said he was optimistic that countries would agree to reduce carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2050.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama have been critical of Russia, particularly in light of the Georgian crisis. But Moscow favors the young Democrat over the Cold War veteran.

John McCain's US presidential campaign begged at the enemy's door this week when a wayward fundraising letter reached the desk of Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin in New York asking for a donation.

 

The Russians wouldn't spare a ruble for the Republican, and sent McCain a sardonic message saying that, unlike the United States, the Russian government does "not finance political activity in foreign countries." US laws would have prevented them from donating had they wanted to send McCain a check.

 

Russian officials, in fact, aren't banking on either McCain or Democratic candidate Barack Obama mending relations upturned by Russia's recent war with US-ally Georgia.

NAIROBI: Hundreds of furious protesters hurled rocks at a United Nations compound in eastern Congo on Monday in frustration that peacekeepers have not halted the rebel advance that is sweeping the countryside.

The rebels are now in control of several major towns and the headquarters of a national park where endangered mountain gorillas live in the middle of a shrinking ring of safety.

Jaya Murthy, a spokesman for Unicef in the eastern Congo city of Goma, said heavy fighting was raging in several areas between government troops and rebel forces under the command of Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general who says he is fighting to protect ethnic Tutsis.

Murthy said that the conflict was spawning a vast wave of internally displaced people, with tens of thousands fleeing battle zones, often for the second or third time in recent months. As many as 250,000 people have been driven from their homes since the fighting between the rebels and government forces intensified in August.

Syria's foreign minister has accused the US of an act of "criminal and terrorist aggression" over what it says was a helicopter raid on its territory.

Walid Muallem said Sunday's attack saw four US aircraft travel eight miles inside Syrian airspace from Iraq and kill eight unarmed civilians on a farm.

He said those who died were a father and his three children, a farm guard and his wife, and a fisherman.

The US has not confirmed or denied the alleged raid.

In an interview with SPIEGEL, American neoconservative scholar and McCain adviser Robert Kagan speaks about the legacy of the Bush-Cheney years, America's future position atop a "League of Democracies" and how China and Russia will push Europe back into America's arms.

SPIEGEL: Dr. Kagan, many intellectual forerunners and former friends of the president are now distancing themselves from him, and some are even attacking him as a failure. You are missing from the list of neoconservatives performing a mea culpa. Have you never given George W. Bush advice that you regret?

 Kagan: "America remains number one, even though other, new players are increasingly challenging it in that role." Robert Kagan: Well, I mostly regret the advice not taken, not advice that I have given. But I can already tell what's next: the Iraq war...

SPIEGEL: ...and you were undoubtedly one of its intellectual fathers. You spoke of "regime change" early on and of the need to forcefully remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Kagan: I was hardly alone. So did the Clinton administration and a majority of the US Senate. I believe that military intervention to bring down a foreign government should be the exception. But, in the case of Saddam, who was pursuing an aggressive foreign policy and was threatening his neighbors, even the rest of the world, I thought it was necessary. I can't believe that people think that we would be better off if that inhuman dictator were still in power.

KIGALI, Rwanda -- C'est la vie.

In another blow to the language of love, the Rwandan government has decided to change instruction in schools from French to English.

All government employees are now required to learn English, and everyone here from lawmakers to taxi drivers to students to businesspeople seems to believe that the usefulness of French, introduced by Belgian colonizers, is coming to an end.

[...]

Rwanda has accused the French of arming the former Rwandan army and ethnic Hutu militias, even as they carried out the 1994 genocide. About 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in 100 days of planned, systematic violence.

The Rwandan government recently accused 33 senior French military and political officials of direct involvement in the genocide, demanding that they stand trial. Among those implicated is François Mitterand, president of France at the time of the genocide and now deceased.

French officials have denied responsibility, conceding only that "political" errors were made. In 2006, a French judge accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebel group that eventually stopped the genocide, of being involved in the downing of a plane carrying his predecessor, President Juvénal Habyarimana, whose death in April 1994 gave Hutu leaders the pretext to begin the genocide.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is very critical of U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama's positions on Iran, according to reports that have reached Israel's government.

Sarkozy has made his criticisms only in closed forums in France. But according to a senior Israeli government source, the reports reaching Israel indicate that Sarkozy views the Democratic candidate's stance on Iran as "utterly immature" and comprised of "formulations empty of all content."

The Dalai Lama has called a special meeting of Tibetan exiles to discuss the future of their struggle as talks with China have foundered, officials said Tuesday.

The unusual meeting comes after the Dalai Lama told Tibetans on Saturday that he has given up on efforts to persuade Beijing to allow greater autonomy for Tibet under Chinese rule and he would now ask the Tibetan people to decide how to move forward.

The five-day meeting, scheduled for mid-November, will be attended by representatives of all the Tibetan exile communities and political organizations, said Karma Choephal, speaker of the self-declared Tibetan Parliament-in-exile.

The meeting could mark a significant shift in the Tibetan strategy for confronting China, long dominated by the Dalai Lama's "middle way," which rejected calls for outright independence but argued that greater autonomy was needed to preserve Tibet's unique Buddhist culture.

"Anything can come up in the meeting," Choephal told The Associated Press. "The outcome of the meeting will have a democratic and moral bearing on the future thinking of the Tibetan leadership."

According to a recent analysis by Minqi Li, economics professor at the University of Utah, the world economy must contract at a historically rapid clip -- at an annual rate of about -1 to -3.4 percent between now and 2050 -- if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be held below 445 parts per million (ppm). That is the level at which we could run into a nightmare scenario in which warming could start feeding on itself in positive-feedback loops and lead to who knows what. Much deeper cuts are needed to get down to 350 ppm, at which the planet will remain in a familiar and comfortable condition.

The -1 to -3.4 percent economic reductions required just to reach the more modest goal of 445 ppm were computed by assuming a wide range of scenarios. That range in negative-growth estimates covers a range of scenarios going from dramatic to modest improvements in energy efficiency and alternative technologies. But in all scenarios, however rosy their assumptions, economic growth will have to be thrown into reverse or else. Everything depends on how that economic contraction is handled.

The US economy declined by about 55 percent in just four years at the start of the Great Depression, with the well-known catastrophic outcomes. At the -2 percent annual rate of contraction required by Professor Li's "medium-green" scenarios, economies would eventually shrink by an amount close to that Depression-era 55 percent, but over a period of more than 40 years, not four.

Interesting stuff. Red, raw meat for the scoffers, since James Lovelock is mentioned.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

Five Chinese oil workers kidnapped in Sudan died during a botched rescue attempt, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

China was involved in the rescue effort led by Sudan, ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said. She confirmed that two other workers had been rescued and two more remained in captivity. <...>

Rebels have previously warned Chinese and other oil firms to leave the country, saying their operations help support the government in Khartoum. <...>

Sudan's government has blamed rebels from Darfur for kidnapping the Chinese, but on Monday a spokesman for the rebels denied involvement. The Chinese were snatched on Oct 18 while traveling near an oil field in the southwestern region of Kordofan.

It was the third attack on Chinese targets in the last 12 months.