Morning Brief, Monday, October 8

Asia

NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. government is stepping up pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to permit aerial spraying of opium poppies, a move that many analysts fear could be destabilizing. More here.

A helicopter escorting newly reelected Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf crashed in Kashmir.

Burmese junta: The floggings will continue until morale improves. 

A typhoon devastated China’s southeast coast, and nearly 1 million Chinese computers were hit with viruses last week.

Middle East

A top Turkish lawmaker threatened to cut Turkey’s help to the U.S. mission in Iraq if a bill on the Armenian genocide passes the U.S. congress.

Sudan will host a few hundred Palestinian refugees fleeing Iraq. Perhaps the Sudanese will house them in this razed rebel town.

U.S. Gen. David Petraeus accused Iran’s ambassador to Iraq of secretly being a member of the powerful and troublesome Qods force. 

Europe

Investigators know the identity of Anna Politkovskaya’s killer, her former newspaper reports.

Drunken intruders punched a hole in a Monet painting at Paris’s Musée d’Orsay.

A former British ambassador has gotten himself in trouble for criticizing an Uzbek billionaire.

Elsewhere 

A sharia court in Nigeria banned a play that mocks… the use of sharia for nefarious ends.

The war on terrorism is aiding al Qaeda, a British think tank reports.

The Nobel Prize for medicine goes to an international team of stem-cell researchers.

Today’s Agenda 

• IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei is in India to meet with Indian nuclear officials.
• The Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry, peace, and economics are to be announced this week.
• The U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights visits Sri Lanka to assess the human-rights situation there.
• Today is Columbus Day in the United States.