THE JAPAN TIMES

Abe already preparing policy team for new job

Prime minister-in-waiting Shinzo Abe has already started taking applications from bureaucrats who want to join his policy team at the Prime minister?s Office.The government?s announcement on Thursday came just one day after Abe was elected president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Abe is expected to be made the nation?s leader next Tuesday in a vote in the House of Representatives, which the ruling bloc of the LDP and New Komeito controls.Abe plans to appoint five to 10 working-level bureaucrats who will tackle specific issues.The applicants will be interviewed by Abe and his aides, and those chosen will take up their new posts Tuesday, when Abe plans to form his new Cabinet.

VATICAN POST

Who did the Pope quote?

Byzantine Greek Emperor Manuel, whom the Pope calls «erudite», had lost his throne to his brother in 1376. How did he get it back? By calling for help from the Muslim Turks! Back on the throne in 1379, he paid tribute to the Turkish Sultan. His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech September 12 at the University of Regensburg in his German homeland. He discussed «the question of God through the use of reason» and the matter of getting «reason and faith [to] work together in the right way.» His basic theme was that there has been a «synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early [Christian] church» and that this relationship between Christianity and Greek philosophy and logic has been a very good thing. He warned against those who believe this synthesis is «not binding» upon new converts from non-western traditions; this view, he declared, is «false.» The pontiff plainly intended to depict the Roman Catholic Church as supportive of modernity and science in general, and both western and tolerant. The Pope opened his homily by referring affectionately to his years teaching at the University of Bonn (from 1959) during which the university was a «universe of reason.» He then segued into a description of some of his recent reading. «I was reminded of all this recently when I read part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara [in modern Turkey] - by the erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.» Thus he alluded to an encounter between a Byzantine (Christian) emperor and a learned Persian (that is to say, Iranian) Muslim a century after the last major Crusade. The emperor, as cited by Benedict, tells the Persian, «Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.» BBC News reports that the Pope said «I quote» twice, stressing that these weren?t his own words...

THAILAND DAILY

Thai coup, a blow for Asian democracy

Malaysians, led by Prime minister Abdullah Badawi, have uniformly reacted in shock at the sudden and unexpected crash of democracy in Thailand. But despite fears that the generals will not easily hand power back to democratically- elected civilians as the military is promising, few Malaysians really miss the ouster of Prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra whose «shoot-to- kill» policies against suspected criminals and ethnic Malay-Muslims in southern Thailand had alienated many Malaysians.What lies shattered is the belief that military intervention in civilian politics was over for good after the 1992 putsch and that Thai democracy was mature enough to be a showcase for ASEAN member countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, Singapore, the Philippines, Brunei and Indonesia have had their share of autocratic or military-backed regimes. «I feel uncomfortable with the military coup. I fear it sets a dangerous precedent in a country that should have seen its last coup years back,» said Steven Gan, editor of Malaysiakini, an independent news portal. «Will the generals hand power back to civilians as they are promising? Does this coup mean the military will intervene again and again when civilian governments don?t match up? The coup is not so much condemned, but the question is what the coup leaders will do now?There must be a more mature and democratic way to resolve differences in a democracy and that way is through elections...»

CHICAGO SUN TIMES

With Atlantis back, NASA looks to future

NASA declared that it?s back in the space-station assembly business Thursday after shuttle Atlantis and its six astronauts safely returned from a 12-day mission to install a big new piece of the orbiting outpost. «It was a great team effort. Assembly is off to a good start,» commander Brent Jett radioed as the shuttle touched down in the dark about an hour before sunrise.

With Atlantis on the ground, the space agency and its international partners plan 14 more shuttle flights in an ambitious effort to finish building the orbiting space lab over the next four years.