Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah landed in London yesterday. Jenna Crombie of Newsweek's London bureau watched the Queen greet him. Her report:

Tourists in London were treated to quite a spectacle this afternoon as Queen Elizabeth welcomed King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to Britain. After an official state reception at the Horse Guards Parade Square in Whitehall, the King and Queen traveled to Buckingham Palace together, amidst much pomp and circumstance, in a gilded horse-drawn carriage.

But behind the scenes, controversy lurks. Some British human rights activists, politicians and terrorism experts are furious at the warmth of the Queen’s welcome. Just a few days before his arrival, King Abdullah was widely criticized in the British media after claiming that the Saudis had provided the British with intelligence that could have prevented the July 2005 bombings in London, which killed 52 people. British officials hotly deny the allegation. Abdullah also implied that many countries, including Britain, are not doing enough to fight terrorism--a surprising accusation given that 15 of the September 11 bombers were from Saudi Arabia. The fact that earlier this year an investigation into the allegedly bribery-ridden arms deal between British defense firm BAE and the Saudis in the 1980s was called off has added to misgivings about the visit. And then there’s the shady subject of the Saudi human rights record--three British citizens imprisoned in the country recently claim they were tortured

Stock markets in the developing world are not for sissies. Who can forget the scenes of late last decade, when financial contagion swept bourses from Bangkok to Buenos Aires, bringing traders to their knees? It was no different in Brazil, where in 1999 the overvalued real collapsed practically overnight, taking the São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) with it. It wasn't long before the sages started dissing Latin America's biggest economy, calling for financial rainmakers to take the B out of BRICs, the acronym for the world's trendiest emerging markets - Brazil, Russia, India and China.

What a difference a decade makes. On October 26, the traders will be frantic again, this time clawing each other for a chance to get a piece of one of the world's hottest properties. Yes, Bovespa is going public. And if the market buzz is to be believed, by the closing bell on Friday, Brazil will have shepherded one of the largest IPOs of the year.

In London today former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan named the first recipient of the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. Jenna Crombie of Newsweek's London bureau was present for the announcement. Her report:

No doubt by now, the former President of Mozambique will have heard the good news. This morning former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan announced that Joaquim Chissano, who led Mozambique between 1986 and 2005, was the first winner of the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. Annan, chair of the Prize Committee, praised Chissano’s successes in reducing poverty levels, encouraging peace and reconciliation in wake of the ravages of civil war and in boosting the economy of his southern African nation during his two terms in office. Annan said he hoped this award would serve to celebrate good African governance and shed light upon the emergence of conscientious leaders.

Within the next week they will start peeping out of men's lapels, be strategically placed on ladies' handbags and big ones will be displayed on the fronts of London's famous black taxis. It's Poppy Appeal time again in Britain and the paper and plastic poppies, sold by the Royal British Legion to raise money for military veterans, will be springing up all over the country on the run up to Remembrance Day on November 11. This year, however, the vibrant red symbol of blood spilled on battlefields from Flanders to Basra is taking on even more significance with debates raging in the papers and in parliament over the treatment of returning vets and soldiers who have died in combat. Earlier this month a mother, whose teenage son was killed by an explosion in Iraq, refused to accept an apology from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for confusion over the mix up of her son's body parts with another man's limbs. Several families have cried foul over compensation for their injured loved ones; one soldier, who lost both legs and suffered brain damage after he was struck by an IED in Afghanistan, was given a lump sum of just over £150,000 while a Royal Air Force (RAF) typist on a civilian claim received £484,000 from the MoD when she injured her thumb typing.

For the last two years running, bankers in London, New York and Tokyo have reaped record-breaking bonuses, sending bountiful ripples through their local economies in the form of everything from gasp-worthy bar bills to astronomical property prices. Many movers and shakers, buoyed by a record $3,300 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions activity globally in the first half of this year, were hoping that the coming bonus season would prove three’s the charm.

That was, of course, until America’s subprime mortgage crisis sent the global economy into a penny-pinching credit crunch.

What did Vladimir Putin hope to achieve as he stood side by side with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Teheran yesterday?

  Photo: AFP

Certainly the visit was a boost to Ahmadinejad. Ever since Russia – believed by many in Tehran to be Iran’s only major international ally - backed a UN Security Council resolution censuring Iran and imposing mild sanctions last March, Iran has been dangerously isolated internationally. Now, it seems, the relationship is back on track – and, crucially, Iran is a degree more confident that thanks to Russia’s veto on the Security Council, there will be no further tightening of sanctions.

That diplomatic boost for Ahmadinejad sounds like a loss for Washington. Indeed, when George Bush hosted Putin at the family estate at Kennebunkport, Maine, this summer, much of the talk was on Iran and persuading Putin to continue his support for UN sanctions. At the time Putin agreed that Iran should be prevented from developing nuclear weapons. Yet yesterday Putin confirmed at a press conference in Tehran that Iran also had the right to "pursue its civilian nuclear power projects." That’s actually something not even the United States denies – but the symbolism of Putin coming to Iran’s defense was significant.

Judging by all the negative ink on biofuels lately - they're too expensive, energy inefficient, not so green, or so we're told - you'd think the rush to rescue the world from sky-fouling fossil fuels is a sham. That would be a shame. If there's any truth to the latest buzz out on what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will say next month when it weighs in with another major report on the state of the planet, then we're already cooked.

Or so says Tim Flannery, the Australian scientist and author of "The Weathermakers" who has become the rock star of climate scholars. Though not a member of the climate panel, Flannery pored over the official numbers recently and came away shaken.

Speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline, on Oct. 9, he said that the forthcoming panel report will show that the earth's atmosphere has already passed the danger zone for the levels of gases which are driving planetary climate change. In fact, we passed the threshold two years ago - a decade earlier than had been predicted - when, thanks to acclerated burning of fossil fuels, the concentrations of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane reached 455 parts per million.

That's the level that scientists say will bring on at least a two degree centigrade (3.6 farenheit) hike in averagle global temperatures, after which all manner of environmental havoc is likely. Higher ocean temperatures, for instance, will not only hasten the melting of polar ice sheets and dangerously lift sea levels, but likely provoke megadroughts and wildfires in many of the world's rainforests.

What's causing the emissions to spike? Prosperity, says Flannery. Not just in China and India; economic growth has been the rule in many nations. And what's driving the wheels of progress? Mostly those expensive, inefficient, and not so green fossil fuels. In fact, instead of redcuing their earth-baking greenhouse gas emissions, the fastest growing nations in the developed and developing world alike are "recarbonizing," as energy wonks put it, thanks to the usual suspects: coal and oil.

There's been no official comment so far from IPCC insiders. Maybe they're  trying to catch their breath.

Turkey argued that if Congress passed the bill, Turkey would excercise its “strategic leverage.” That’s a common Turkish argument with all foreigners – but now it's being put to the test. What does Turkey’s strategic leverage mean – or is it just verbiage? The government is under huge pressure to do something to show its disapproval. But already Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to be backpedaling. He told CNN Turk last night that “political realities do not permit sentimentalism” and that “the consequesnce of any action should be carefully studied in the light of the common interests and links we have with the US.”

İf the Turks really wanted to hit the Americans where it hurt, they could, for instance, prohibit Turkish airspace to US military flights en route to Iraq. They could limit use of Incirlik air base, a major US Air Force hub for the region. And they could cut truck traffic between Turkey and Iraq, which accounts for 70 per cent of the Coalition’s total supplies.

Its unlikely that any such serious measures are on the cards, if only because Turkey doesn't yet want to risk a complete alieniation fron the US, and the dramatic shift of its pro-Western strategy that would entail. At the same time, a kind of turning point has been reached. Ankara is deeply disappoınted over the US failure to make good on repeated promises to rein in the Iraq-based PKK Kurdish separatists. Turkey has decided to tackle the insurgents themselves; next week the government will present a bill to parliament authorizing a cross-border incursion into Iraq.

It will almost certainly be passed. Erdogan says he wants the authorization in his pocket but will not use it until after the [Iraq] Neighbors Summit on Nov 3 in Istanbul, and will likely also hold off until after a scheduled trip to Washington to meet Bush the week after.

In the meantime Turkey has withdrawn its Ambassador from Washington, and cancelled other official visits. Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Calif) predicted last night that the only consequences of the genocide bill would be “angry words from Ankara, and then it will be over” – angering the Turks no end. But the hope is that he’s right – for Turkey’s sake, and America’s.

Chechen gunmen have long been the enforcers of Russia's criminal underworld. But is the government using Chechens to silence its opponents? Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who is now a leading figure in the United Civic Front opposition group, seems to think so. Today Kasparov asked Russia's Prosecutor General's Office to investigate what he called "threats from Chechen officials" after Chechen Parliamentary Speaker Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov called for Kasparov to be jailed for treason. "Garry Kasparov must be put in jail," Abdurakhmanov told journalists earlier this week after Kasparov criticized Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov. "However, if we do not manage to achieve the desired result through federal laws, we will resort to other measures. The Caucasus allows for this, and the Caucasus has its own laws, and Kasparov will be punished for such liberties. He must be in jail, and if not, we will punish him anyway." Abdurakhmanov isn't the only Chechen who seemingly has it in for Kasparov: Chechnya's Human Rights Commissioner Nurdi Nukhazhiyev is also on record as saying that the opposition leader "should be punished using traditional measures we use in the Caucasus."

Kasparov has good cause to take threats from Chechens seriously. Last month Russian prosecutors investigating the 2006 murder of crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya arraigned Shamil Burayev, formerly head of Achkhoy-Martan District of Chechnya, on suspicion of arranging the murder. Politkovskaya had accused Burayev's boss, Ramzan Kadyrov, of involvement in torture and kidnapping.

The funeral images on Turkish television are a familiar ritual. A line of plywood coffins draped in large Turkish flags stands in the courtyard of a school or government building; inside are the bodies of soldiers killed in the latest attack by Kurdish separatists. Behind the coffins a line of smart young soldiers standing at attention, a gaggle of hysterical mothers being restrained by male relatives and, if the crop of tragedy is big enough, a few senior generals and politicians. Today, the Turkish military buried 13 men killed in a PKK ambush near Sirnak, by the Iraqi border. Their death brings the toll to 97 soldiers killed this year alone.

Not surprisingly, calls for action from the media and opposition are overwhelming – and most center on the idea of raiding PKK camps in North Iraq, where around 4500 PKK fighters are thought to be holed up. The Baghdad government – and particularly the Iraqi Kurds who control the foreign ministry - has strongly rejected the idea of sanctioning any cross-border operations by Turkey. Its not hard to see why. The Iraqi Kurds need Ankara’s cooperation to continue their trade with Turkey, which is the lifeblood of their landlocked region. And though the Iraqi Kurds have had their differences with the PKK, the idea of siding with the Turks, a historical enemy, against fellow-Kurds is unthinkable. So Turkey’s government is between a rock and a hard place. Whacking the PKK is the easy option, providing the Turkish public with the quick satisfaction of revenge. But that’s exactly what the PKK wants Ankara to do. They’ve lost the war for a separate Turkish Kurdistan, and beggared their people for a generation in the process. There’s little support for the PKK’s twisted, Marxist version of nationalism among most Kurds – who just want basic rights and prosperity, not the eternal revolutionary struggle envisaged by the PKK. So what the dying PKK needs to revive its fortunes and its credibility is an aggressive raid by the Turks, which will create a new crop of martyrs and force even their old enemies, the Iraqi Kurdish administration, to back them.

Professional revolutionaries thrive on conflict. What they hate most is compromise of the sort forced on Turkey by the European Union, which made Ankara give Kurds cultural rights and liberalize free speech laws. A new escalation of violence – if Ankara succumbs to the provocation - would undo all those years of reform in a stroke by stoking knee-jerk nationalism, and a new spiral of violence. The key to asymmetric warfare is provoking your stronger opponent into self-defeating acts of over-reaction. That is precisely what the PKK is attempting to do. Perhaps the government will find the wisdom to resist the temptation to charge in and avenge its dead.

Cutting edge greenhouse technology in the Netherlands could mean trouble for Kenya's flower industry.  Kenyans have long considered themselves to have an environmental advantage over Europe. Although they rely heavily on air transport—which leaves a hefty carbon footprint—Kenya's climate allows it to grow its plants outside as opposed to indoors, where temperature and light must be controlled artificially. But a new study from the Hague-based Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI) shows that difference in carbon dioxide emitted in the production of Kenyan and Dutch roses is smaller than previously thought. And the gap is quickly closing as the Netherlands switches to new, non-polluting methods to heat its greenhouses.

The Netherlands horticultural sector aims to become climate neutral by 2020. Its new heating technology, currently under trial, involves capturing energy with solar panels during summer and storing it in water inside permeable rock materials 120 meters under ground.  The warmed water then gets pumped up to the greenhouse during the winter months while cold water is circulated in the summer. The first greenhouse to use this system opened in Holland last year and further trials are going on in the country right now. At a time when the world is increasingly conscious of the carbon footprint left by shipping commercial goods around the globe--most often calculated as "food miles"--such development could make a big difference to buyers.

If flower consumers do start favoring Dutch suppliers, it would deal a huge blow to Kenya, which sees the 700 million it earns in exports of flowers, vegetables and fruit annually as critical to the health of its economy. Kenya is currently the leading flower exporter to the European Union, supplying 38 percent of all imported flowers sold there. LEI claims that previous reports that emissions from Kenyan flowers, including airfreight, were nearly six times lower than Dutch flowers are just wrong—partially because they neglected to take into account variations in flower weight between Kenyan and Dutch varieties. No doubt Kenyan officials will dispute this new study, which has yet to be published in full, and continue to resist the introduction of carbon labeling on all imported flowers.  But everyone will have to agree that what matters most these days is not what you call a rose. It's the carbon it costs to get there.

Beijing isn 't the only Chinese city that's grasped the power of sports as a way to enhance its own profile. Duncan Hewitt reports on the spectacle of the Special Olympics' star-studded opening ceremony in Shanghai:

     It was the day the glamour of Hollywood came to the suburbs of southern Shanghai.  Was that really Arnold Schwarzenegger striding up the stairs in the middle of an 80,000-seat concrete football stadium;  film star Ziyi Zhang pouting beautifully; Colin Farrell emoting sympathetically about the situation of the world's intellectually disabled; Yo-yo Ma playing a jaunty tune on his cello?

    For a few hours on Tuesday evening, the drab high-rises and home-decoration superstores which surround the Shanghai Stadium seemed to vanish into the night sky, as it played host to the opening ceremony of the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games, the movement set up by JFK's sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 1968 to bring sport - and love - into the lives of people once dismissed as 'mentally handicapped'.  The biggest contest ever, with some ten thousand athletes, this is the first time the games have been held in Asia, the first time in a developing country.

    And China -- Shanghai in particular -- is determined to ensure they leave an indelible mark. Thanks to Don Mischer and his production team - veterans of the Emmys, the Superbowl and the 1996 Olympics - the opening delivered, with a stunning light show, dramatic fireworks and slick choreography: athletes with intellectual disabilities performed tai-chi routines against a backdrop of swaying bamboo, dancers formed a giant yin-and-yang symbol, and 170 teams of participants from around the world marched into the stadium in a record-breaking time of just one hour.

     Quincy Jones, who wrote the theme tune for the games, 'I know I can', was there. Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun conducted his own choral work. Jackie Chan, Olympic gold medallist Liu Xiang, a host of Chinese movie stars and celebrities and a smattering of international politicians added to the glitz.  Shanghai's own Yao Ming missed his pre-NBA season media day at the Houston Rockets - and incurred a fine as a result - to attend Shanghai's opening ceremony.  Schwarzenegger, who skipped several days of a special session of California's legislature to fly in, made a tear-jerking speech, describing Special Olympics athletes as true heroes. His mother-in-law, 86-year old Eunice Kennedy Shriver herself, sat on the VIP stand, weeping with emotion.  The plight of the world's intellectually disabled has probably never had quite such a glamorous moment in the spotlight...

     And in the midst of it all, China's President Hu Jintao sat smiling slightly nervously.  A man famous for his reserved, unemotional manner, the cautious Mr Hu can rarely have had an introduction such as that given him by Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver: "Wow!  What a show! President Hu Jintao!..." he whooped as he bounded onstage, like a Superbowl cheerleader. 

  

Here's a correspondence from B.J. Lee, Newsweek's reporter in South Korea:  

Ostensibly, last week’s summit between South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il produced a major progress in bringing the two hostile states together. In the second-ever summit since their division in 1945, the two Koreas agreed to seek peace on the Korean peninsula, by holding more frequent summits and pursuing cooperation from the U.S. and China. The two Koreas are still technically at war because no peace treaty was signed after the 1950-1953 Korean War. The South also promised to help revive the North’s impoverished economy, by building roads, railroads, shipyards and a special economic zone there. The two parties also agreed to set up a joint fishing zone in a disputed sea area and start a freight train service across the heavily armed border remaining as the world’s last Cold War frontier. “North and South Korea shared the view they must end the current armistice and build a permanent peace regime," said the joint declaration signed by the two leaders.

  Brazilian politics has never been for prudes, but the fortunes of Senate president Renan Calheiros and his onetime lover continue to arch eyebrows. Calheiros, as this blog last reported (Aug. 13), has been under fire since May, when he was caught sending wads of cash to Mônica Veloso,

 with whom he had an extramarital affair and a child. Calheiros, who is not much to look at (below), has battled an irate public and fierce political foes ever since to save his own - how might the Brazilians put it? - "bum bum." Not so the fair Ms. Veloso, who has seen hers glorified from the printed page to cyberspace. A former journalist, she not only became one fo the country's biggest stories by revealing her ex's funny finances but now graces the cover of the anxiously awaited October edition of Brazilian Playboy, due to hit the stands on Oct. 9. Call it David and Goliath meets Beauty and the Beast. The whole imbroglio has kept a thousand gossips and eggheads busy parsing the peculiarities of politics and propriety in Latin America's biggest nation.