Modest progress on Myanmar is overshadowed by the threat of war between Thailand and Cambodia

FOUR months ago, when Thailand's prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, visited his Cambodian counterpart, Hun Sen, the two countries seemed capable of dealing peacefully with a long-running dispute over an ancient temple on their borders. Thailand backed Cambodia's bid to have the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple listed as a "world heritage" site and both sides agreed to keep talking over their overlapping claims to a nearby patch of land.

Since then, things have deteriorated to the point where each side has sent thousands of troops to the area. This week talks between the two countries agreed no more than to try to avoid settling things by force. Cambodia asked the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting over what it called a state of "imminent war". ...

The government wins a hard-fought victory over its cherished nuclear deal with America. Its image and credibility have paid a high price

AFTER a rancorous, sometimes riotous, two-day debate on its most contentious policy, a nuclear co-operation agreement with America, India's government on July 22nd won a parliamentary vote of confidence. This did not ensure the survival of the vexed agreement, on which George Bush and India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, shook hands in July 2005. It still needs the approval of several bodies, including the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But the government's victory, by 275 votes to 256, with ten abstentions, has probably saved it from strangulation by its Indian opponents.

It has also prolonged the government, at least for a bit. A governing coalition led by Mr Singh's Congress party was on July 9th deserted by its Communist allies, in response to its long-delayed decision to submit the nuclear deal to the IAEA. A tribute to nuclear-armed India's rising stature, the agreement in effect grants an amnesty on its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), by allowing it to purchase nuclear fuel and technology regardless. But the Communists oppose the deal's subtext, closer ties with America, and therefore vowed to bring the government down. So the government called the confidence vote to thwart them. ...

News from the forbidden Citius, Altius, Fortius

FOREIGNERS deemed potential protesters are being kept out of China during the Olympic games (August 8th-24th). Beijing is ringed with police checkpoints to keep troublemakers at bay. But the authorities have named three city parks where demonstrations, in theory, will be allowed. They are well out of earshot of the main Olympic venues and police permits will be needed (five days' notice required). Chinese rules ban any protest that threatens public security or social stability. This is routinely used to block any demonstration that citizens have the temerity to propose.

Relations between China and Taiwan are much improved since Taiwan elected President Ma Ying-jeou in May. But hackles have been raised in Taiwan by a reference by China's state-run news agency to the "China, Taipei" Olympic team. Taiwan says the correct term should be "Chinese, Taipei", supposedly suggesting a merely cultural link with China--not belonging to it. Taiwanese might have other bones to pick. An exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing labels Taiwan's entries with the flag of the People's Republic. ...

The Maoists learn that not all power grows from the barrel of a gun

IT HELD elections in April. But Nepal is still without a government. On July 23rd, however, it did acquire a president, Ram Baran Yadav, a peasant's son from the southern Terai plains. This follows the abolition of the 239-year-old monarchy. The former king, Gyanendra, has been granted an official forest retreat to sulk in.

The election, for a Constituent Assembly, which, besides being responsible for drafting a new constitution, doubles as a parliament, was won by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). For a decade from 1996, the Maoists waged a vicious insurgency against the government. Now, they took 220 of the assembly's 601 seats but were unable to form the government. As the other parties reeled from defeat at the polls, the Maoists seem to have overestimated their own strength. Rather than forge a government of national unity, they were arrogant, publicly deriding other party leaders as "losers". ...

The climate-change prime minister loses some green points

COALMINERS in New South Wales (NSW), Australia's most populous state, boast that they export enough of the black stuff to supply New Zealand, Indonesia and Singapore with all their electricity. Along with Queensland and Victoria, the state also digs up enough to provide Australia as a whole with 83% of its power. This dirty energy has turned Australia into one of the world's highest per person emitters of greenhouse gases. With more than 200 years' supply of black coal left, Australians have never much questioned this. But that may be about to change.

The Labor government, under Kevin Rudd, outlined plans in a green paper on July 16th to cut carbon pollution with an emissions-trading scheme. Mr Rudd's promise to tackle climate change played a large part in Labor's election win last November. During its 11 years in power the former conservative coalition, under John Howard, largely ignored the issue. ...

Nearly 40 years after fighting flared, a border deal is reached

AFTER decades of dispute, China and Russia have at last reached agreement on where the entire length of their common border lies. On July 21st the two countries signed an accord on the last small stretch that had yet to be formally settled, putting an end to a quarrel that once came close to war. In both countries, a nationalist fringe will be nettled.

With their "strategic partnership", a shared resentment of Western dominance and friendly military ties, China and Russia have long put behind them the acrimony that erupted into cross-border skirmishes in 1969. In recent years they have been tidying up the remaining odds and ends along their 4,300km (2,670 mile) frontier. The latest agreement, signed in Beijing by the two countries' foreign ministers, resolves the niggling matter of a couple of islands at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers near the city of Khabarovsk in Russia's Far East. ...

Nearly two decades of conflict have left Kashmir overloaded with orphans

"WHEN did you last see your father?" is not a question to ask many of the 350 children in Srinagar's main orphanage. Over half are victims of Kashmir's 19-year-old insurgency, having lost one or both parents to the war between Indian soldiers and separatists.

Wasim Ahmed Bhatt, 16, is more forthcoming than most. His father, a member of a local Islamist outfit, Hizbul Mujahideen, was shot dead 14 years ago while on an operation against the army. After a long struggle to feed their three children, the dead man's widow deposited Wasim at the orphanage four years ago. There he has learnt English, which he wants to study at university. He says he has no interest in fighting for Kashmir's freedom--though many, if not all, orphans seem to favour independence. ...

Frightening and senseless threats to our correspondent from angry jihadists

BY SOME reckoning, the leaders of Islamabad's Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, ought to be in prison. For six months last year, led by two clerical brothers, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the mosque was a jihadist citadel. In the heart of Pakistan's capital, the brothers sent forth Islamist vigilantes. They kidnapped six Chinese women whom they accused of selling sex. They threatened to break the heads of music-cassette vendors. When President Pervez Musharraf demurred, the Red Mosquers bunkered down.

A siege ensued. "We will defend ourselves even to death," said Mr Ghazi, at a press conference inside the mosque's fortified walls. He spoke truth. A year ago this month, the then General Musharraf sent in the troops. In the ensuing gun-battle, Mr Ghazi and over 100 of his followers were killed. Mr Aziz escaped in a burqa; but was soon arrested. He has been charged with kidnapping and other crimes. But most of his accomplices are still at large. They include his wife, Umme Hassan, who ran a seminary for female jihadists. Indeed, she and her fellows have since set up shop in another seminary, outside Islamabad. ...

Radical Muslim and Christian groups stoke the embers of Papua's conflict

THE separatist conflict in Indonesia's Papua region--formerly known as Irian Jaya and once one of the world's great liberal causes--has become relatively quiet in recent years. Small groups of protesters still occasionally gather to wave the Morning Star independence flag and get arrested for it. But decades of repression by the Indonesian security forces, combined with the granting in 2000 of partial autonomy from Jakarta, have sapped the separatists' ranks. However, according to a recent report on the region, there is a risk that the separatist conflict may be rekindled or replaced by religious strife because of the arrival of new and more muscular forms of both Islam and Christianity.

Broadly speaking, indigenous Papuans--who are dark-skinned Melanesians, like their kin next door in Papua New Guinea and Australian aborigines--tend to be Christians or animists, whereas the many migrants to the region from elsewhere in Indonesia are mostly Muslim. In recent years fundamentalist Christian groups, some started by American and Canadian preachers, have been proselytising among indigenous Papuans. Their success has also prompted the development of fundamentalist streams in the established Protestant churches. ...

Only six-and-a-half to go

WILL North Korea ever reliably give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons? Few among the diplomats from America, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia most closely involved in a five-year, six-party effort to denuclearise the Korean peninsula would wager on it. But on July 13th China announced their agreement to take this dogged disarmament effort another step forward.

By October North Korea promises to have fully disabled its plutonium-producing 5MW nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Work is under way to remove spent fuel-rods from the reactor; the cooling tower was blown up last month. Once its control rod is cut, it would take a year and a lot of effort and expense to restart the reactor. Some fresh fuel-rods for Yongbyon also have to be disposed of. South Korea has also offered to buy a stash of fresh fuel prepared for a now abandoned 50MW reactor; if talks broke down again as often in the past, North Korea could retool this for Yongbyon. ...

A newly humble and emollient president, up to a point

WITH his once-hopeful presidency paralysed by weeks of street protests against imports of American beef, Lee Myung-bak (pictured) is now trying to restore a modicum of sanity to domestic politics and--in case that idea sounds insufficiently implausible--even to his country's dealings with North Korea.

A new, humbler Mr Lee, once admired as the "Bulldozer", is on display. His people last month renegotiated a beef deal with the United States, which had said that unless South Korea opened its market completely to American beef, then Congress would not approve a sweeping free-trade pact. Protesters had decried the risks of mad-cow disease, so the new deal limits imports to low-risk animals under 30 months old. That cuts little ice with many emotional protesters but--after Mr Lee last week also sacked three cabinet ministers over the fiasco--was good enough for the opposition Democratic Party to end its boycott of the National Assembly. The assembly convened on July 10th, after a six-week delay, with a backlog of work. ...

Despite good laws and even better intentions, India causes as much pollution as any rapidly industrialising poor country

Correction to this article

A HEREDITARY Hindu priest, Veer Bhadra Mishra is wont, shortly after sunrise, to totter down the stone steps of his temple to the Ganges river, and there perform a three-part ritual. He touches the sacred water. He dips himself in it. He cups it in his hands and drinks it. ...

A rare slip-up in court by Singapore's elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew

MEMBERS of Singapore's government are notorious sticklers for legal exactitude. So it has been interesting to watch the reaction after the country's elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew--a British-trained lawyer before he became a politician--gave inaccurate testimony in the trial of two opposition leaders.

In May Mr Lee testified in a hearing to decide damages against Chee Soon Juan, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), and his sister, Chee Siok Chin, for defaming the former prime minister and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, who is now prime minister himself. Mr Lee senior claimed that after the London-based International Bar Association (IBA) held its annual conference in Singapore last October, its president sent a letter to the Law Society of Singapore praising the country's justice system. It has since emerged that there was no such laudatory letter. ...

The opposition leader and another critic arrested

SO FAR, the case against Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia's main opposition leader, has stayed pretty close to the script from 1998. Now, as then, he poses a threat to the prime minister of the day. Also as then, he faces accusations of "sodomy" (ie, homosexual sex, a crime in Malaysia) from an aide. And on July 16th, in another flashback to 1998, armed police in balaclavas pounced on Mr Anwar and took him for questioning.

Last time Mr Anwar was beaten during interrogation and appeared in court with a black eye. He was jailed for 15 years but freed in 2004 after the appeal court overturned his conviction. This time Mr Anwar, who had briefly sought refuge in the Turkish embassy when the accusations surfaced, was released on bail after one night in custody. No charges have yet been filed. The prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, promised there would be no repeat of the "black-eye incident". ...

The Taliban show they are not just suicide-bombers

IT IS a tough, complex and until this week largely forgotten war that American troops fight in the high valleys of Kunar and Nuristan. The region is almost too high for helicopters to reach; there are few roads and dense pine forests provide ideal cover for insurgents, with short supply lines to safe havens across the Pakistan border. The advantages of Western technology and firepower are largely nullified.

They did not save the small American combat outpost at the village of Wanat in the Weygal valley. Two days after it was built, just after the 4.15am call to prayer on July 13th, intense gunfire streaked into the base from the village. Insurgents breached the defences. In fierce fighting, nine American soldiers were killed, more than in any single battle since 2005. Another 15 Americans and four Afghans were injured, out of a garrison of 45 Americans and 25 Afghans. The attackers were beaten back, and reportedly also took heavy casualties. But the "temporary" outpost has since been abandoned to the Taliban. ...