康老师的报刊课

LEH, India -- In the brewing discord between two giant, ambitious nations, even a remote meadow in the Himalayas is worth fighting over.

Some two-dozen Chinese soldiers converged earlier this year on a family of nomads who wouldn't budge from a winter grazing ground that locals say Indian herders had used for generations. China claims the pasture is part of Tibet, not northern India. The soldiers tore up the family's tent and tried to push them back toward the Indian border town of Demchok, Indian authorities say.

Chering Dorjay, the chairman of India's Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, says he arrived on the scene with a new tent and Indian intelligence officers and urged the herders to stay put. "The Chinese, it seems, are gradually taking our territory," he says. "We will feel very insecure unless India strengthens its defenses."

Dueling territorial claims along this heavily militarized mountain border, coupled with economic tensions between the two nations, are kindling a 21st-century rivalry. The budding distrust has created a dilemma for the U.S. about how to court one nation without angering the other.

China and India cooperate occasionally. But in recent years, they have competed vigorously over trade, energy investments, even a race to land a man on the moon. Some Indians want their nation to move closer to the U.S. as a hedge against a rising China -- a strategic shift that's likely to complicate ties among all three.

"China is trying to become No. 1," says Brajesh Mishra, a former national-security adviser for India. "This is the seed of conflict between China, India and the U.S."

The prime ministers of India and China are expected to meet this weekend at a summit of Asian leaders in Bangkok, following several weeks in which their nations traded barbs over trade and disputed territory. "Both sides will exchange views on issues of mutual concern," China's assistant foreign minister, Hu Zhengyao, told reporters Wednesday.

Next month, after a planned visit to China, President Barack Obama will host a U.S. visit by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a meeting meant to highlight what the White House says is a "growing strategic partnership." Commercial and military ties between the two countries have been getting stronger. Last year, the U.S. loosened restrictions to allow India to buy sensitive technology and nuclear equipment for civilian use. Soldiers from both countries are participating this month in a joint defense exercise.

Indian defense analysts say India needs closer U.S. ties to hedge against potential hostilities with China. "If China's rise is peaceful, and it integrates into the global economy, everything should be fine," says retired Indian Brig. Gen. Gurmeet Kanwal, director of the Center for Land Warfare Studies, an army think tank. "Should China implode, it's better to have a friend like the U.S."

In addition to the defense concerns, trade friction is growing between India and China. India leads all members of the World Trade Organization in antidumping cases against China. India has banned imports of Chinese toys, milk and chocolate, citing safety concerns, and has launched investigations into export surges of Chinese truck tires and chemicals, among other products.

On Oct. 15, Indian heavy-industries minister Vilasrao Deshmukh asked the finance ministry to impose taxes on imports of inexpensive Chinese power equipment. "We don't want India to be turned into a dumping ground," he told reporters.

At the moment, the biggest threat to India-China relations may be their competing claims for big swaths of territory along their border. In recent years, China has settled border disputes with a host of nations, including Russia, as part of what it calls its "good neighbor policy." But China and India have made little progress, despite 13 rounds of meetings since 2003.

China says the eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh is historically part of southern Tibet. India wants China to hand back territory it calls Aksai Chin, desolate high-altitude salt flats that residents of Ladakh claim as part of its ancient Buddhist kingdom. India's discovery of a Chinese-built road in the region helped spark a border war in 1962.

Earlier this month, China objected to a visit by Indian Prime Minister Singh to Arunachal Pradesh to campaign for local elections, saying it was disputed territory. "We request India to pay great attention to China's solemn concerns, and not stir up incidents in the areas of dispute," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters.

India's foreign minister countered that Arunachal Pradesh is Indian territory, and demanded that China stop investing in infrastructure-related projects in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir. Both India and Pakistan claim the whole of Kashmir.

The 1962 border war, which India lost, complicated the boundary between the two countries. These days, Chinese and Indian forces in some border areas have agreed to go out on different days to patrol contested territory. "We want to avoid an eyeball-to-eyeball conflict," says Gopal Pillai, India's secretary for the home ministry, which oversees the border police.

India and China are intent on turning fast economic growth into national strength. When their interests have converged, they have proven a powerful combination. On Wednesday, they announced plans to cooperate at December's climate-change talks in Copenhagen, a pact likely to see both fighting carbon-emission caps proposed by industrialized nations. During global-trade talks, they both resisted Western pressure to open farm markets.

"China's economic and military growth is not a threat to India. And India's shouldn't be a threat to China," says Cheng Ruisheng, a former Chinese ambassador to India. "We should be an opportunity to one another."

But many Chinese resent any comparison with India, still a largely poor agrarian nation with only about one-third of China's per-capita income. And they're generally wary of India's warming ties with the U.S.

Indians, for their part, bristle over the flood of Chinese imports and China's increasingly cozy ties with India's neighbors, including Nepal, Sri Lanka and arch-rival Pakistan. In a speech last November, Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, then its foreign minister, identified an expansionist China as one of India's top challenges. "Today's China seeks to further her interests more aggressively than in the past," he told the National Defense College in New Delhi.

The Chinese government has objected to a proposed Asian Development Bank program that India hoped would help fund a water project in the disputed territory of Arunachal Pradesh. This year, the Chinese embassy began issuing visas to residents of Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir in a manner that Indian officials say leaves China with a way to later claim that it isn't recognizing the visa recipients as Indian citizens. A spokeswoman for the Chinese embassy in New Delhi says "every country has the right" to set its own visa policies.

U.S. defense contractors could benefit from India's desire to modernize its military. While the U.S. has banned weapons sales to China, it has ramped up such sales to India. Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. are among the defense contractors competing to supply India's air force a new fleet of jet fighters -- a deal that could be valued at $10.4 billion.

Some Chinese analysts say friction between India and China are playing into what they say is a U.S. wish to contain China. "If border tensions between India and China continue to simmer, I can't say the U.S. will be displeased," says Shi Yinhong, a specialist in Sino-U.S. ties at People's University in Beijing.

The contested territory in northern India lies in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The region abutting China, known as Ladakh, consists largely of rocky mountain terrain with isolated green pastures grazed by yaks, goats and horses. Many of the herders and traders living on both sides of the blurred border share the same Tibetan heritage and Buddhist faith. The main town on the Indian side, Leh, was an ancient caravan stop.

Today, the area crawls with Indian soldiers. Indian border police tightly regulate visitors traveling east toward China.

The roads, which run beside Indian army camps and over a pass above 17,000 feet, are dotted with offbeat signs: "I'm curvaceous, be slow," warns one. "I like you darling, but not so fast," says another.

India intends to use the new mountain roads in part to move military supplies. In September, an Indian cargo plane landed at a new high-altitude airstrip near the border.

Indian villagers near the border have been caught in the middle of the conflict. When villagers were constructing an irrigation canal a few years ago, Chinese soldiers tried to wave them off, says Rigzin Spalbar, chairman at the time of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council.

The villagers hurled abuse at the soldiers, but were angry at Indian soldiers for doing nothing, he says. The Chinese "are pestering us to test India's reaction," he says.

Indian residents of the area claim Chinese soldiers have painted Chinese characters on rocks in territory that India claims as its own. The residents say the border has never been as tightly patrolled as it is now.

Konchok Gurmet, 70 years old, lives in Spangmik, a village ringed with Tibetan prayer flags on Panggong Lake, beside the border with China.

He says that until a few years ago he was able to smuggle horses and wool across the border in exchange for Chinese crockery, clothes and thermos bottles.

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Hillary Clinton vows she will never run again for the White House.

"No," replied the Secretary of State with a laugh when asked whether she will ever again seek the presidency during an interview that aired on NBC's "Today" show Monday.

"This is a great job. It is a 24/7 job. And I'm looking forward to retirement at some point," Clinton, 61, said.

Clinton, who lost her bid for the Democratic nomination last year, also denied she still wishes she's the one making the final decisions instead of President Obama.

"I have to tell you, it never crosses my mind," Clinton said.

"Never?" NBC's Ann Curry asked again.

"No, not at all," Clinton said. "I am part of the team that makes the decisions."

Clinton vehemently refuted media reports suggesting she is "largely invisible" on the major foreign policy issues facing the nation, most notably the wars in Afghanistan and Iran.

"I find it absurd," said Clinton, referring to the reports saying she's been marginalized. "I find it beyond any realistic assessment of what I'm doing every day."

Still, Clinton conceded, there might be "some misunderstanding" about her stature in the Obama White House that needs to be "clarified."

The former first lady - and now the highest-ranking woman in the Obama administration -- suggested her leadership style might be a factor in the public's perception of her role in the administration.

"I believe in delegating power," Clinton said. "I'm not one of these people who feels like I have to have my face in the front of the newspaper or on the TV every moment of the day. I would be irresponsible and negligent were I to say, 'Oh, no. Everything must come to me.'"

"Now, maybe that is a woman's thing. Maybe I'm totally secure and feel absolutely no need to go running around in order for people to see what I'm doing. It's just the way I am."

Asked whether Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, Clinton said she can't "read" the Nobel committee members' minds.

"But the fact that they recognized that his attitude toward America's role in the world, his willingness to challenge everyone to kind of step up and take responsibility really restores an image and appreciation of our country."

Clinton said she didn't think winning the prize would influence the president's deliberations concerning next steps in Afghanistan, including the question of whether to increase the number of troops in the country.

"I think that the president makes each decision on the merits," she said. "It's not going to influence some of these tough decisions."

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The President of the United States doesn't have to give back the Nobel Peace Prize just because people in his own country don't think he deserves it, he doesn't have to apologize for it or act like getting caught with a Nobel is like a talk-show host getting caught with an intern.

The Nobel hasn't suddenly become more trivial than the People's Choice Awards because Barack Obama wasn't supposed to get it. And just because the committee finally found another American President it thought worthy of this honor doesn't mean Obama really wants to be President of the whole world.

That was the guy before him.

This really is a first with the Nobel, all these sudden and self-righteous experts on the prize actually wondering how badly an honor like this hurts Obama.

Chicago loses the Olympics, Obama is the one who really lost. He wins the Nobel Prize and is told he's some kind of bum loser again. Forget that he was surprised and properly humbled and said so. Forget that the $1.4 million he got for the prize goes to charity.

The truth is that the ones who hate him, hate anything he tries to do, don't want him to win any prize with the word "peace" attached to it, not at a time when they want him to be a big-war President and give the generals what generals always want, which is more troops.

Right now Obama has to do the hardest thing any President ever has to do: Be smart and right in a time of war. People keep saying that the opposition he faces right now is as mean and hateful as what Bill Clinton faced. No, it isn't. There was no war for Clinton when he took office. It changes everything.

Gen. William Westmoreland always wanted another 100,000 troops from Lyndon Johnson to send to Vietnam. Johnson kept going along until he finally said no. It was much too late for Johnson by then, of course, his legacy was shot, the American President who signed the Civil Rights Act and who signed Medicare into law was going to be remembered for Vietnam, the war that finally made him quit on his stool in the spring of 1968.

Now, the only way Obama is supposed to get the armies of the right off his back is to give Gen. Stanley McChrystal what he wants, as many as 40,000 more troops for Afghanistan, maybe as many as 60,000.

Obama put himself on this road when he sent more troops over there and said he had to, it wasn't just his war, it was America's war, and a war of necessity. Right. So was Vietnam. At the beginning of 1964, there were 16,000 military "advisers" in Vietnam. By 1967, the number of ground troops had grown to nearly half a million

Still Westmoreland kept pushing for more. He called 550,000 the "minimum essential force" and called 670,000 American troops "optimum." That was when Johnson, broken by then, famously asked, "Where does it all end?" And Westmoreland said that if he got all the troops he wanted, he could finish the job in three years.

Obama worried too much about being called weak during the campaign and he is clearly worried about the same thing now, as his own generals call for reinforcements in Afghanistan. So do the tough guys in the media who have never served a day in the military in their lives. These are the same guys who worry about where the money will come from to pay for Obama's social agenda but never worry about where we find enough soldiers to fight these wars.

We can't keep sending the same heroes back, or the war in Afghanistan eventually becomes a nightmare out of "Zombieland." You know where the soldiers will eventually have to come from for Obama to be the big, strong, brave President they say he has to be with wars? From a draft. Wait and see how much the war lovers love war if the military ever comes after their sons and daughters.

You want to say this President hasn't backed up his own fancy words so far? You want to say he's done an awful job of explaining the difference between health care and health care legislation? Go ahead. And he does seem lost sometimes, preoccupied with being the most popular kid in class. But the idea that it's some sort of terrible thing for the rest of the world to think highly of him is just one more shouted lie in America.

Just not nearly as big and loud a lie as this one:

That the only way for Barack Obama to make things right for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is by sending more kids off to war.

The first doses of swine flu vaccine will be nasal sprays, not shots, health officials said Friday.

The needle-free FluMist is not recommended for some of the people most in danger of serious complications from swine flu - including pregnant women, children younger than 2, and people with asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Some 3.4 million doses of the nasal spray will be available the first week of October, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It is not clear when swine flu shots will be ready.

Health officials in the city expect to receive an initial shipment of 1.2 million doses next month, followed by a half-million more every week thereafter.

The city Department of Health, which will offer free vaccines to all school-aged children this fall, says the spray and shot are equally effective among healthy people ages 2 to 49.

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The new

The Opposite House
Designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and located in the heart of Beijing's trendy Sanlitun district, The Opposite House is by far and away Beijing's coolest hotel. A striking, open-plan lobby reaches up to the sky, while fashion-themed works of art draw your eye to different corners of the relaxed space. The Zen rooms are the main reason to stay here, but the major bonus is the fantastic selection of restaurants and bars, including the popular after-work hangout Mesh and Mediterranean eatery Sureno.

11 Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang District (+86 10 6417

The old

With a list of guests that extends to celebrities and heads of state, the St Regis is Beijing’s most prestigious address. Many an important executive has thrashed out a deal in the Press Club Bar, and the Sunday brunch at the Garden Court is for those who prefer quality to quantity – or to put it another way, caviar to a greasy fry-up. The style is over-the-top elegance, with more marble and chestnut wood than you can shake a stick at: definitely a classy experience.

1 Jianguomenwai Dajie (+86 10 6460

The new

The Zetter
If you’re looking for a modern, stylish and very reasonably priced boutique hotel in the capital, then The Zetter should be your first port of call. Situated in the heart of London’s stylish Clerkenwell district, the hotel incorporates all the amenities you’d expect of a modern hotel  – free wi-fi, 24-hour room service and movies on demand – with a host of elegant design touches that set this hotel apart: think Penguin paperbacks, pink mood lighting and Eley Kishimoto textiles. Whatever your room rate, the staff offer a level of dedicated and hospitable service usually only found in the most deluxe of London hotels.

St John’s Square, 86-88 Clerkenwell Road

The old

Claridge’s
The opulent Claridge’s has long been the Mayfair destination for comfort, service and downright decadence. Many deluxe hotels offer the top-notch range of facilities and services available at Claridge’s, but none can imitate the quintessentially English sense of luxury on offer here. From the lavish art deco interior style, to the Michelin-starred restaurant run by Gordon Ramsay, via a world-beating afternoon tea, a stay at Claridge’s is an exercise in 1930s-style glamour. On a wintry London evening, nothing beats slipping through the hidden door that conceals ‘The Fumoir’ – a sensuous, low-lit bar perfect for a secret rendezvous.

Brook Street W1K 4HR

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The relationship between China and the U.S. may be the world's most complicated. While the two economies desperately need each other — China relies on exports to the U.S. to drive growth while the U.S. requires investments from China to finance its giant deficits — Beijing and Washington nevertheless routinely spar over a wide range of sensitive issues. The U.S. has accused China of manipulating its currency to unfairly promote exports, while China has openly called for the replacement of the U.S. dollar as the world's premier currency. But with so much at stake, the two nations have tried to keep their rapport cordial. In July, U.S. President Barack Obama called for "cooperation, not confrontation" with China.

Until now. A widening trade dispute threatens to ratchet up the tension in the China-U.S. relationship, with potential consequences for the entire world economy. The spat began on Sept. 11, when the Obama administration announced it would slap tariffs of as much as 35% on Chinese-made tires, effectively pricing them out of the low end of the American market. Two days later, China's Ministry of Commerce said that it would start anti-dumping investigations against imports of some U.S. chicken products and auto parts. Though the ministry's announcement made no mention of the tire tariffs, the timing of China's action appears as an eye-for-an-eye reaction to Obama's decision

Some analysts fear the ill will caused by the tariff dispute could lead to an escalating round of conflict between the two nations, souring overall U.S.-China ties. "The action taken by the U.S. government no doubt will damage the Sino-American relationship seriously at a time when mutual trust is most needed," comments Yu Yongding, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "This is indeed a very bad beginning for the Obama government in terms of cooperation" between the two countries.

The timing couldn't be worse. Policymakers and business leaders have been looking more and more to a partnership between China and the U.S to solve the world's most intractable problems, from reform of the global financial system to climate change to nuclear proliferation. Most pressing, cooperation between Washington and Beijing is seen as absolutely crucial to nurturing the budding recovery of the global economy. The two sides need to alleviate the giant economic imbalances — excessive debt and deficits in the U.S. paired with excessive savings in China — to restore the world economy to a more sustainable growth path

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Radioactive cobalt cleared from Lebanese lab.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repatriated dozens of Russian-made, highly radioactive sources that had been languishing unused in a Lebanese research institute for more than a decade.

The effort forms part of a wider IAEA initiative to secure radioactive materials used in scientific research, medicine and industry, which could potentially be used by terrorists to make a so-called 'dirty bomb'

IAEA officials identified possible security issues with the radioactive material at an unspecified agricultural institute in Lebanon in 2006. They were concerned to find that a cobalt-60 irradiator, originally used for a biological pest control project, had been lying dormant since 1996. The sealed unit still contained 36 individual sources with a combined activity of 3,500 Curies, making it the most powerful source of radioactivity in Lebanon.

The irradiator had previously been used to sterilize male Mediterranean fruit flies or medfly (Ceratitis capitata), with a view to controlling the medfly population and preventing crop damage by egg-laying females. But after the project ended, all the staff members who knew how to look after the radioactive equipment subsequently left the institute, leaving the cobalt-60 sources potentially insecure.

 The sources were fully shielded, so there was no risk to research staff entering the room where the irradiator was stored. "We were worried about the risk of theft, either for the value of the irradiator or particularly for malicious purposes," said Robin Heard, an IAEA radioactive source specialist who oversaw the mission. If the sources had been removed from the container, direct exposure to the radioactive material could have killed someone within minutes.

Source of worry

Plans to repatriate the radioactive material were initially delayed, owing to general political instability in the region, and in particular Israel's bombing of Lebanon's airport, which prevented outgoing flights. The sources were finally moved to a secure storage facility in Russia on 30 August.

"This is a big enough set of sources to be worrisome were it to fall into terrorists' hands," says Matthew Bunn, a non-proliferation expert at Harvard University. "Lebanon is certainly a country with some fairly substantial terrorist activity." The IAEA's repatriation mission in Lebanon was a piece of "good international housekeeping", adds John Simpson, an expert on nuclear non-proliferation at the University of Southampton's Mountbatten Centre for International Studies, the United Kingdom. "It is clearly extremely sensible that the IAEA should try to get all states to account for all radioactive sources that are within their territories."While this operation was a success, it merely scratches the surface of a global problem, says Bunn: "It's a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and this is at best one piece."The IAEA has identified more radioactive material that it would like to remove from Lebanon, although the location and activities of these sources is not being made public. The cost of the removal programme has been met by the European Union.IAEA officials are also working in Africa and former Soviet Union satellite states to improve the security of radioactive materials. In the Ukraine, for example, a centralized storage facility is planned to house used radioactive sources from across the country. Construction of the facility within the Chernobyl exclusion zone is expected to begin later this year. The UK government has pledged £2.1 million from its Global Threat Reduction Programme towards the scheme.