The Malaysian Insider

WASHINGTON, Nov 21 - The United States' leading intelligence organisation has warned that the world is entering an increasingly unstable and unpredictable period in which the advance of western-style democracy is no longer assured, and some states are in danger of being "taken over and run by criminal networks".

The global trends review, produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) every four years, represents sobering reading in Barack Obama's intray as he prepares to take office in January.

The country he inherits, the report warns, will no longer be able to "call the shots" alone, as its power over an increasingly multipolar world begins to wane.

LONDON, Nov 21 - It seems only yesterday that scarcity was the story. Energy and commodity prices were heading into the stratosphere. The oil was running out, food shortages loomed, Russia was resurgent and China was marching into Africa amid a scramble for dwindling resources.

Now? Prices everywhere are falling as recession bites. Investment banks have disappeared; and the global credit system is on life-support. The big threat is deflation rather than inflation. The oil price has slumped, wiping the smirk from authoritarian leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

When Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for the presidency he expected Iraq and healthcare would be the priorities of his presidency. No one told him the banks were facing bankruptcy and the US an economic shock as severe as any since the Great Crash.

LONDON, Nov 21 - Employers who turn a blind eye to corruption face up to 10 years in jail as part of a radical overhaul of Britain’s bribery laws proposed by the British Law Commission on Thursday.

The commission, the government’s law reform watchdog, also recommends the creation of a new offence of bribing foreign government workers.

The reforms, which are expected to be implemented in the next parliamentary session, go some way to meeting accusations that Britain has failed to properly tackle corporate bribery.

LONDON, Nov 21 - When the man they call No Drama Obama met the Clinton Psychodrama in the Democratic primary campaign, it was bound to produce an epic for the ages.

The iron self-discipline of the long-shot pretender proved just enough in the end to overcome the front-runner whose strengths were undermined by the self-indulgent incontinence characteristic of the Clinton political machine. It seemed a fitting catharsis for the modern Democratic Party when he won the primary.

And when Senator Obama cemented his victory over the summer by declining to offer her his vice-presidential slot, it appeared to douse once and for all the last embers of the Clinton family's ambitions.

WASHINGTON, Nov 21 - A federal judge ordered the release of five Algerians held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the continued detention of a sixth on Thursday in a major blow to the Bush administration’s strategy to capture and hold terror suspects without charges.

In the first case of its kind, US District Judge Richard J. Leon said the government’s evidence linking the five Algerians to al-Qaida was not credible as it came from a single, unidentified source. Therefore, he said the five could not be held indefinitely as enemy combatants and should be released immediately.

“To allow enemy combatancy to rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with the court’s obligation,” Leon told the crowded courtroom.