Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin today praised President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap plans for a missile defense system in Europe and urged the U.S. to also cancel Cold War-era restrictions on trade with Russia. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance and Russia should consider linking their defensive missile systems. He said NATO and Russia have a shared interest in combatting the proliferation of intercontinental ballistic missile technology in East Asia and the Middle East. ”If North Korea stays nuclear and if Iran becomes nuclear, some of their neighbors might feel compelled to follow their example,” Fogh Rasmussen said. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, had pushed to base elements of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying it would help defend against a missile attack from Iran. But the Kremlin strenuously objected, fearing that the system would compromise Russia strategic nuclear capabilities or be used to eavesdrop on Russian military forces. Russian leaders in the past threatened to deploy short-range missiles to the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad near Poland if the U.S. moved ahead with the missile defense plan. Today, the Interfax news quoted an unnamed Russian military-diplomatic source as saying that such retaliatory measures would now be frozen and, possibly, fully canceled in response to Obama’s decision to scrap the missile defense shield. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday praised the U.S. decision to dump the missile defense plan as a “responsible move.“A brazen, daylight suicide bombing on the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia’s capital has killed at least 21 people, mostly AU peacekeepers, the mission today stated. Suicide bombers, disguised in a U.N.-marked vehicle, drove Thursday through the security perimeter of the mission’s headquarters, which is attached to Mogadishu’s airport. They detonated explosives near a building housing some of the mission’s top commanders. The attack killed four civilians and 17 soldiers, including the mission’s second-in-command, Burundian Cmdr. Maj. Gen. Juvenal Niyonguruza, according to mission spokesman Gaffel Nkolokosa. The force commander, Ugandan Gen. Nathan Mugisha, was among the 40 wounded. Al-Shabaab, the Islamist militia with ties to al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the African Union. The strike happened days after U.S. special forces targeted and killed a senior al Qaeda operative in southern Somalia. Analysts immediately hailed the death of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan on Monday as a major blow to al Qaeda’s efforts to work with Al-Shabaab to try to gain a foothold in the lawless country. Days later, however, Al-Shabaab struck back at the most prominent Western-linked target in Mogadishu — the African Union peacekeeping mission. The African Union has a 3,400-member peacekeeping force inSomalia, made up of troops from Burundi and Uganda. It operates under a U.N. mandate to support Somalia’s transitional federal government. The peacekeeping force is charged with protecting key government and strategic installations in Mogadishu, including the port, airport and presidential palace. It is the de-facto military force of the weak, transitional Somali government. China’s charm for foreign investors has not waned despite the global credit crunch that dampened investors worldwide, according to a UN report on trends in foreign direct investment. The economically recovering nation also capitalized on the financial crisis by buying cheap overseas assets, according to the World Investment Report 2009 released yesterday by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. China is reportedly poised to join the list of top investing nations in the world.Globally, the infusion of FDI fell from $2 trillion in 2007 to $1.7 trillion in 2008, a 14 percent drop, according to the report. The report projected that FDI inflows will bottom in 2009, dropping by at least 40 percent, to below $1.2 trillion. A rebound is expected in 2010. Despite the global gloom, FDI into China in 2008 rose by 30 percent to $108 billion, making it the third largest recipient of FDI in the world, after US and France. FDI to China dropped by 17.9 percent in the first half of this year, beating the 40 percent drop globally. Recently, the UN conference ranked China as the most favorite destination for FDI, followed by the US, India, Brazil and Russia.